Sigmund Freud made a false root analysis and built on it several major false analyses that have had disastrous effects on the 20th century. When treating female patients who suffered from "hysteria," he was again and again confronted with them relating stories of having sex with their fathers. Freud interpreted that as their repressed sexual feelings for their fathers and used it to claim that children are sexual; that women are an "incomplete gender" possessing a "penis envy"; and that women are in love with their fathers and men with their mothers, with feelings of love for another person being transference from one's parent. In fact, given the vast prevalence of incest and child sexual abuse - computed to affect 30% of women and 10% of men - and the link that such has had to mental illness - it is far more likely that these patients were relating actual memories of sexual abuse by their fathers. Indeed, if such memories were to be narrated in a present-day therapeutic setting, they would be seen as just that: Memories of childhood sexual abuse. As corollary of this mis-analyses have come four false analyses. The first three have been popularized and continue to be used for wrong ends; the last has likewise been of injury, but to a more limited group. The following will go through all four of these and show where they have gone wrong. The first corollary mis-analysis is the claim of childhood sexuality. This claim has been used for exceptionally wrongful actions, such as justifying incest and pedophilia. Simply to put, there is no evidence of children actually being sexual or of there being a physiological mechanism for sexuality in children. That is compared to teenagers, who are highly sexual as they have hormones raging in their blood. But with prepubescent children, there is no evidence of actual sexuality any more than there is of critical amount of sexual hormones in their blood. What is true is that children are curious and can be just as curious about sexuality, or about their bodies, as they are about everything else. It is also true that children copy adult behavior and what they see in the media and around them. And it is true that curiosity is enhanced about things that are forbidden. Finally, it is true that children often develop crushes, or even feelings of love, for other children or for adults. These, however, are not sexual, but emotional, in nature, and have far more to do with emotional closeness than they do with sex. Having based his portrayal of children as sexual beings upon a wrongful portrayal of memories of childhood sexual abuse as erotic fantasy, Freud introduced a very dangerous idea that has been used for incest, pedophilia, and sexualization of childhood. This idea, being corollary of a wrong analysis, is refutable by transitive logic; but it will take more than just logic to fix the damage that it has done. The second corollary mis-analysis is the portrayal of women as an "incomplete gender" possessing "penis envy." Not only has this led to complete misrepresentation of women, but it has also formed much of the basis for 20th century secular misogyny. Feminist scholars have presented what Freud saw as something that happens in patriarchial societies that value men and devalue women. To this description, there is a qualifier. What Freud saw, was something that was a product of a historical accident - the early 20th century society in which men had all the power, and women were sufficiently educated in the ideals of liberty and equality to want the liberties, powers and opportunities that men had. We see no envy of men by women in societies such as Sweden, France, and liberal parts of America, where women have equal power and status with men. Nor do we see the same envy in the conservative Muslim, Christian and Hindu societies where women accept the subservient role as part of their religion. Freud took an accident of culture and history and made it binding on all of womanhood. And that was as bad for humanity as it was for women of his time. The third corollary mis-analysis is the most famous and most graphic of all Freudian errors. It is of course the claim that children are in love with the parent of the opposite gender and the portrayal of romantic love in youth or adulthood as transference of that love. Since the basis of this claim is false analysis of childhood sexual abuse by the parent of opposite gender as erotic feelings for the parent of the opposite gender, this claim is likewise refutable by transitive logic. But there is also easily apparent evidence that it is a false claim, and that is as follows: Women raised by single mothers, men raised by single fathers, and homosexual people raised by single parents of opposite gender, are just as likely to develop feelings of romantic love as do the people who were raised in nuclear families. As these situations lack the precedent of a parent of the correct gender being in the house, they cannot be transference and must be something else. Finally, since the feelings of romantic love held by people who were raised in nuclear families are of the same character as the feelings of romantic love held by people who did not have a parent of the correct gender in the household, whose feelings cannot be transference, these feelings likewise cannot be transference and must be something else. During Freud's time, there were few single-parent households, and fewer homosexuals, to study; now there are plenty of them. And what the experience of women raised by single mothers, men raised by single fathers, and homosexual people raised by a single parent of the opposite gender, show, is that love takes place in people regardless of whether or not they had a parent of the gender that is desired and as transference for whom the feelings of love can be misconstrued. This means that Freud's analysis is not only false by being based on a false analysis; rather, it is false also in light of simple reality. The fact of people developing feelings of love for another person when they were raised without the parent of the desired gender in the house shows that Freud's analysis of love as transference is a mis-analysis - as any corollary of a false analysis would be expected to be. Finally, Freud portrayed the feelings of love that some patients developed for their therapists also as transference from their parents. For these feelings, there are two superior explanations. One is based on analysis; the other is based on science. The first one is as follows: When a woman is faced with a brilliant, handsome, composed, apparently compassionate man who makes an apparent effort to understand her - or when a man is confronted with a beautiful, compassionate woman who also makes such an effort - feelings of love are quite possible as a result. And they are likely especially in case that the female has never had such pople in her life, with neither her husband nor her father having ever made a genuine effort to understand her feelings - or in case that the male likewise has not had such women in his. Which means that these feelings are not transference at all, having had no existence in one's past, but rather an understandable reaction to the attempted understanding provided by the therapist and to what the therapist is. The second explanation is based on a recent scientific experiment in which love was reproduced in laboratory settings by having male and female subjects reveal to each other intimate details about their lives. This of course happens in one-on-one therapy, but it happens more in group therapy and settings such as Alcoholics Anonymous. And while much of the more recent psychology aims to portray the males in such situations as predators and women as victims, a more rational, level-headed and scientifically valid explanation is this: Such feelings are likely in situations of this kind due to the inherent nature of such situations. These situations feature exchange of intimate information; which, by the same mechanism as underlies the experiment, fosters development of feelings of love. The misconstruction of memories of childhood sexual abuse as erotic fantasy has lead to four terrible and wrongful conclusions, all of them having had poisonous effect on places that have been exposed to these conclusions. It is time that these conclusions be seen as what they are: Corollaries of a false and wrongful analysis, wrongful and false therefore in and of themselves.
