Sigmund Freud:
Philosophy
Rationality. While many enlightenment thinkers viewed rationality as both an unproblematic ideal and a defining feature of man, Freud's model of the mind drastically reduced the scope and power of reason. In Freud's view, reasoning occurs in the conscious mind--the ego--but this is only a small part of the whole. The mind also contains the hidden, irrational elements of id and superego, which lie outside of conscious control, drive behavior, and motivate conscious activities. As a result, these structures call into question humans' ability to act purely on the basis of reason, since lurking motives are also always at play. Moreover, this model of the mind makes rationality itself suspect, since it may be motivated by hidden urges or societal forces (e.g. defense mechanisms, where reasoning becomes "rationalizing"😉.
Dr. Frederick C. Crews
"He was a charlatan.
In 1896 he published three papers on the ideology of hysteria claiming that he had cured X number of patients.
First it was thirteen and then it was eighteen.
And he had cured them all by presenting them, or rather by obliging them to remember, that they had been sexually abused as children.
In 1897 he lost faith in this theory, but he'd told his colleagues that this was the way to cure hysteria. So he had a scientific obligation to tell people about his change of mind. But he didn't.
He didn't even hint at it until 1905, and even then he wasn't clear.
Meanwhile, where were the thirteen patients? Where were the eighteen patients? You read the Freud - Fleiss letters and you find that Freud's patients were leaving at the time.
By 1897 he didn't have any patients worth mentioning, and he hadn't cured any of them, and he knew it perfectly well.
Well, if a scientist did that today, of course he would be stripped of his job.
He would be stripped of his research funds.
He would be disgraced for life.
But Freud was so brilliant at controlling his own legend that people can hear charges like this, and even admit that they're true, and yet not have their faith in the system of thought affected in any way"
Author of The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute