Sigmund Freud Paper - Essay Example

He laid the groundwork for much psychological theory to come and developed some of the most powerful theories in the history of the discipline. Freud’s ways of thinking influenced the culture at large and lead to a large body of art, poetry, and literature. Some suggest that much of surrealism can be traced from Freud’s work. However, all of his theories have been disproved today and he is no longer relevant to academic psychologists. This is an amazing shift in influence for someone who once seemed to be at the cornerstone of human thought.

Freud's many theories were incredibly influential in his lifetime and in the decades after his death. He began as a young psychologist and eventually started publishing case studies based on the patients who treated. Some of them had incredible stories to tell. From these patients he began to create elaborate psychological theories. Many of his theories were named after classical Greek characters, lending them an air of historical credibility. The Oedipus Complex was one wherein he suggested that affected boys want to kill their father and marry their mother.

Another was the Electra Complex where a woman wanted to marry her father. These were elaborate theories that gained wide currency in the culture and society. Another of Freud's main concepts was that a person's personality and many of their later problems have a source in childhood experiences. Overall, Freud pointed contemporary psychologists in a correct direction, but many of his ideas also slowed down progress. He cut a larger than life figure, and was so comprehensive in his intelligence that it could be difficult to dispute his ideas.

Nowadays, however, few if any people call themselves Freudians. There is a feeling that Freudians have an unnatural predilection to examine the sexual lives of people in order to explain every problem they have. That is in part of one of Freud's legacies: that sex and death dominate and drive all human beings. They may play a role, but few psychologists today believe that these two things can explain everything. Freud's theories are not considered to be relevant today by most theorists. They are fascinating historical artifacts that show us how the discipline of psychology began more than one hundred years ago, but they are not really cited in contemporary academic papers as authorities on any subjects.

Freud had a limited amount of clinical data at his disposal and a great deal of his work involved the interpretation of dreams which is now seen to be as not at all scientific. His idea that sexual identity is a main component of a person's overall identity was influential at the time, but again has been pared back in recent years to some extent. It is useful to see Freud's work as a kind of pendulum. He opened the box to so many new ideas that people immediately adopted because they were so interesting and because there was perhaps a grain of truth to them.

Over the years, though, people began to drop his ideas, and the pendulum has swung back again. The truth is that times have changed. Psychologists today have much more to work with than simply what their patient told them they dreamed last night or a story about a patient's relationship with his or her father. They can measure the levels of chemicals in peoples' brains and can determine how that influences their behavior. There is no doubt that traumatic experiences can change the way people