Sigmund Freud told of a Jewish women who dreamt that a stranger handed her a

Sigmund Freud told of a Jewish women who dreamt that a stranger handed her a

Sigmund Freud told of a Jewish women who dreamt that a stranger handed her a comb. The women desired to marry a Christian man which triggered an emotional argument with her mother on the night prior to her dream. When Freud asked her what memories she associated with the word comb the woman told him that once her mother had once told her not to use a separate comb because she would "mix the breed." Freud then revealed that the meaning of the dream was an expression of her own latent wish to "mix the breed." Examples such as this seem like very persuasive evidence of Freud's theory that dreams are a form of wish fulfilment but many scientists and philosophers of science say that Freud's theories can't be scientifically falsified or that he lacks scientific evidence. But what constitutes scientific evidence? Surely Freud is a scientist because he grounds his theories in specific empirical clinical examples that he expresses clearly in a way that even the most uneducated person can understand them? The symbolic nature of dreams may require interpretation but interpretation isn't necessarily simply "subjective" and therefore lacking "objective" "scientific" grounding in my opinion if one can bolster that interpretation with empirical evidence. If we dismiss Freud because he isn't "scientific" then how do I know that other forms of science have been dismissed despite the fact that they maybe entirely reasonable on their own terms?

Read another response by Miriam Solomon, Gabriel Segal
Read another response about Mind, Science
Print