Is Freud Up-to-date?

Sigmund Freud, a name resounding through the decades, is an outstanding historical character who had a major impact in the field of psychology. But with the fast development of science, due to the new technology and the new scientific methods, are Freud's theories up-to-date? Can they be authenticated?

Freud was born in 1856 in Moravia, being one of the eight children of Jacob and Amalia Freud. He was a brilliant student of the Medicine University in Vienna and this gave him more credit and a more accurate vision when studying psychology. He was the first to analyze the unconscious from a scientific point of view. Actually, his entire work was focused on this concept and his theories emerged from it.

He postulated the fact that as any physical system, we as humans work with energy. The source of this energy, called the libido, is exactly our unconscious. Starting from here, Freud developed theories regarding dreams, the psychopathology of the daily life, all aiming to explain human behavior. And the conclusion was that our entire behavior is initiated by our instincts: the instinct of life, which includes the sexual instincts, and the so-called ego-instincts, and the instinct of death. Furthermore, these instincts can be expressed or not. The second case leads to a tension within the brain, causing anxiety, which in time has the predisposition to become a pathology.

The entire XIXth and XXth centuries were very influenced by Freud's perspective towards the human behavior, but this started to change. There were many causes: the new sciences, neuropsychology, experimental psychology, the idea of intelligent design, which led to cognitive psychology.

The new era started to focus more on scientific evidence than other explanations. And this exactly was the light in which Freud's theories began to be seen: spectacular, interesting but unable to be proven, unauthenticated, no longer viable theory. The unique affective pattern, Oedip complex, the libido, the ontological levels, the projective tests, all the fascinating amount of information cannot be scientifically proven.

Does it mean that Freud's theories are abandoned, no longer used by the posterity? Contrary to its scientific rejection, the statistics show that there are still thousands of psychologist that guide their work by this paradigm, and there are thousands that use the projective tests, that TAT, the RISP, the Rorschach test.

There can be many explanations. One of them might be the fact that this psycho-dynamic perspective attracts future patients. The reason is that Freud's theories are very popular among the common-sense population, and the great majority are attracted by the idea of hypnosis, by the symbolism of dreams, by the interpretation of ink spots, by the vision in which they, as patients, lie down on a sofa and begin to talk about their problems while a mysterious psychologist listens and takes notes. Another explanation may emerge from the fact the unconscious is mostly inaccessible and Freud was the man who dedicated his life analyzing this human component.

So even though his theories in explaining what goes on in the "black box" have not been proven yet (and cannot be proven so far), they are the most elaborated ones on this chapter.

Regarding the usage of the projective test, these are widely used, not only by the psychologists embracing Freud's paradigm, but by all kinds of psychologist working in a clinic environment. The reason is that these tests have a global view of the personality and they can offer details that other structural tests are unable to offer. Besides, they are mostly used with children in order to attract attention and to help them relax and become more familiar to the next procedures.

In conclusion, Freud still remains a remarkable character, who had a greatly influenced the development of psychology, his theories are still in usage but the great majority of specialists gave up on this "trend" and became more centered on other paradigms, which can be proven by scientific methods and which are more plausible, such as behaviorism, cognitive and social psychology. Now it depends on the population when choosing which psychologist to visit. It's up to them whether they prefer a mythical or a tested perspective, a long-term treatment or a short-term one, a high fee or a lower one.