The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Freud's ideas were spread by those who misunderstood them, giving them too much importance relative to their true value.
- In plain terms
- People who didn't fully understand Freud gave his ideas too much fame.
- What can you take from it?
- Misunderstood ideas can gain disproportionate fame due to incomplete grasp.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How much of popular theory do people actually understand?
- Does fame indicate truth?
Another view
It judges popularity by depth of understanding which is hard to measure.
More from Alfred North Whitehead
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.
Permalink to quote #56 Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment in recognition of the pattern.
Permalink to quote #58 A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.
Permalink to quote #55
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