The content of his studies was mostly false, but the concept of it was influential and groundbreaking. He initiated the process of moving the questions of the mind from the field of philosophy to the field of science and medicine… But he didn’t achieve that process himself. His psychoanalysis wasn’t science yet, but philosophy on its way to become science.
That wasn’t really Freud’s achievement though. There are many early psychologists who deserve credit for this much more than him, such as William James, Gustav Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt, Hermann Ebbinghaus, or (later) B. F. Skinner.
Freud’s work was mostly in the medical tradition, developed independently from the emerging psychological science of that time, and that’s where his theories still have the largest impact.
The content of his studies was mostly false, but the concept of it was influential and groundbreaking. He initiated the process of moving the questions of the mind from the field of philosophy to the field of science and medicine… But he didn’t achieve that process himself. His psychoanalysis wasn’t science yet, but philosophy on its way to become science.
That wasn’t really Freud’s achievement though. There are many early psychologists who deserve credit for this much more than him, such as William James, Gustav Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt, Hermann Ebbinghaus, or (later) B. F. Skinner.
Freud’s work was mostly in the medical tradition, developed independently from the emerging psychological science of that time, and that’s where his theories still have the largest impact.