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   TayFoNay, Sigh-D (tayfonay@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 21:59:05 JST TayFoNay, Sigh-D

   Visited the Freud museum when I was in Vienna last month because I think it’s required for psychologists should you find yourself in that city. His apartment was big and spacious, especially by European standards, with multiple large rooms for living and his office area across the hall.

   He had a live-in servant who, among other things, greeted his patients and got them settled in the waiting area. As we made our way through his office spaces, next to the coat hook room we came to a much smaller room with a tile floor. I’d guess it was maybe 1.5 meters x 2 meters in size.

   The placard on the wall said this was the room the woman slept in. She’d lay a mat down each night and basically sleep on the floor in a closet. Meanwhile here’s his waiting room, basically next door to where she slept. Thus, solidifying in my mind that Freud was an insufferable asshole.

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 21:59:03 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Urban Hermit

     @Urban_Hermit @tayfonay Freud was born in 1856. Prior to WW1 and the Spanish Flu, domestic servants were universal (for the middle/upper classes) and treated like dogshit. In the central powers there were employee passports and employees couldn't leave without their employer's permission—rape of female servants was unremarked on. Much like some of the Gulf states today. His servant actually *had a room to herself* for sleeping in. That was unusual!

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     Urban Hermit (urban_hermit@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 21:59:04 JST Urban Hermit

     in reply to

     @tayfonay I think he might be insufferable on many counts, but this particular thing might be due to living in an insufferable culture where there waa a vast difference between how you treat the people who paid you, vs the people who were paid by you.

     We get better, but even now when I see that cashiers at the grocery store are forced to stand all day just to not look lazy, when their real job is to help me, not make me feel superior, I am shamed by the system that thinks this is a service.

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 22:07:22 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Urban Hermit

     @tayfonay @Urban_Hermit No argument! He was an asshole (and his whole model of how the brain works was fundamentally flawed). But he was also a man of his times (and the phrase "unquestionable male privilege" BARELY begins to cover it).

     His theories about female neuroses can easily be framed as an attempt to deny the existence of rampant [female] child sex abuse among the upper tiers of society from whom his clients were drawn ...

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     TayFoNay, Sigh-D (tayfonay@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 22:07:23 JST TayFoNay, Sigh-D

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross
     • Urban Hermit

     @cstross @Urban_Hermit That’s some good perspective. Still an asshole.

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 22:23:30 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Urban Hermit

     @tayfonay @Urban_Hermit

     As Upton Sinclair said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

     I think this was applicable to Freud wrt. child sex abuse in upper-crust Vienna. If he'd admitted that his patients were giving factual accounts of abuse rather than fantasies, he'd have ended up in jail because the customers paying his bills were their rich and powerful guardians (and most likely rapists).

     Think Trump/Epstein today.

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     TayFoNay, Sigh-D (tayfonay@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 03-Nov-2024 22:23:31 JST TayFoNay, Sigh-D

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross
     • Urban Hermit

     @cstross @Urban_Hermit :1000: I was watching the other people taking in the displays of his stuff, and reading the curated stories about his life and work and wondered if they were having a similar experience as mine (mostly disgust) or felt in awe of his “genius.”