/lit/ - Literature

why is this guy still taken seriously in 2023?

How come psychoanalysis and esoteric conceptions about the unconscious have managed to survive all this time?

Especially with people like Zizek and Peterson basing their projects on Lacan and Jung -- Freud's legacy is still alive and well. But whats the point? Whats the methodological approach here, exactly?

A generous assumption would be that these people only use psychoanalytic models as metaphors or as tools to understand psychology and society, similar to how people attribute human-like minds to living beings with vastly different brains. It's easier to say "The fly is looking for a way out" and pretending that it has a concept of inside/outside, that it might even be able to form propositional sentences about it's goal; instead of tediously explaining that it really is just aimlessly flying towards brighter areas because that's where the food tends to be and can be more easily recognized, and that this behaviour is a result of natural selection, meaning beings who did not follow beneficial behavior died. Pretending animals/insects/plants/fungi have minds makes communicating easier, so i guess we can extrapolate from this that we ought to use familiar models to explain other things.

But this argument doesnt hold with psychoanalysis, because it's unfalsifiable, artificial and an unintuitive model. It slows communication down, which is the exact opposite of what you want to do if you're using it to explain something completely different. If Zizek tells me to look at toilets, is he honestly suggesting that the ideology of that toilets country magically puppeteered the architects, foremen and plumbers of that country to all join a conspiracy to make sure that the country's toilets should all look a certain way? If Peterson tells me to be aware of certain archetypes, is he honestly saying that an ephemeral maelstrom, the "collective unconscious", is forcing it's cosmic cookie-cutter into the souls of our species?

They obviously don't really believe this. But if so, then why bother with Freud/Lacan/Jung at all? Why not come out and say "Economic processes have this *specific* effect on the individuals brain and this *exact* consequence for large-scale social change" and come up with a predictive model? Why not simply say "People tend to form certain kinds of personalities if they experience certain things and you can do X, Y and Z to change this development" and sit down with actual scientists to come up with a more effective kind of therapy than asking people to clean their rooms?

Whats the deal, /lit/?

anonymous poll. no need to lie.
http://www.strawpoll.me/13582305

>>8631218
Actually, replace Rand with Freud

I want to hear him psycho-analyze the situation

>tfw Nietszche only murders God to prevent castration anxiety

>>8188410

Can't avoid the Freud.