Do you know in what way? My understanding is that the concept of the unconscious is generally accepted.
Three things:
1) No, it's not. The unconscious is unconscious. The fact that we can figure out how we are weird still doesn't give us any power to do anything about it. So as a psychological tool it's not particularly useful.
2) Freud's claim that he understood why we are compelled to such and such isn't based on anything much. It's clever. I'll grant him that. But it is unfalsifiable.
3) It's at best a gross simplification. The more we learn about the brain the more complicated it comes across. We're not entirely sure what the consciousness does. So that makes statements about the unconscious and subconscious a bit premature.
Today we know that dreams are just noise. They mean nothing.
How do they know that though?
Um... research. We used to think there was some sort of pattern to it. The available research seems to indicate that it's completely random. Freud was probably projecting
Today sleep and dream research is more geared toward trying to figure out why we do it rather than trying to analyse the symbolism of it.
The track record of psychoanalysis for curing mental problems is not good. It's worthless. Which was both Jung's and Freud's major focus in their practices.
I think that's debatable and depends on what one means by "cure". For example CBT (which grew more out of the Adlerian school) has shown some good clinic results in alleviating anxiety and depression but the results seem to be restricted to the short term.
CBT is not psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis and analytical psychology are more about coming to terms with unconscious material over the long term (often in excess of 10 years), so it's less about "curing" and more about cultivating something of a more harmonious relationship between the conscious and unconscious. Patients will often still suffer symptoms such as depression or anxiety but their relatedness to these seems to change to one where it is less of a problem. The idea is that the conscious ego attains some autonomy from unconscious influences rather than a "cure", since anxiety and depression can be in many respects normal human responses to certain situations. It's more about ego autonomy, self-acceptance and emotional relatedness than the removal of symptoms.
Complete nonsense. There is no support for that the things a person or therapist says is the reason for a behaviour is the real reason. Here's an example. People who are psychologically dysfunctional as adults and were sexually molested as children tend to blame their mental problems on the sexual molestation. But here's the kicker. People who weren't molested as children are crazy in exact the same proportions. It's actually a weak link between childhood trauma and later mental problems. Sexual fetishism is another excellent example. Back in the day we used to link various trauma to developing an interest in pervy sex. Now we've studied it. It's seems just random. Some people, for no apparent reason, get turned on by this. And since it (sexual transgressive behaviour) goes in families we suspect that it's biological somehow.
To me psychonalysis is just as much about trying to justify mental problems as it is trying to actually learn stuff. Most importantly it's all unfalsifiable. There's no way a psychoanalyst knows if they're just talking shit.
BTW, I'm very specific about what psychoanalysis is. I've tried all manner of therapeutic methods. Psychoanalysis was not impressive. Impressively expensive. I'll give them that.
I think you're being overly kind to Jung. I do think he was a New Agey type. What I take from Jung is that if we look hard enough we can see patterns and meanings in anything. The constant bane of postmodernism. On that topic, I see Jung mostly as a philosophic stepping stone of postmodernism. There's other more interesting philosophers who came after him. An interesting historical figure. But not one that is relevant any longer. His moment of glory was in the 70'ies. Today, not so much.
I think that the fact that Jung's work is internally consistent and logical is in itself a cause for caution. There's lots of theology that similarly is internally logic, yet complete bullshit. Logic = garbage in, garbage out.
Yeah, difficult to argue that I agree. I think Jung's basic theories hold water - complex theory, archetypes, synchronicity (perhaps a fore-runner to confirmation bias), typology, projection etc, but
the further down he rabbit hole one goes the more of an art form and less of a science it becomes.
That's what I love about Jung and where I think Jung belongs. It's art. Just like poetry he says things that resonate within us emotionally. That is powerful and valuable. Still can't teach us much. And we should be very weary about his ideas being passed off as science or Truth.
