Riley feels angsty about a dude that died a while ago.
Who knew that you could call speculation science? Wait, sorry, I am not trying to ruffle too many psychologists' feathers. Speaking of psychology, Sigmund Freud was, like, a massive loser. After being born in 1856 in Czechia, Freud dedicated his life to making his personal experiences scientific facts. He paved the way for psychology with interesting ideas on ego, dreams, and slips of the tongue. All of his theories were proved through extensive research on his feelings about the topic.
Lucky for Freud, a little biologist named Charles Darwin published a book called On the Origin of Species in 1859. Here, Darwin talked about evolution, which had a fascinating effect on the scientific world. Scientists were already drooling over the world being a “natural machine” that could be understood and controlled. Imagine their excitement when humans were a part of that machine. I am being a bit broad with this depiction of the science community in the 19th century. Not everyone wanted to control humans, some of them were Christian. Unlike many scientists who used Darwin’s concept of evolution to excuse massive amounts of racism (no bad feelings, it's just science), Freud used evolution as the basis for understanding the human mind.
If people are just evolved monkeys, then the way they go about life is controlled solely by chemicals and instinct. This makes understanding why people do what they do so much easier. Freud proposed that the human mind was controlled by unconscious memories and urges. He then divided the mind into three parts: id, ego, and superego. According to Simply Psychology, an academic research support website on psychology, “The id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality.” The ego is the part of the psyche that mediates between instinct and morality, and the superego is the extremely moral part of the mind. This is one of the only theories Freud had that makes sense.
Now that the semi-reputable theory is out of the way, let's get into the theories that make Freud a loser. A major part of Freud’s study was dream analysis. His book Interpretation of Dreams implied that dreams were a way of discovering what the inner conscious was thinking. Sadly, this theory clung on to a lot of people and now it shows up in the strangest places. For example, Tupac Shakur, a famous American rapper, sang, “Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real.” The real kicker to dream analysis is that Freud never came up with the meanings of dreams. He told patients to interpret the dreams themselves. This is like if an engineer piled some nuts and bolts into a box and hoped for it to become a computer. Truly, dream theory is the most scientific principle out there. Feelings are terrific sources to base the world upon.
One of the better-known Freud theories is that of the Freudian Slip. This theory states that when people say something they do not mean to, it shows what their subconscious is thinking. This is true because people never make mistakes. In his book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life he says, “...the disturbance could be brought about…through influences outside this word, sentence or context, from elements which we did not intend to express, and of whose incitement we became conscious only through the disturbance.” Not only does his theory say that slips of the tongue imply subconscious shenanigans, but it also implies that there is a part of the mind that people have no control over. The way he proves this to be true is through circumstantial data. If one continues to read his explanation of the theory in his book, then one will discover that he came to this conclusion through observing how people occasionally forget names and addresses. He concludes that the reason people forget names is because they have some sort of subconscious desire to get away from them. Science should be done in this way more often. Bigfoot is real because a lot of people believe in it. The government is made of lizard people because I have never seen the president interact with a reptile.
Freud had a lot more theories surrounding the reproductive system. However, talking about that might get this article taken down. He came up with some hilariously laughable ideas. Freud was not only a bad scientist, but he was also a questionable person. He suffered from a massive inferiority complex that drove a lot of his students to hate him. He drove away his own daughter by calling her an idiot for coming up with a theory that was liked more by the science community. No matter what, he did pave the way for psychology to become practiced. Now, people can be called "doctor" instead of being called "private philosopher".