What do psychologists generally think of Freud and psychoanalysis?
There is a mix bag of literature on Freud… he has written such a vast amount of work and revised his theory to the point that he can be portrayed positively, or negatively, based on the material one relies upon. He has had some very good ideas, such as unconscious processes which may effect motivation, but other concepts are difficult to test. There are a lot of ad hominen arguements against Freud, and some of his concepts do sound absolutely absurd… I believe that he does have some merit though, and we should pick out the best from each theory. Although, this brings the problem of conceptual contradictions, in that the different theories rest on incompatible assumptions, for instance, free will vs determinism, cognition etc. Psychodynamic therapies are considered to be less reliable because projective measures such as free associations, sentence completion tasks, etc can be interpreted in different ways. There is some evidence that it’s effective in uncovering unconscious processe
