Why did Karl Popper criticize Freud's theories?

The heart of his criticism is that Freudian psychology is a complex ad hoc framework to explain past behaviours, and it makes no significant testable predictions. The contrast he drew was with Einstein's theories (developed and popularised at the same time as Freud's). read more

Karl Popper was a proponent of the scientific-methodological concept of falsification. Karl Popper's ideas on falsification can be summarised as follows: A theory is only a scientific theory, if it can be tested. Scientific knowledge claims to be"certain" knowledge. read more

But Freudians did not make bold conjectures, and did not attempt to falsify their theory with truly scientific experiments. Sources. Popper lays this out in SCIENCE: CONJECTURES AND REFUTATIONS, in the 1st chapter. It is a great read and accessibly written. read more

Why did Popper criticize Freud's theory Karl Popper said Freud's theory was unscientific because it violated the principle of falsification. Popper claimed that within Freudian theory nothing that a person could do would be contrary to what the theory predicted. read more