Phobias everywhere

The Freud-Sex Religion

I have linked up what is going on with sexuality to the religious ideas of Freud. I call them “religious” because Freudism has been debunked as an empirical science, but his followers hold zealously to his ideas. He speaks not in terms of “true” and “false” but in terms of “phobias.” This line stood out:

“In this process, repression succeeds in one particular: the discharge of anxiety may be to some extent damned up, but only at a heavy sacrifice of personal freedom. Attempts at flight from the claims of instinct are, however, in general, useless, and the result of the flight by means of a phobia remains still unsatisfactory” (The Unconscious).

The idea is that a person has a sexual instinct but represses it due to cultural norms. This repression causes anxiety which manifests itself as a phobia about the object of sexual attraction. The psychoanalyst thus works backward from the phobia to the repression. By freely expressing the sexual desire, the anxiety, and phobia are removed.

All of this is analyzed at the level of instincts and feelings. Freud does not consider if there are actual moral standards about sexuality by which to measure our own conduct. Nor does he consider the truth or falsity of propositions like, “this sexual behavior is wrong.”

You’ll see the same method among his followers today. Those who disagree about the morality of their proposed sexual lifestyle are dismissed as having a phobia and are told to take a class to be better educated and overcome this phobia. Not only does this rely on the false sexual-religious ideas of Freud, not only does it dehumanize by silencing debate, but it also exhibits the basic logical fallacies we teach Logic 101 students to avoid.