Ten psychoanalytical mistakes in Freud’s theory

Abstract

The author reviews ten paradigmatic questions in Freud’s writings that along the time were either misunderstood or exposed by Freud in an ambiguous way leading to technical and clinical mistakes. Such mistakes contributed to dispersions on psychoanalytical techniques and theories. The author also suggests that the use of the etiological model of Medicine beyond the frequent use of the phenomenological diagnosis instead of the psychodynamic one, inevitable at the time when Freud exposed his ideas, permitted such ambiguities and its consequences. Likewise will be reexamined: 1) the search for the unconscious instead of “how consciousness is formed”; 2) the pathogenicity originated from defense mechanisms instead of its ego’s aspects regarding protective functions; 3) one person psychology (which leads to neuropsychology) instead of diadic psychology, or relationship psychology; 4) repression understood as a defense pressure instead of the dissociation of the significant from its meaning; 5) the pregenitality as sexual conduct instead of the symbolism of sexuality; 6) emphasis on healthy behavior instead of healthy organization of symbolic structure (leading to a healthy ego); 7) emphasis on normalization instead of generating consciousness; 8) natural scientific model of analyzing symptoms instead of cultural model so creating a medium for a structural analysis of mental life; 9) transference as historical re-edition instead of significants open to meanings; and finally 10) emphasis on biological experience instead of existential experience.