[Buddha-l] Buddhism and Psychology becomes unfalsifiable

[JKirkpatrick]

Wait a sec...........I never said anything about the incest
taboo. (I pointed out that the totemism ideas in Totem and Taboo
have been discredited. See C. Levi-Strauss on incest-- a more
persuasive explanation.) I was only on about F.'s contribution of
the useful ideas of ambivalence and projection. So please don't
consider what I wrote as part of this disagreement between Dan
and Bob. 

Thanks,
Joanna
___________________

Bob,

Joanna's explanation was exactly right.

> The question is: IS THERE REPRESSED MATERIAL at all?
> And, if there is, IS it what the therapist believes?
> Who can tell if the therapist is correct, except the therapist?
>
> Freud (or the therapist) was the only one who knew or who could
know 
> --

This is silly.

When someone who explicitly claims to reject Freudian theory and
Totem and Taboo in particular, says that the idea of being
attracted to teenage girls would make him feel incestuous toward
non-family members, then he displays
(1) some lack of understanding about the thesis of Totem and
Taboo, which talks about the origin of precisely that feeling,
and (2) the fact that he does feel sexual attraction for teenage
girls but has a mechanism that supposedly smothers the feeling.

Repression is already showing.

When that person is told that such an idea confirms the oedipal
theory (one might add transference and several other things Freud
discusses), and he
*strongly* denies it, that's objectively observable repression.

Not the therapist's secret.

> My understanding is that the claim that we repress stuff we
find 
> painful is not borne out by contemporary non-Freudian
therapists.

"Pain" is one reason. There are many. People have been denying
there is an unconscious from the moment Freud uncovered it, and
this facile dismissal of repression is part of that denial and
attack. The unconscious makes people squirm, since it not only
holds all the dirty secrets about themselves they prefer not to
have anyone, including themselves look it; it's dark and dirty in
there, there are spiders, you might poke your eye out (to quote
Firesign Theater).

> The claim seems to be unfalsifiable.

Can you falsify that the sun exists?** So does repression.

Dan

**  (yeah, every night!) 

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