What Are Three Important Criticisms of Freud's Theory of Personality

Question

Examlex · Accepted Answer

The Answer is The answer should include the following information: Three important criticisms of Freud's theory of personality are: inadequacy of evidence, lack of testability, and sexism. Freud's conclusions were based on a small and skewed sample of his own middle- and upper-class patients from early twentieth-century Vienna. The ideas he gleaned from working with this group do not generalize well to the whole of society. It is also impossible to objectively assess Freud's work, because he did not take notes on the therapy sessions that were used to form his ideas. It's possible that Freud's ideas influenced his patients' behavior, and not the other way around. Freud's psychoanalytic concepts tend to be vague and impossible to objectively measure or confirm. For instance, how might one operationally define and quantify the influence of the id? Freud's theory has also been criticized for sexism. Freud believed that penis envy produces feelings of shame and inferiority in women, which causes them to be more vain, masochistic, and jealous than men. Freud also held that women are more influenced by their emotions and have a lesser ethical and moral sense than men.

What Are Three Important Criticisms of Freud's Theory of Personality

Definitions: