I love my parents, but not quite like that

Freud's famous therapy couch

Today I committed the cardinal sin of psychology by citing Freud.

Freud is one of the most famous, creative and mostly wrong psychologists of all time.  Besides prescribing cocaine to his patients (as well as taking it himself), Freud described how men want to sleep with their mothers and women are like castrated men.  I cannot count the number of times people have asked me, "Oh, so I want to sleep with my mother?  You going to psychoanalyze me now? Hahahaha hurpadurp!"  Freud soon becomes the bane of every psych undergrad's existence, as people you barely know will assume you can solve all of their problems by listening to their "crazy" dreams.

Cocaine bad! 

Therapy good!

Many of Freud's theories have been disproved (sorry, cocaine is not a prescription drug).  Plus, "men" develop as females/don't grow a penis unless exposed to specific hormones during their development, meaning female is the default gender and men are just women with funky junk.  Thus, it is quite upsetting when I run into someone who thinks psychology is still just psychoanalysis and that dreams/Freudian slips reveal all there is to know about a person's psyche (and that he/she want to have sex with one of their parents, of course).  

However, some of Freud's other ideas, such as the unconscious and talk therapy, have proven to be genius, groundbreaking events in psychology.  In my aforementioned paper, I discussed Freud's objections to the idea the brain is modularly organized, or has specific, predetermined areas to perform specific functions. (For instance, a modular view would say the brain processes visual information in the occipital lobes, auditory information in the temporal lobes, etc.)  Freud argued against this, promoting a more equipotential view of the brain, where functions are represented as a distributed network across the entire brain, not localized to specific areas.  (More about this idea soon!)  This was another fascinating, genius idea, especially in 1891, before sophisticated brain imaging techniques existed.  In other words, Freud imagined language to (basically) be controlled by a neural network before ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic computer, was built in the 1940s.

ENIAC.  Yeah, my laptop weighs a pound and a half and puts this thing's processing power to shame.

Morals of the story: no, I will not psychoanalyze you, stop pretending you're "so crazy durr hurr hurr" , Freud was brilliant but mostly wrong, the brain is cool but STILL not fully understood, and facial hair + pocket watch + cigar is a winning combo.

Case in point.

Also, this is Freud, in case you live under a rock.

Edit: In case you live under a rock with internet access.