Gerald Peterson pointed out that Freud and Pavlov would not have considered themselves psychologists. To be complete, we'd have to add Piaget to that list--his Ph.D. was in biology. But it doesn't matter what the individual in question thought he was. We're stuck with the association of Freud with psychology, and the other two, physiologist and biologist, are famous for their contributions to our field. So we've appropriated them, whether they like it or not.
Peter Harzem commented, concerning my nomination of Piaget but not Freud as worthy of a top-ten nomination for lasting influence in psychology: > It seems to me the two paragraphs above [mine--SB] are contradictory: > both based on questionable methods, but one favorable to the one > preferred (Piaget), and unfavorable to Freud." Not guilty. The issue is not whether their methods are equally questionable but what their lasting influence has been for scientific psychology. I assert that Piaget continues to be influential; Freud, not so much. But for the record, their methods are not equally misguided. Freud's "observations" are a hodge-podge of introspection, sometimes of dreams from years earlier, second-hand accounts, and unsystematic observations bullied from unwilling patients and coloured by his bizarre interpretations. He also just made stuff up. Moreover, he did not systematically record his observations. I seem to recall that he waited until after dinner to write things down (selectively) and precious little of these "observations" have been made available to us to examine. Piaget is guilty of none of that. His method was not experimental, but it was meticulous: objective, carefully observed, accurate, and recorded in great detail for us to examine and replicate. We can trust what he reported. We can't trust what Freud said. > Moreover, if we are judging not by content of the individual's work > but by the extent of its influence in he number of studies generated, > Freud's work would win hands down. This is of course an empirical > matter, and cannot be supported except empirically, by a pervasive > count through almost a century. (Any offers?) It all depends on what you mean by "studies". If you include in the count all the endless psychoanalytic case reports offering pseudo- scientific opinions, Freud may have generated a greater total than Piaget. But if you restrict "studies" to only those which have at least some attempt, however modest, to collect objective empirical data, then Piaget wins, no contest. But in fact, it's not the total number of studies that's significant here. It's how many scientific reports _currently_ in the literature can be said to have been influenced by Piaget and by Freud. There was at one time a flurry of interest in "testing Freud"; but he's moribund these days, while Piagetian child psychology continues to boom (e.g. witness the considerable interest in "theory of mind", the Piagetian-style concept championed by the cousin of Borat Sagdiyev. > By the way, what on earth was the 'lots of trouble ' that Freud > caused? Notwithstanding Allen Esterson's more scholarly reply, here's my response: Freud's method of psychoanalysis, of attaching whatever fanciful interpretation came to mind to his patients' disclosures, caused much grief among those subjected to it. Practitioners of his method unleashed devastating accusations, particularly against mothers, that their inept and cruel methods of child-rearing were to blame for whatever problems their children exhibited, including such profoundly disabling disorders as schizophrenia and autism. How would you like to be on the receiving end of that? The history of Freud's concept of repression is a particuarly sorry one, leading to false accusations of child sexual abuse, which destroyed families and sent people to prison for crimes which existed only in the therapist-addled minds of their accusers. I'd say that was "lots of trouble". Stephen [Suggestion for Peter H. It would be easier to quote you if you turned off the HTML in your messages. It makes your text disappear when I hit "reply".] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 0C8 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm -----------------------------------------------------------------------
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