. I think he hit the nail on the head for the most part. His theories were not only logical, but highly likely. Of course this is only after one peels away the layers of the circumstances of that time period. Many of the things people reject today about Freud were just how people thought back then. While now we usually reject the idea of physical differences between gay and straight people’s bodies, in Freud’s time it was thought of as fact. Men and women were viewed differently then, and though Freud seemed to want to not be horribly sexist, many of the views he had ended up being sexist by modern standards. Perhaps it was not that he didn’t believe what he was saying, it was that even the father of psychoanalysis couldn’t escape the prevailing thoughts and norms held by his society. I thought that the fact that he resigned from the study (something that was criticized by those who spoke in the class) was actually the only logical step for him to take. He suggested that if the girl’s parents wanted to continue this treatment it should be from a female psychoanalysist. He was correct in this conclusion because by then it was painfully obvious that the girl would not open up to a male nearly as much as she would to a female. Freud was making progress in his diagnosis, but not in actually treating the girl (he knew the chances of that were slim from the beginning), which is what her parents had come to him for. Of course her parents (or at least her father) would most likely think that this was a bad idea. It’s likely (especially knowing what we know about psychology today) that the girl would have turned her affections on the woman analyzing her. The Oedipus complex part of Freud’s theories were quite convincing to me as well. It makes sense of a reaction that is otherwise sort of strange. The girl had been there for the birth of one of her brothers and it had not effected her. Yet...
