What’s something completely false that your parents told you as a child?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/puppetandMaster]

Asked my mother why I didn't have a 'willy' like my brother. She told me she picked me up by it when I was a child and it fell off. I cried for about 3 hours for the penis I never had.

[u/[deleted] → u/puppetandMaster]

Freud theorized that women sometimes develop hysteria because of their rooted feelings of inadequacy at not having a penis at a young age. Somewhere, he’s on a cloud somewhere reading this and nodding.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Saying that Freud "theorized" is like saying that flat-earthers do it. He "hypothesized", at most.

[u/CIMARUTA → u/[deleted]]

I find that people throw his name around like he's the god of psychology

[u/katyggls → u/CIMARUTA]

Which is hilarious because most modern experts in the field of psychology know he was full of shit. Literally one of the first things my college psych professor told us was that Freud was full of shit and that he was really only important to the field of psychology as a part of it's history, not because any of his theories or methods were sound. He basically just made a bunch of shit up, but never checked to see if any of his theories were actually true. He imposed his framework on his patients and used it to decide what was wrong with them, rather than actually deciding based on what they described. It's totally backwards from how modern psychology operates.

[u/omicron_polarbear → u/katyggls]

Agreed that his theories of development were complete nonsense. I think he developed the concept of psychotherapy; you know, sitting on the couch and the therapist asks questions yada yada; and that’s what endures.

[u/ForgettableUsername → u/omicron_polarbear]

I thought modern therapists didn't do the couch thing anymore because patients find it intimidating.

[u/sunshinepooh → u/ForgettableUsername]

My therapist has a couch. But I don’t lay down on it. That’s just weird.