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We all have that one friend, you know the one who's a bit more organized and stubborn and who sometimes gets upset if they or. You screw up.

You might have even heard someone insult them by calling them anal. But wait, that doesn't make any sense Why does being rigid and organized have anything to do with butts? Well, if you were to ask Sigmund Freud quite a bit.

But also he'd be wrong that insult of calling someone anal though does come right out of Freud's work. It's related to anal retentive fixation, which is supposedly the result of unresolved conflicts between you and your caregivers during potty training. But like so many things Freud thought it's kind of bogus.

So, why do we still spend so much time talking about the student psychology classes? The short answer is that there were a few things Freud got right that were really important but also. Psychologists now want to take the lead on debunking some of the nonsense he started in their field if you haven't heard of the guy.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who popularized loads of ideas about psychology across the United States and Europe. Some of his ideas were pretty reasonable and are still supported today for example Freud believed that the experiences you had growing up can influence how you behave now, but even more of his ideas were. Kind of out there like Freud also thought that while growing up your unconscious mind spent time focused on each erogenous zone like the mouths anus and genitals.

He also suggested that children work through sexual frustrations with their opposite sex parent and that women suffer from penis envy. Really so it can seem really weird or even harmful that psych classes devote time to his work. But there are reasons for it.

One reason is historical Freud did get some things right and that became the foundation of future more trustworthy research. For example Freud popularized the idea that people are influenced by an. Unconscious mind meaning that your thoughts and behaviors might not all be under your conscious control.

He wasn't the first to introduce the idea. But he was among the first to talk about it without mentioning like ghosts or demons instead. He thought your unconscious mind grew from your experiences and modern attachment theory grew directly from those ideas in other words.

Psychologists now think that the experiences in your relationship with your caregiver can influence how you develop relationships later in life. Although no one today could legitimately. Argue that it has to do with your erogenous zones.

It's still based on the insight that unremembered experiences as a child can influence you as an adult which was a fairly new idea at the time another reason that Freud is still taught today is because. Sometimes Freudian therapy can still kind of work. Most of Freud's theoretical ideas about how the mind operator were based on his clinical work with patients that kind of therapy is called psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy.

It involves a lot of talking and sorting through. Supposedly unconscious processes and although Freudian theory is now mostly abandoned some meta analyses have shown that. Psychodynamic therapy can be effective at least depending on what you compare it to for example a 2012 meta-analysis of 11 studies found that.

Psychoanalytic therapy was somewhat effective for a variety of disorders if you compared it to treatments that didn't involve talk therapy. But it didn't seem that useful if you compared it to anything else another. Meta-analysis in 2008 looked at more than 23 studies that compared long-term psychodynamic therapy to shorter therapies.

And it found that spending more time in psychodynamic treatment was generally better for personality functioning and reducing symptoms. There are plenty of caveats to this though for one. Even if the overall results were promising the studies in the meta analyses did seem to vary a lot.

Some found that Freudian therapy worked really well and others not so much that suggests there could be other variables at work. Also, most of these studies compared Freudian methods to shorter treatments or to no treatments at all. Ultimately the takeaway here Is that if you're looking for a therapist?

You might find that someone practicing a more Freudian style actually works well for you or you might find better results elsewhere regardless because these types of therapies do still exist the idea is they're based on are important to know about. Finally one last reason you still hear about Freud in class. Is that psychologists are trying to take responsibility for the mess their field made and are trying to clean things up a bit in the past century Freud and his ideas got really popular.

So students come into psychology courses with all kinds of ideas about the guy and your professors need to point out which ones are flat-out. Wrong Plus Freud isn't just in psychology class anymore 2008 study of course descriptions at 150 colleges and universities found that 86% of courses referencing psychoanalysis. Were taught outside psych departments.

The researchers found that Freud's work is brought up across the humanities including in English departments So the hope is that if you learn about him in psych class. You should be able to sort out fact from fiction if you run into him in another course if you're suffering through the boring parts. Of intro psych wondering why you're spending so much time talking about this old dead bearded wrong, dude.

Don't worry too much your professor is just trying to give you some historical context about how psychology has grown and clean up some of the messes the field is made if you've watched a few episodes of scishow psych you've probably picked up on the. Fact that we're really curious people who love learning about the mind and about the world that's why this episode is brought to you by curiosity stream their subscription-based streaming service that offers more than 2400 documentaries and nonfiction titles many of them come from the world's best filmmakers and they're super interesting. For example, we just found one called light on earth.

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