Freud's oedipus theory goes against evolutionary biology

[Agape]

You put it better than I could have Cyrene, I hand the court to you. I will clap, and boo the opposition from the background

[Cyrene]

Homicide by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson is a landmark textbook. Its one of the most exhaustive and important works on homicide to ever be produced, its discoveries and the importance of those discoveries are massive.

They rip Freud left, right and center, because its pure nonsense.

As in

The idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the silliest thing they have ever heard. Obviously, it did not seem so to Freud, who wrote that as a boy he once had an erotic reaction to watching his mother dressing. But Freud had a wet-nurse, and may not have experienced the early intimacy that would have tipped off his perceptual system that Mrs. Freud was his mother. The Westermarck theory has out-Freuded Freud

—Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

So cohabitation in youth sets off incest avoidance, Freud was attracted to mommy because he didn’t get the early exposure 99.9% of humans do.

Freud was attracted to mommy because the Westermarck effect failed to set up properly.

[Cyrene]

In attempting to interpret the conflict within the family Freud was conceptually at sea. Having no theoretical based view of the essential nature of individual self-interests, he postulated arbitrary psychology needs in an ad-hoc manner. The anchor that elluded him, and continues to elude virtually all of his followers is the insight that the ultimate function of evolved psychological mechanisms is the promotion of fitness.

• Daly/Wilson

THERE.

He literally imagined mother attraction could EVOLVE, because he didn’t understand natural selection would winnow it out, because the differential survival rates between organisms elluded him as the SOURCE for evolution.

[Sauwelios]

@Cyrene

The point is that after you seriously study Freud, he turns out to be wrong. With incest FREUD WAS WRONG and WESTERMARCK was/is right.

Westermarck made predictions that are TRUE. Whatever dumb bullshit Freud said about repression in relation to incest is irrelevant, he had no evidence and the fact that almost every mammal has incest avoidance is telling enough.

No, you still don’t understand. According to Freud, there is no qualitative difference between man and the other animals. That an animal or even all animals avoid incest proves nothing regarding motivation. Whatever their motive may be for avoiding incest—for instance, self-repression, as Freud offers—, the reason that motive and thereby the avoidance of incest are naturally selected is that incest decreases fitness. The motivation for avoiding incest need not be to avoid inbreeding. Evolution is logical and therefore counterintuitive. I recommend Miller’s book The Mating Mind.

We have adaptations to avoid incest, but they are to keep our true urges repressed? Unless my true urge is to have mutated offspring its not a repressed anything.

Wrong again. Your ‘true urge’ may be to have incest. This does not mean it is to inbreed. These are two different things. That the latter is an effect of the former does not mean that if you desire the former you desire the latter.

Peoples universal desires increase their fitness, they are things like a drive for food, warmth, sex, even love, not things like jumping off a cliff or banging your own mother. Because those things DECREASE the fitness of your offspring.

Real nonsense. “People’s universal desires”?.. That’s a meaningless phrase. The reason those desires have become universal is because they increase fitness… So what you’re saying is a truism.

If some ignorant Freudian theory contradicts evolution, the freudian BS gets discarded. Thats the only sane choice.

Indeed: if…

[Cyrene]

In attempting to interpret the conflict within the family Freud was conceptually at sea. Having no theoretical based view of the essential nature of individual self-interests, he postulated arbitrary psychology needs in an ad-hoc manner. The anchor that elluded him, and continues to elude virtually all of his followers is the insight that the ultimate function of evolved psychological mechanisms is the promotion of fitness.

• Daly/Wilson.

You are conceptually LOST AT SEA

The idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the silliest thing they have ever heard. Obviously, it did not seem so to Freud, who wrote that as a boy he once had an erotic reaction to watching his mother dressing. But Freud had a wet-nurse, and may not have experienced the early intimacy that would have tipped off his perceptual system that Mrs. Freud was his mother. The Westermarck theory has out-Freuded Freud

• Steven Pinker

Or the obvious, Freud was attracted to mommy so…

[Cyrene]

Theres massive evidence for incest avoidance. NONE for repressed incestual urges. Freud never based his ideas on evidence or science, he was self serving that way.

unless you can provide a hypothesis of Freud’s that makes predictions, has evidence, etc, y’know meets the basic criteria of a scientific theory worth talking about, its time to shut up, no?

If I wanted to read self serving bullshit about repression, i’ll reread Freud. Unless you want to provide the evidence he thought unneccesary? Reread plenty of Freud it is transparently self serving, he makes no attempt to reach objectivity.

If you agree thats evidence, if you don’t thats repression, and he ignored 3rd party criticisms.

When absolutely no evidence IS EVIDENCE OF REPRESSION, is that not obviously self serving?

[Sauwelios]

@Cyrene

Homicide by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson is a landmark textbook. Its one of the most exhaustive and important works on homicide to ever be produced, its discoveries and the importance of those discoveries are massive.

They rip Freud left, right and center, because its pure nonsense.

As in

The idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the silliest thing they have ever heard. Obviously, it did not seem so to Freud, who wrote that as a boy he once had an erotic reaction to watching his mother dressing. But Freud had a wet-nurse, and may not have experienced the early intimacy that would have tipped off his perceptual system that Mrs. Freud was his mother. The Westermarck theory has out-Freuded Freud

—Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

First off, Pinker’s How the Mind Works is obviously not Daly and Wilson’s Homicide.

Second:

The idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the silliest thing they have ever heard.

Really? Have they investigated this? In any case, the point is that this desire is repressed (according to Freud it doesn’t just occur in boys, by the way: it also occurs in girls, before they realise they are ‘castrated’ (i.e., do not have a penis but a clitoris)).

So cohabitation in youth sets off incest avoidance, Freud was attracted to mommy because he didn’t get the early exposure 99.9% of humans do.

So you think Freud only based himself on his own personal experience? Possible, but not necessarily true.

[Sauwelios]

@Cyrene

He literally imagined mother attraction could EVOLVE, because he didn’t understand natural selection would winnow it out,

As I’ve said, it will only be winnowed out if it actually leads to inbreeding. If it is repressed, however, it will not lead to that. Ergo…

And in fact, it may even have been naturally selected, because it actually led to non-incestual sex. Everywoman is then a mother-substitute. What motivates us to have sex with non-relatives may be our repressed desire to fuck our mothers!

[Sauwelios]

@Cyrene

The anchor that elluded him, and continues to elude virtually all of his followers is the insight that the ultimate function of evolved psychological mechanisms is the promotion of fitness.

And the anchor that may have eluded Daly/Wilson is that the fact that the ‘ultimate’ function of evolved psychological mechanisms is the promotion of fitness need have nothing to do with psychological motivation. Suppose that I want a red car because, due to a random mutation, red is my favourite colour. If this fact then gives me sexual access to fitter females, that does not mean that my desire for a red car is really aimed at sexual access to fitter females.—

[Sauwelios]

@Cyrene

Theres massive evidence for incest avoidance. NONE for repressed incestual urges. Freud never based his ideas on evidence or science, he was self serving that way.

unless you can provide a hypothesis of Freud’s that makes predictions, has evidence, etc, y’know meets the basic criteria of a scientific theory worth talking about, its time to shut up, no?

If I wanted to read self serving bullshit about repression, i’ll reread Freud. Unless you want to provide the evidence he thought unneccesary? Reread plenty of Freud it is transparently self serving, he makes no attempt to reach objectivity.

I take it you have read plenty of Freud? Because I read—admittedly not in writings by Freud but in a book about Freud—that Freud did base his ideas on evidence or science (the observations I have referred to throughout this thread).

When absolutely no evidence IS EVIDENCE OF REPRESSION, is that not obviously self serving?

How do you explain dreams, Freudian slips, and neurotic symptoms then?

[Jakob]

@Cyrene

Theres massive evidence for incest avoidance. NONE for repressed incestual urges. Freud never based his ideas on evidence or science, he was self serving that way.

unless you can provide a hypothesis of Freud’s that makes predictions, has evidence, etc, y’know meets the basic criteria of a scientific theory worth talking about, its time to shut up, no?

If I wanted to read self serving bullshit about repression, i’ll reread Freud. Unless you want to provide the evidence he thought unneccesary? Reread plenty of Freud it is transparently self serving, he makes no attempt to reach objectivity.

If you agree thats evidence, if you don’t thats repression, and he ignored 3rd party criticisms.

When absolutely no evidence IS EVIDENCE OF REPRESSION, is that not obviously self serving?

What on Gods green Earth are you blabbering about? Freud determined the entire 20th century with his discovery of the subconscious. It’s a bit late for salon-talk about evidence.

[Cyrene]

Freud didn’t discover the sub or unconscious mind he argued for their existence and influence over behavior, he argued for a CONCEPT, that doesn’t mean his ideas about the sub or unconscious mind were right, they are demonstrably false in many cases.

The majority of incestual relationships are between fathers and daughters because parental certainty is lower, incest is super rare but when it does occur its in the situations evolution predicts.

Your mother is certainly your mother, your father has a good chance of not being a genetic parent at all.

Virtually all incest cases are fathers and daughters with the daughter largely coerced, by an older father.

Nothing about incest or homicide rates support Freudian theory, but they fall nicely into predictions darwinians have made.

[Cyrene]

There is no evidence whatever of a same-sex bias in homicides involving infants or prepubertal children: The proportion of victims that are male is virtually identical whether the killer is male or female. (Simiarly we find no evidence of any same-sex bias in the physical abuse of small children by mothers vs fathers, using data sets much larger than the present homicide data; Wilson, Daly, & Weghorst, 1983). It is only after puberty that any same-sex tendency becomes apparent. The data in table 5.4 are unanticipated and anomalous from the perspective of Oedipal theory, but they are fully in keeping with a selectionist analysis of the temporally shifting conflicts between parent and offspring

• Homicide

incest/homicide between family members contradicts Freudian theory, but fall into the exact patterns expected from Darwinians.

Freud was wrong about family conflicts and incest.Period

[Cyrene]

What motivates us to have sex with non-relatives may be our repressed desire to fuck our mothers!

Repression of incestual desire won’t evolve, because incestual desire won’t evolve. You’re making the same ignorant mistakes Freud did.

Theres no reason to evolve psychological repression from jumping off a cliff, because no cliff jumping urge will evolve to begin with.

No cliff jumping urge, no need to evolve a repression of that urge. No fear of heights works well enough. You are 150 years off with your education on evolutionary biology.

Oh, btw, Darwin spoke of the unconscious or subconscious mind, so Freud didn’t discover that.

[Cyrene]

People don’t evolve urges/desires that decrease fitness for a repression to be neccessary. Its like saying we all have a bear drive, the unconscious urge to kiss a grizzly bear, BUT we evolved a repression of that urge.

NO! the urge can’t evolve to begin with. Secondly evolution is efficient, it doesn’t evolve repression for disadvantages, like blind cave fish didn’t evolve eyelids, they lose the eye over evolutionary time, because having eyes when unnecessary is COSTLY.

Having a repressed incest drive would be COSTLY, biologically COSTLY. Evolution is thrifty, not so wasteful as to evolve eyelids for cavefish. No the eyes go away and the resources used to maintain useless traits go elsewhere.

So repressed incestual desire like repressed desire to rape grizzly bears can’t evolve, even if it could the power of selection would winnow it out.

[Jakob]

@Cyrene

Freud didn’t discover the sub or unconscious mind he argued for their existence and influence over behavior, he argued for a CONCEPT, that doesn’t mean his ideas about the sub or unconscious mind were right, they are demonstrably false in many cases.

The majority of incestual relationships are between fathers and daughters because parental certainty is lower, incest is super rare but when it does occur its in the situations evolution predicts.

Your mother is certainly your mother, your father has a good chance of not being a genetic parent at all.

Virtually all incest cases are fathers and daughters with the daughter largely coerced, by an older father.

Nothing about incest or homicide rates support Freudian theory, but they fall nicely into predictions darwinians have made.

I also don’t think the Oedipal complex should be taken literally. More as a metaphor for the ultimate consequence of the desire to be master of ones own fate, which does form a tension between every child and parent. But Freud discovered one hard fact - the sexual nature of the subconscious, and the repression of that nature. That has been proven by the extensive economic and political use that has been made of the idea, and the resulting consumerist world. The change from a need- to a desire-culture is claimed to be almost singlehandedly engineered by Freud’s (double!) nephew, Edward Burneys, who saw the necessity of using his uncles ideas to control the bewildered masses.

I’m taking this way off topic, though - apologies. My agenda, ad nauseam…

[Agape]

‘What motivates us to have sex with non-relatives may be our repressed desire to fuck our mothers!’

I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World. The above statement would adhere to his definition of pseudoscience. Paraphrased- that a belief sets itself up so as to be impervious to outside testing (attempting to exonerate itself to the scrutiny of the scientific method).

[Cyrene]

I lent my copy of demon haunted world, never got it back. Excellent book.

[Sauwelios]

@Cyrene

What motivates us to have sex with non-relatives may be our repressed desire to fuck our mothers!

Repression of incestual desire won’t evolve, because incestual desire won’t evolve. You’re making the same ignorant mistakes Freud did.

No, you’re the one making the mistake here. All “evolve” means is that it doesn’t go extinct. If a mutation caused incestual desire (in five-year-olds, mind you!), it would ‘evolve’ if it gave a survival and/or reproductive advantage. If the desire is naturally repressed, because of mechanisms that already ‘evolved’, it could give a survival and/or reproductive advantage. I’m not saying this is the case, only that it’s possible.

Theres no reason to evolve psychological repression from jumping off a cliff, because no cliff jumping urge will evolve to begin with.

Our difference seems to be that you think the repression could only arise later in time than the incestual desire, whereas I don’t.

[Sauwelios]

@Agape

‘What motivates us to have sex with non-relatives may be our repressed desire to fuck our mothers!’

I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World. The above statement would adhere to his definition of pseudoscience. Paraphrased- that a belief sets itself up so as to be impervious to outside testing (attempting to exonerate itself to the scrutiny of the scientific method).

That’s all very nice (but then, you want to believe that it’s pseudoscience, because you’re evidently afraid that it’s not). Of course it remains pseudoscience as long as there is no evidence. Freud supposedly based himself on evidence. It’s up to you to investigate that.