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Postscript: The Tragedy of Freud Abandoning Scientific Psychology for the Pseudoscience of Psychoanalysis

In the preface, I said I would pay tribute to Freud, but it seems that as I kept writing, I forgot to formally pay tribute to him.

Freud was a remarkable scholar. In the words of Richard Webster, psychoanalysis might be the most successful and complex pseudoscience in history!

Regarding various attempts to scientifically validate psychoanalysis, Freud wrote in a 1934 letter to psychologist Saul Rosenzweig that his theories were **"not relevant to experimental verification"**.

This was actually an implicit admission that his entire theory was "self-evident"—a pure word game where everyone argues their own case and everyone is right.

But Freud had no choice! He was hurting inside, but he wouldn't say it! So he started talking nonsense!

The dilemma he faced was that the neuroscience of his time was simply insufficient to support his ambition.

You have to realize, Freud started out doing research in neuropathology.

Before creating "psychoanalysis"—the most successful pseudoscience—he actually wanted to use neuroscience to achieve a grand unification of psychology. That was his forcedly abandoned manuscript:

“Project for a Scientific Psychology (German: Entwurf einer Psychologie).”

In this manuscript completed in 1895, Freud attempted to construct a rigorous natural-science model of psychological phenomena based on "neurons" and energy flows, grounded in biophysics and neuroanatomy. However, because the brain anatomy of the time was not advanced enough to support his theories, and he was dissatisfied with the mechanistic explanations in the manuscript, he abandoned its publication.

Could someone please fucking time-travel back and give him a CT scanner!

However, it is also inappropriate to treat it as a purely "natural science" programmatic manuscript, because it already contained many of the "pseudoscientific concepts" that Freud would later popularize, such as the ego, the unconscious, and the pleasure principle.

If you look into his life, you will see that Freud had actually received rigorous training in neuropathology and anatomy.

One of his earlier planned works on brain anatomy, Critical Introduction to Neuropathology (Kritische Einleitung in die Nervenpathologie), was also never published. The real reason was exactly the same as why he archived the Project for a Scientific Psychology: anatomical knowledge was still insufficient to explain his psychological theories.

Just think about the precision of dissection at that time!

The human brain project has been running for so many years, with billions of dollars—tens of billions of RMB—invested, and only now have we achieved a complete structural mapping down to the synaptic level of just one cubic centimeter of human brain tissue (about 1/500th of a cheap bottle of iced red tea).

So, back then, old Freud was looking at brain slices through a magnifying glass like the ones used to burn ants—what was the point? And Einstein's doctor hid his brain and carried it around for decades, only to discover absolutely nothing of value for brain science in the end.

As the saying goes, "what makes you can also break you!" Once neuropathology—that clumsy, pain-in-the-ass obstacle—was abandoned, old Freud completely let himself go!

Of course, to be more precise, it was actually during the process of letting himself go that he gradually discarded the stumbling block of neuropathology.

After brain anatomy (neuroscience) blocked Freud's path to scientific psychology, he turned to Shakespeare and Nietzsche. Using purer philosophical speculation and literary writing skills, he crafted his

"psychoanalysis",

completing the narrative of his so-called "psychological phenomena of energy flow." He developed it into a highly sought-after diagnostic technique for hysteria, ultimately laying a solid foundation for psychoanalysis to become "the most successful and complex pseudoscience in history"!

I think this evaluation of "the most successful and complex pseudoscience in history" is spot on, especially when considering the continuous complication of this "theory" by the numerous schools and successors of psychoanalysis after Freud.

Rather than a success in psychology, psychoanalysis is a success in philosophy—that is, the art of language (the very coffin lid that Wittgenstein nailed shut for philosophy)!

Some say the humanities have their own special value. Yet if philosophy, the mother of humanities, is merely an "art of language," and now Large Language Models (LLMs) possess an art of language far superior to humans, it feels like the humanities are complete garbage in front of LLMs!

PS: Old Freud was a bit dishonest: he clearly bought and read Nietzsche's books, yet still claimed that "his own theories had nothing to do with Nietzsche's philosophical thoughts." Wouldn't it be nice to just admit that Nietzsche's Übermensch philosophy and his own superego are a gay couple?

Of course, in writing this postscript, what I want to say is: it is already the year 6202, and those of you in psychological counseling and so-called psychotherapy are still clinging to the muddled, pseudoscientific pot of psychoanalysis. You are truly treating over a century of scientific and engineering progress as if it were nothing! Stop trying to cure diseases with philosophical fantasies (the art of language)!

If someone needs to take medication, let them take it; if someone needs money, give them money!