S igmund Freud was one of the fathers of modern psychology and the inventor of sit-on-the-couch-and-tell-me-about-your-feelings therapy. He also spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about penises.
Freud got a lot right. But Freud also got a lot wrong. Both of these statements are indisputable.
One of Freud’s big ideas was that parents play a defining role in shaping the personalities and emotional and mental health of their children. It’s an idea that persists to this day.
Up until Freud, it was understood that parents taught their children certain behaviors — say “please” and “thank you,” make your bed in the morning, don’t eat mud it’s bad for you — but Freud introduced the idea that parents, through influencing a child’s unconscious, could actually shape how a child sees themselves and the world. Through their actions, parents could actually shape and mold a child’s permanent personality, for better or worse.
The idea intuitively made sense. Although Freud’s explanations for how this actually happened were a little bizarre. Little boys wanted to murder their fathers and fuck their mothers.¹ And little girls were doomed to spend their entire lives secretly wishing they had penises.²
The explanations were rightly criticized and soon disregarded as being batshit loony. But the…
