From Mind Hacks:
ABC Radio's The Philosopher's Zone has just had two special editions on Freud and his relevance to modern day thinking.
The programmes look at two contrasting areas of his wide-ranging theories.
The first is on Freud's contribution to philosophy and the second contrasts Freud's theories of dreaming with modern dream science derived from neuroscience.
The discussion picks out theories which were seminal in igniting research, and those which have not stood the test of time.
For those wanting an almost entirely critical take on Freud, the Times Literary Supplement has a review of a Frederick Crews' new book entitled Follies of the Wise (ISBN 1593761015), which attempts to show that even many of Freud's more popular ideas are fundamentally flawed.
Taking pot shots at Freud is quite fashionable in this day and age. However, as Freud wrote so much and about so many different topics, it is easy to find something to criticise but difficult to dismiss all his ideas at once.
Link to Philosopher's Zone on Freud the Philosopher.
Link to Philosopher's Zone on The Dream Debate.
Link to TLS book review.
I listened to the first radio program about Freud as philosophy. It is rather sympathetic to Freud's ideas, but does bring out some good points. I think of Freud as primarily a philosopher, even with regard to psychology. It is hard to think of it as science, as it seems to really consist of a reformulation of Greek myths and intuition. It is pre-scientific (as all good philosophy is, really), because it provides a starting point, but is a metaphor just like the notion that the mind is a computer. That is a useful concept, and may generate some specific theories, but no one regards it as any more than a metaphor.
