Why do non-psychologists talk so much about Freud?
Most psychologists don't care about Freud's work outside of a historical sense and kinda hate him as a person. His work was quite literally used as an example of pseudoscience by Karl Popper.
And yet for some reason philosophers have an obsession with integrating his views into their work and artists keep using his views as inspiration and analyze existing works via the lens of psychoanalysis.
Honestly I think it's as simple as his notariety.
He is one of the most well-known psychologists and is a bit of a pop culture icon.
It's like how you see most non-physicists talk about Einstein more than they do Feynman or Higgs.
They spend multiple weeks on him in Intro to psychology classes. Even though they tell you at the end it's a bunch of rot (if you haven't figured it out yourself), if that's like 1/5 of your psychological knowledge, you're gonna use it
His work is important to study from an historical perspective in order to see how psychology grew into what it is today, in the same way that it’s important that we learn about outdated concepts like tabula rasa and phrenology in order to better understand what is correct. The fact that he applied so much of his own subjective thoughts to his brand of psychology shows us how we, as potential future psychologists, also have the same capacity to search for confirmatory evidence and eschew disproving evidence in search of a theory. He’s a great example of what not to do when it comes to psychology.
Probably because his ideas is what made popular psychology known to the world. His ideas have largely been debunked but there are nuggets that have been developed and become something different, rather than abandoned.
His ideas about ego, id superego etc are more commonly understood than the current psychiatric terms.
So, just like we call it pop culture, pop psychology is well known and he's the head.
I get that for the artists, but what about the philosophers? Are they not big dick academics who will lose their standing if their ideas are nonesense?
I would say that I can’t think of many philosophers that entertain Freud directly, although you could probably make an argument that he’s had some influence by way of his impact on Lacan, who is cited more extensively (Zizek comes to mind), or on Jung (referenced by Sloterdijk at least a few times).
Speaking of Zizek, he’s made an entire career out of sounding well educated, making pop culture references, and being completely insane.
In general I don’t think that’s a fair expectation of the field though, philosophers can always claim that their misguided ideas were undertaken as a dialectical exploration in argument against the thing being presented. Or they’re presenting cultural context, not fact.
Personally, I haven’t thought about Freud since psych 101. There’s plenty of exceptional philosophy out there where you won’t have to hear about him, try Baudrillard, Sloterdijk, Bookchin, Graeber, Badiou, Camus, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault, Bachelard. There’s so much great stuff to read and ponder, nevermind that which isn’t worth the time. And who knows, after some reading, you may come full circle back to an answer; Zizek said that 99% of people are boring idiots.
It's the only psychologist who has a name known to the bulk of laymen, so he's quoted for the sake of sounding educated. And more often than not, entirely misquoted to produce a "credible" argument.
That's about what I was thinking, the self-perpetuating fame. The general population just doesn't know the names of many psychologists, but they've heard of Freud and a handful of Freud's ideas.
It's a way of framing discourse, ideas, and concepts. In the most general sense, id, ego, and super ego descibe that which is fundamental and can not change, that which can change but is not known at hand, and that which is presently known and can be actively changed. Try applying this framework to current events and you'll see why people still discuss it.
Police brutality is a good example. What is fundamental to a police officer and drives them? What more maleable mindset does this create? What conscious decisions and actions does an officer take?
Obviously, this framing doesn't perfectly capture the issue, but it does set you on a structured path to addressing it. If having an authoritative personality is what drives a police officer, how might we instill a more positive mindset when they are on patrol? How can the actions of a police officer negate that mindset?
I think some of this is also just that pop science often lags years or decades behind real science. Most people couldn't name another famous psychologist, or an evolutionary scientist beyond Darwin, or a physicist beyond Einstein.
Specifically regarding art and philosophy, even if Freud's idea were wrong, you can still glean something useful (or at least interesting) from using them as a starting premise.
Freud's theories are pretty simple to understand and easy to map onto. Back when Freud was influential, people were easily able to import and use it in their literary theory, philosophy etc. Same thing happened with Lacan but since Lacan builds on Freud it's essentially the same thing.
In order to use an updated understanding of psychology or even better, neurology, people would have to learn a whe lot of much more complex theory and facts, and explain it to their readers, and apply it into their own thing.
It's much easier for an overworked academic to take this wrong but much-used system that everyone already knows.
To be clear, the vast majority of academic philosophers (at least in the Anglophone world) find Freud to be useless pseudoscience. Freud gets taken seriously in literary analysis and continental philosophy. The latter is a minority position (although drawing a hard and fast line between "analytic" and "continental" philosophy is pretty difficult these days).
When I was getting my PhD in philosophy, I would have been laughed out of the room if I wrote a term paper that used Freud in any significant way.
My psychiatrist often kills five minutes of my hour convo ranting about freud. I love it. (Until I had to pay for mental services directly instead of my work paying for it)
This gets at the history of literary and art theory in the 20th century. The basic answer is that people in the arts adopted psychodynamic frameworks from Freud, Lacan, etc, while actual psychologists moved on.
when I think of other famous psychologists my mind goes to people like zimbardo or milgram, because of their attention grabbing studies. but they are not great examples because their work has big problems with ethics and replicability. after that, maybe pavlov or skinner? but their work is most famous for its less ethical uses. harlow? or a bunch of his contemporaries who got famous mostly for torturing monkeys? maybe piaget?
I only did psychology to a college level but I think a lot of 20th century psychologists are famous for the wrong reasons. Freud was full of crap but at least he didn't torture any monkeys
And yet for some reason philosophers [...] and artists [...].
Why are you careful/nuanced with psychologists but dump philosophers and artists in the same bag as if they all do the same?
I see this a lot. The other day, I was watching a science video. Same thing: "some physicists believe...", "other physicists...", but "philosophers say...".
Do you think philosophy and art (disciplines that by their very nature are diverse and creative) create only one type of people? I mean, Karl Popper is a philosopher against Freud, you just said it. You could find many philosophers opposed to Freud, indifferent, critical, in agreement, etc. Artists are the same, very different people among them.
Now, the real question should be why is Freud popular amongst some artists and philosophers and other non-psychologists, especially in certain regions like France and Argentina, or certain traditions like old continental philosophy. And that's probably the beginning of an answer at the same time: a strong tradition of psychoanalysis within certain circles. Also, a matter of coherence or lack of. For example, if you start reading French existentialism and keep reframing certain aspects of reality, you may find yourself inclined to epistemological paradigms that do not oppose psychoanalytical theories, so you could combine them if you want to. If you start denying materialism in some ways, you may end up denying biological explanations of psychopathological phenomena, so Freud could be a good substitute (or not, depending on the person).
I guess if I were to give a psychological reductionist answer, Freud and similar authors appeal to part of the population that is skeptical of conventional models, the status quo, scientism, hard materialism, etc.
Because his 'theories' are easy to understand for the layperson, and have become tropes in our narrative culture. Most people's understanding of freud is simple 'blame your parents for your problems.'
You do see a lot of Jung as well, but Jung's work is more abstract and out there and is often used symbolically, whereas Frued's is used literally and in sitcoms.