The difference between Kandel and Feynman is that Kandel is a neuroscientist who understands psychoanalysis and Feynman clearly hadn't really read Freud's work, only expressing skepticism on the basis of his vague intuitions about how long it should take to come up with a theory.
Kandel got Nobel for medicine, namely memory physiological basis of neuron storage, not for proving psychoanalysis correct. His thoughts on it are as relevant as Feynman.
A counterexample - Tesla was also a genius Engineer but he also believed in Aliens, and doves with laser eyes, being infused by Cosmic energy.
Kandel's obvious expertise on the functioning of the brain puts him in precisely the right position to give an assessment of how realistic Freud's models in describing what happens in the brain. More specifically, his expertise on the neurology of memory is directly connected to a lot of what Freud hypothesized about how memory functions. In fact, in his 99 paper on psychoanalysis and neuroscience
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.156.4....
Kandel cites specific neuroscientific mechanisms that connect with mechanisms in the paychoanalytic model. This is very much his area of expertise and far more relevant than Feynman shooting from the hip about something he does not really know much about. Kandel is an expert in neuroscience and from the literature very well versed in psychoanalytic work, and makes actual arguments salient to both disciplines to justify his opinions, as can be seen in the above article.
Ok, but did Kandel proved Freud right? Did he found proof for ego, id, super-ego, Thanatos/Eros in brain morphology? Me skimming it shows little to no evidence of so, hence his contributing to prove Freud right is no more different than what Feynman did.
I did found this gem though:
> Thus, unlike various forms
of cognitive therapy and other psychotherapies, for which compelling objective evidence now exists—both as therapies in their own right and as key adjuncts to pharmacotherapy—there is as yet no compelling evidence, outside subjective impressions, that psychoanalysis works better than nonanalytically oriented therapy or placebo.
So wait. Even he admits Psychoanalysis is less useful than what we have currently. Way to bury the lede.
From what I see, this is more a rally to revive psychoanalysis on solid biological grounds, than confirmation of psycho analysis as such.
The question is not whether Kandel proved anything, but merely whether psychoanalysis has been discredited. I am not making the case here that it is proven, verified, or completely substantiated in any particular way (here at least). That people are still taking its ideas seriously in mainstream research fields is enough to show that it is not discredited. The whole point of the aforementioned article is argue that psychoanalysis has credibility as a theory.
Kandel points out several connections between ideas from Freud's model and potential neuroscientific correlates. The subsequent works of Solms have further pursued these connections as a rigorous scientific project. How can you compare all of this to Feynman arguing against psychoanalysis on the basis of personally doubting someone could come up with it?
These are not marginal outsiders doing basement research. A theory being discredited means that there is a consensus in research against it. There is plenty of active research in reputable institutions both in psychoanalysis and neuroscience as I linked to explicitly, as well as in therapy research (which could be surfaced pretty easily). Many may have contested psychoanalysis, but tis is not what a discredited theory looks like.
> The question is not whether Kandel proved anything, but merely whether psychoanalysis has been discredited. I am not making the case here that it is proven, verified, or completely substantiated in any particular way
Well, if it's not proven and verified, if it's not more useful than another theory, what is the point of it?
As the wise man once said "All models are wrong, but some are useful". Why stick with theory if its useless?
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Let me demonstrate - Geocentric system is correct. From POV fixed to Earth it's correct to say Earth is center of rotation. So they nailed the particulars. Sun and the rest of the stars/galaxies rotates relative to Earth.
However, here is the kicker. The more you want to study movement of a certain galaxy, the more cycles and epi-cycles do you need to construct. The calculations become more and more difficult. In other words - model is useless. Model with high effort to predictive power is useless.
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Is Freud right on some particulars? Yes. I do believe there is strong evidence of a subconscious and conscious process, and subconscious process being the foundation for consciousness.
But ID/EGO/SUPER-EGO? No. That probably doesn't exist. Same for his Eros/Thanatos. Same for his obsession with child sexuality (this was experimentally disproven). It's just a relic of his flawed theory and worldview. Why are people trying to resurrect it? No idea.
Instead of building a theory based on evolution, biology, psychology, people are chasing what some Victorian philosopher said as if it were a gospel.
At the moment, there is no canonically useful model of the mind that is established in the consensus of those who study it. You are writing this as though psychoanalysis has been replaced by some better theory that explains more of the phenomena that it addresses, but no such theory exists. One of its main contenders, evolutionary psychology, does not actually provide a model for the mind, just the conditions under which it developed. Other models have offered piecemeal models of isolated effects such as cognitive dissonance, many of which are subsumed by psychoanalytic models anyways. The point of Kandel referring to it as the "most satisfying model of the mind" (at least in 1999) is because it addresses a territory of phenomena that still does not have a clear alternative. There is no analogous "geocentric system" against which psychoanalysis looks Ptolemaic. From the above reference to work, clearly psychoanalytic models are not useless, and hence researchers continue to find reasons to stick to it.
I think you are conflating Freud's model of the mind with a couple of particulars. The id/ego/superego is not particularly central to Freud's work until it makes an appearance as the "second topography" in the 1920's. The most important part of his model involving unconscious processes are almost taken for granted by psychology today after trying to soft shoe around the idea for half a century via reductive behaviorist models that fail to substantially account for anything complex like language, culture, thought and memory.
Even if we address the second topography, why is it that it "probably doesn't exist?". Is it because Feynman doubted it? It would certainly be dogmatic to suppose that this suffices to justify this claim. Solms et al. have done a lot of work showing correlates between the model of the ego and the id and functional neuroscience, so there is work to show that they very well may exist. You cannot just assert that these things don't exist because you or Feynman don't personally buy into them. None of these researchers are taking Freud as gospel, as you seem to be taking the words of Feynman. Denying that psychoanalysis is useful means engaging in those actually working on its ideas, or even engaging in Freud's ideas substantially, and making clear arguments for why this should be treated as useless.
> At the moment, there is no canonically useful model of the mind that is established in the consensus of those who study it.
I'd personally go with either one that shown promise, i.e. can be used to cure people and can make testable predictions. I know it's hard, this is psychology. I think a lot of theories that shown promise are computational theories of mind.
> I think you are conflating Freud's model of the mind with a couple of particulars.
I've never read a book about Freud's model without id/ego/superego or Oedipus/Elektra complex, etc.
Like, ok. He hit the mark with conscious/unconscious. What else?
> why is it that it "probably doesn't exist?" Is it because Feynman doubted it?
Because I'm neither a psychologist nor a fortune teller. I'm not aware of any modern theory really propagating id/superego/ego as some form of structure of the mind (I could be wrong here), nor am I able to say that in future we won't discover exactly three precise parts of the mind.
So no. It's not about Feynman. It's about how Freud came with his theory of the mind and the "evidence" for it.
First. He didn't look at data and then synthesized a solution. He basically said, yeah, this looks like it, lets make conscious and subconscious. Oh, and different desires. And different parts of mind. And make them three.
Second. Psychoanalysis is essentially science based on hearsay i.e. therapist reporting their view on the patient. Yeah, no way that could be biased or distorted. I'm pretty sure I cured cancer in that one guy. He had symptoms of common cold, but I definitely cured him of cancer. Yup.
That's not how you do science. Like I know psychology is hard to do, because it's not like you can debug a person (in clear conscience).
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But Feynman is onto something. Frank Wilczek defined a beautiful theory as one you get more than you put in, or as he put it exuberance of productivity.
In lieu of that, for having all these parts and urges and egos and complexes, what does psychoanalysis do that other disciplines can't?
Whether one assesses one or another proposed model as having promise is a matter of debate and not a means to credit or discredit anything. It does not seem as though there is any case here for the assertion that 'psychoanalysis has been discredited', as that issue is no longer being debated.
Instead, it seems that the question you are addressing now is whether psychoanalysis is a promising model. That is a different issue and bears upon a discussion of the theory itself. If you have never read a book about Freud's model without id/ego/superego, you don't appear to be familiar with Freud's work to begin with. Look at everything Freud wrote before 1920, and there is little mention of these things (the ego shows up some because the term in German was just "Ich" and is used anywhere a notion of "self" is referenced, but the "id" and "superego" certainly make no appearance until later). "Interpretation of Dreams", the "Introductory Lectures", the 19th century works on "Neurosis", and the metapsychological works primarily address unconscious processes, memory, repression, and other mechanisms of defense, with reference to hysteria, obsessional neurosis, paranoia, and psychosis. The id/ego/superego organization was introduced later in "The Ego and the Id" and other works around that time.
I would suggest if you are skeptical about Freud, and want to actually evaluate his ideas, and not cartoons of them, you should at least read "The Unconscious" or "Interpretation of Dreams", particularly the third part of the latter text. If you read Freud, you will see that he most certainly looks at data and syntheses solutions. Freud very clearly and methodically deduces most of his ideas from accounts of neuroses, dreams, and other mental phenomena. In the "Interpretation of Dreams" for instance, Freud discusses previous research on dreams, observes many interesting qualities of recorded dreams as well as discourse in therapy, "and then synthesized" a model of cognitive mechanisms that would account for the phenomena, among them condensation, displacement, and regression. He then goes on to further synthesize a plausible model of how these processes work in general, how memory and consciousness plays a role in them, and how these models are consistent with cognition in general. Modern research on dreams actually substantiates this fairly well thus far, taking the position that dreams are forms of memory consolidation and the consequence of "regression".
You really have to read some of this stuff and not just parrot what you have heard others say about Freud. The "Elektra Complex" is not even Freud's idea; it was an idea of Jung's that Freud was critical of.
