Reasonable rhymes from Vienna

Well, everyone knows how I like Freud.  A straightforward diagnosis My dear Doktor Freud, you must come to my aid, For  disequilibrium makes me quite fade. When I fly in a plane or ride on a bike, A bott.  of best brandy I must first tike! Professorial knowledge, I’ve heard it well said, Is your [...]

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The nature of things

I have mentioned before that, while I admire Freud, I am not a Freudian.  It is quite possible to see the virtues in a person without agreeing in the least with his or her ideas ; just as it is quite possible to see the  merits of a theory or of a hypothesis without buying [...]

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It’s too simple

Almost all science (knowledge) is concerned with abstractions.  The world is too complex for a human mind to grasp in its functioning, dynamic entirety.  So we break it down into manageable chunks ; and most of those chunks are are very small indeed – chunklets – and it is these abstracted bits of the world [...]

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The age of the machine

Is an infant much more than a biological machine?

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Faith or therapy?

Although I am not an enthusiast for psychoanalysis, I do admire Freud’s general theory of psychology.  It has ‘the ring of truth’ about it. One of Freud’s major arguments is that people will avoid doing difficult things, if they can, and do something easier instead.  We always tend towards what he calls the ‘pleasure principle’ [...]

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The man who knew too much?

Sigmund Freud was a remarkable man.  Most people know that he was Jewish and born in Central Europe in the late nineteenth century.  The most productive part of his life was spent in Vienna.   He served in the German Army in WW1 and died in London just before WW2.  The socialists seem to have hated [...]

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