> > How do you identify unconscious motive/motives, since you
> believe in
> > their existence?
> People have mercilessly beat up Freudians for this: "How can you study
> something that is not even accessible to the conscious mind? How can
> you know your assessment of unconscious content is valid?"
That's not what I am asking.
> I guess Doug will be surprised, but I think this argument is pretty
> weak. Scientists posit the existence of many things that cannot be
> directly observed (e.g., gravity, dark matter, 10-dimensional space),
> and they test their ideas by looking for predicted effects of
> whatever force or entity they've posited.
That is obvious; how you can do it for psychoanalysis is the question.
> Psychoanalysts do the same thing: look for the indirect effects of
> unconscious impulses in dreams, slips of the tongue, transference,
> resistance. My fav example (haven't I mentioned this before?):
> homophobic men are more sexually aroused by a film of men having
> sex than nonhomophobic men are. This may seem strange--why would
> men who say they're disgusted by gays in fact be sexually
> aroused by men having sex? Freudians contend that this is a
> common defense mechanism they call reaction formation: these
> homophobic men in fact have a strong unconscious desire to
> engage in same-sex sexual activity, and they cannot directly and
> honestly express this sexual desire, so it is manifested (in
> a twisted way) as conscious disgust and hatred of gays.
How do you demonstrate that all this is true? I am familiar with Freudian theories and I know their claims.
> --In short: the Freudian concept of the unconscious can be
> rigorously studied by psychologists,
The question is how psychologists are able to do it rigorously? What does rigour mean in this case?
>just as the invisible
> force of gravity can be rigorously studied by physicists.
This analogy doesn't explain anything about the freudian concept of unconscious.
Ulhas