Criticism of freuds theory

It is the site of reason and introspection. It is the intermediary between the world within id and the world outside superego. The superego, which is another regulatory agent, protects the society from id. It is partly conscious and in moral parlance, can be called as the conscience of the individual. Being a repository of pride, self esteem etc.

This is exemplified in his postulate of infantile sexuality. Drawing from mythology and contemporary ethnography, Freud proposes his theory of psychosexual development critiqued for its explicit phallogocentrism in which the infant passes through a series of stages, each defined by an erogenous zone of the body. The stages of psychosexual development include:.

During this stage, the principle source of pleasure for the infant is the mouth and the pleasure is derived through sucking, biting, swallowing etc. A person fixated at this stage will be prone to obsession with oral activities like eating, drinking, smoking, kissing etc. Pleasure is derived from the phallic region, through behaviours such as masturbation and through fantasies.

Through both fantasy and overt behaviour, he exhibits his sexual longings for the mother. Many forms of inter-generational conflict are seen by Freudians as having oedipal overtones, such as professional rivalries, often viewed in Freudian terms as reproducing the competition between siblings for parental favour.

Criticism of freuds theory

Electra complexthe female version of the phallic conflict about which Freud was less clear is more complicated. During phallic stage, the father becomes the object of her desire, as she identifies that both her mother and herself are castrated and powerless a severe critique of this Freudian concept is one of the concerns of Feminist psychoanalysts.

Freud further states that the female heteronormative relationships are tinged with a certain degree of penis-envy as she seeks a surrogate father for such bondings. Even though there are social conflicts, they are minimalised through the use of sublimation. Freud described dreams as the royal road to the unconscious, as they provide a better understanding of the repressed desires in the unconscious.

They are considered as the symbolic fulfillment of the wishes of the unconscious. According to him, dreams are symbolic texts which need to be deciphered, since the watchful ego is at work, even when we are dreaming. The ego scrambles and censors the messages as the unconscious itself adds to this obscurity by its peculiar modes of functioning. Without empirical evidence, Freudian theories often seem weak, and ultimately fail to initiate standards for treatment.

Critics have also pointed out that Freud's theoretical models arise from a homogeneous sample group—almost exclusively upper-class Austrian women living in the sexually repressed society of the late 19th cent. Such a sample, many psychologists contend, made Freud's focus on sex as a determinant of personality too emphatic. Other problems with traditional psychoanalysis are related to Freud's method of analysis.

For Freudian analysis to reach its intended conclusions, the psychoanalyst required frequent sessions with a client over a period of years: today, the prohibitive costs of such methods compels most to seek other forms of psychiatric care. Traditional psychoanalysis involved a distancing between therapist and client—the two did not even face each other during the sessions.

Whatever was suppressed was shown in the dreams, and recording the dreams helped identify unconscious conflicts and impulses. Sigmund Freud discovered it. These were some of the techniques that Freud used to talk and learn more about the criticism of freuds theory. However, as time progressed, the discipline of psychology shifted toward what was observable and quantifiable after the Behavioral school of thought.

So many critics ridiculed Freud's theory. There were many supporters of Freud, but he also received some strong criticisms from other people. Krafft-Ebing stated that Freud's theories were "scientific fairy tales," and he projected his personality into the theories. They criticize Freud for telling the patients his thoughts and projecting himself onto the theories he developed.

His theories were panned for being "overgeneralized" and providing "excessive and absolute formulations. Jasper characterized Freud's theories as reckless, with every explanation pointing back to sexuality. His explanation of every issue was simple and always caused by sex. As for him, it was the only active force. Even Freud's disciples followed this simplistic approach.

Freud was very repetitive, and according to his critics, Freud was not empathetic. Hollingsworth stated that the concept of the Oedipus complex was as real as demons, evil, and spirits.