Reviews for Psychology of Yourself

The average rating for Psychology of Yourself based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-09-19 00:00:00 Curt Mill Oh Sigmund Fraud – sorry Freudian slip. Okay, enough of the crappy jokes. First off, in my opinion Freud receives a lot of unfair criticism in general. Many people don’t understand/ properly take into account the historical context in which his theories were formed, mainly a repressive Victorian society. At the time, he found an acceptable way to facilitate appropriate – if inaccurate – discussion about taboo subjects, namely sex. Furthermore, many people today take for granted the vast amount of information we have accumulated – everything from the brain to genes to the interaction between genes and environment – since Freud’s time, courtesy of neuroscience, better technology etc. Freud didn’t have any of that and we have the privilege of hindsight. Also, he didn’t ignore biology; in fact quite the contrary - of course the human genome project hadn’t been implemented yet. Based on this, I won’t fault him too heavily (as many scientists do). I believe his emphasis on nurture, as opposed to nature, was a very important notion at the time – though that notion was blown so far out of proportion it’s disgusting. It was interesting to read of Freud’s medical and scientific background. He really attempted to make psychology into a legitimate science – certainly an important aim and no small peanuts. However, I do believe William James ultimately did far more to set the scientific reductionism of experimental psychology on its proper track. Bottom line: In my opinion, Freud did a few very important things for psychology: He reminded us that we humans have a dark side, he shed some light on how parents can potentially hinder their child’s development (though he did go overboard here, overemphasizing nurture over nature), and perhaps most importantly, he discovered the unconscious or was at least the first to conceptualize it -- I’ve always loved his iceberg analogy of the unconscious, the premise of which is still very appropriate: much of what goes on in our brains does so outside of conscious awareness, or below the surface as it were. But honestly, Freud… does everything really have a malicious ulterior motive? Do all dreams represent repressed sexual drives, and penis envy – really??? And of course, the other problem with Freud’s theories is that they aren’t really falsifiable, which in science is kind of not... okay. *Note: my rating reflects Freud’s ideas, not the author’s writing. I think the author did a fine job creating a synopsis of Freud’s ideas.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-14 00:00:00 Thomas Brahm You Can Not Want To Be Raped. Also homophobia. Freud is the "father" of psychology. But he was also, at times, an idiot. Overall this book was an okay guide to Freud. Fairly basic stuff and I learnt nothing new.