Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an intellectual giant of his time. Considered the founder of psychoanalysis, his research and theories helped popularize the study of mental function and disorders, and began to lift them out of the medical dark ages. His formulation of the id, the ego, and the superego gave science a paradigm for evaluating mental function.
Freud is also one of the most poignant historic examples of how if we don't start with accurate factors in the beginning, the more we reason, the further from the truth we can get regardless of how brilliant one's deductive abilities are. Freud's reasoning was brilliant, compelling, and fascinating, but his conclusions could hardly have proven to be more wrong.
Many studies have been done on the effectiveness of Freudian therapy, and the majority concluded that most people got better faster if they were not subject to Freudian therapy, even if they received no other therapy at all. Some concluded that Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis may have never actually helped anyone, unless you concluded that having the patient feel better was because of the drugs they were given for their mental distress. A good case can be made about how many subjected to this got worse, falling into the blackhole of self-centeredness and self-focus from which they could never escape.
The effect of Freudian thinking on psychology, and the many who were subjected to it, are terrible. Worse, as the Freudian mentality spread throughout Western civilization, it began to erode some of the fundamental pillars upon which civilization had been built. Like the growing depression and darkness that Freudian patients would sink into, a veil of depression and darkness spread over the Western world as it embraced its warped precepts.
As Freud sought to eradicate the belief in God, he also sought to destroy religious morality, which he saw as the cause of depression. He saw the superego, the conscience, as the tyrant that brought depression through guilt in seeking to have men live up to unrealistic moral expectations. Freud was right to think that guilt was causing the depression, but this was not the result of the moral standards, rather the violations of them. The more the standards were attacked, the violations of them increased. It did not result in the deliverance Freud expected, but rather a terrible “death spiral” into increasing depression, with individuals and society as a whole.
To attack God and His moral standards that he believed were the cause of depression, Freud basically taught that no one was the way they were by their own fault, but because of their bad environment and bad experiences. This made everyone a victim and basically mad at the entire world, especially parents or other authority figures. This implied that people did not need to personally change, but society needed to change, and until it did, all of our own personal maladies could be blamed on it.
There is a saying that “Anyone who is good at making excuses is seldom good at anything else.” The more the blame-shifting continued to make everyone else responsible for people’s own failures, the more the meltdown of personality and character continued, along with a great increase in rage, madness, and the depression.
Some of Freud’s contemporaries, and increasing numbers who later entered the field of psychology, repudiated Freud’s theories. Whole new schools of psychology arose that basically taught the opposite of everything Freud taught. These new schools asserted that no one was the way that they are because of their environment, or experiences, but because of the way that they responded to them. This made everyone personally accountable, and the results of this were immediate and spectacular.
Mowrer was one leader of the new revolution in psychology. Having been made the President of the American Psychological Society for his breakthrough studies on learning, he turned his sights on the madness of Freudian therapy and its abject failure. Mowrer declared that psychological problems were not medical problems, but moral problems. This meant that they could only be remedied by patients accepting responsibility for their behavior and correcting them. Results were soon being achieved in weeks that Freudian therapy had not been able to achieve in years, or at all. Some using this new “reality therapy” went to psychiatric wards where those who entered were never expected to leave—the toughest cases of all. Some of these wards were as much as 80% empty within a year.
This new reality therapy was actually not a new therapy at all, but was based on the oldest, most simple, but most effective therapy ever devised for depression. This comes from the only psychological statement in The Bible. The Lord said to Cain in Genesis 4:6-7: “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen (why are you depressed)? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
It is debatable whether Mowrer knew that he was applying biblical methods to his work, but he was. His assertion that depression was not the result of feelings of guilt because the moral standards were too high, but that the culprit was guilt for doing what was wrong. This made the only remedy to quit doing what is wrong and do what is right. Mowrer’s first strategy with a patient was to get them to admit what they were doing that was wrong (confession), and then correct their behavior. That’s biblically called “repentance.”
Since the huge breakthroughs under Mowrer, psychology has continued to reach new heights in effectiveness in dealing with virtually all psychological maladies. People have been restored from the worst conditions to living happy, productive lives. With studies into the physiology of the brain and its functions over the last few decades, some have gone on to help those were slow mentally to become intellectual juggernauts. Whether they know this or not, they do this by using the biblical principles for “renewing our minds” that even most Christians continue to neglect.
So, why does our educational system and institutions continue to use the archaic and counterproductive Freudian methods? Because our educational system, and especially the teachers’ unions, are now almost completely saturated with Marxist operatives who do not care as much about the mental health of students as they do their ability to control and manipulate them. Freudian psychology has been like an open highway for achieving their desired dominance over even the thoughts of people. Thus, the battle for the minds of men continues to rage.
A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. ~Milton Friedman
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