Speaker 1: Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Here thousands of
Speaker 1: hours of Dennis's lectures courses in classic radio programs. Had
Speaker 1: to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. Go to Dennisprager dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, welcome to the Ultimate Issues Hour, an
Speaker 2: hour each week devoted to the great questions of life.
Speaker 2: And I think I got a signal from Heaven as
Speaker 2: it were, to move Peter Kramer over into the Ultimate
Speaker 2: Issues Hour. So it's actually worked out better for you,
Speaker 2: and it worked out better, I think, for the show,
Speaker 2: So thank you for your patience. Peter Kramer is a
Speaker 2: professor of psychiatry at Brown University, a well known psychiatrist.
Speaker 2: And there is a there is a series of biographies,
Speaker 2: short biographies that have been put out. They're eminent, called
Speaker 2: Eminent Lives, and he was given the honor and it
Speaker 2: is an honor to write the one on Freud, whom,
Speaker 2: as I reminded you folks earlier in the show, I
Speaker 2: was my nominee either he or Hitler, and I'm not
Speaker 2: comparing them. Although it's amazing how people will pervert what
Speaker 2: you say. I'm a veteran of having my words perverted
Speaker 2: there in no way related, but those were my two
Speaker 2: nominees for Person of the Century. Time eventually picked Albert Einstein,
Speaker 2: which was just a safe pick. But the effects of
Speaker 2: those two individuals, one for ill and one perhaps, I
Speaker 2: guess I'm a mixed bag. I have been to the
Speaker 2: great consternation of many of my listeners. I have been
Speaker 2: a fan of a Freud. I thought the man was
Speaker 2: the genius of the twentieth century, for good and for ill.
Speaker 2: But I really believe he was a genius in opening
Speaker 2: up the unconscious and all of the ideas that he had.
Speaker 2: Do you agree, first of all, on the effect that
Speaker 2: he has had on modern man?
Speaker 3: Enormous effect, you know. I think you have to when
Speaker 3: you write a short biography, choose one challenge or a
Speaker 3: couple and say these are the ones I'm going to
Speaker 3: look at. And I think what's happened to Freud over
Speaker 3: the past twenty years or so is that his stock
Speaker 3: really has gone down as a scientist and even as
Speaker 3: a person of character. I think, as we know more
Speaker 3: about what he's done through witnesses, you know, beyond himself,
Speaker 3: he looks less good. But he has had this enormous
Speaker 3: influence on how we experience ourselves, so that that contrast
Speaker 3: that paradox, how you can be less and less respected
Speaker 3: as a scientist and yet have this enormous influence on
Speaker 3: how modern man lives with himself. You know, that seemed
Speaker 3: to me my challenge.
Speaker 2: Well, it is a challenge. So the question is, and
Speaker 2: there are people who believe this, many people that psychoanalysis
Speaker 2: and psychotherapy, at least in so far as they are
Speaker 2: related to psychiatry, are not based on science and therefore
Speaker 2: are more harmful than good.
Speaker 3: Well, I think psychotherapy is done well. There was psychotherapy
Speaker 3: before Freud. Most psychotherapy today doesn't have very direct links
Speaker 3: to Freud, and psychotherapy is still one of the really
Speaker 3: important treatments for mental illness, for minor mental illness, for growth,
Speaker 3: for education. But the particular additions that Freud made about
Speaker 3: infantile sexuality, some of the things he said about the
Speaker 3: nature of the unconscious just have not nature of dreams
Speaker 3: have not held up as well as probably everybody expected
Speaker 3: fifty years ago they would hold up.
Speaker 2: What do you think of psychoanalysis itself? And for those
Speaker 2: who don't know the difference psychotherapy is if you go
Speaker 2: to a psychologist or you go to any therapist and
Speaker 2: you talk through your problems. Psychiatry is somebody who does
Speaker 2: that and also has an MD and can prescribe prescription drugs.
Speaker 2: And then there was psychoanalysis where you go about four
Speaker 2: times a week and what is it for about two
Speaker 2: hours of session?
Speaker 3: Well, no, usually the same fifty minutes.
Speaker 2: Fifty minutes, yeah, and you but it is about that
Speaker 2: much a week, right.
Speaker 3: It can be four or five times a week, and
Speaker 3: of course doing that is a different experience. You really
Speaker 3: come in touch with aspects of yourself. The psychiatrists psychoanalyst
Speaker 3: becomes very important in your fantasies and imagination.
Speaker 4: Have you undergone psychoanalysis?
Speaker 3: I have? I have, and it was a Freudian psychoanalysis.
Speaker 3: I was in London, where Freud had moved after he
Speaker 3: left Vienna. Anna Freud was still in London, his daughter.
Speaker 3: I was at that institute where you know, they presided,
Speaker 3: and I was a patient and I thought it did
Speaker 3: me a great deal of good. Although you have to
Speaker 3: ask was it for the reasons that people imagined at
Speaker 3: the time, you know, was it important to bring forth
Speaker 3: the Oedipus complex, this notion of having a sexual incestuous
Speaker 3: interest in your mother? And being willing to murder your
Speaker 3: father in the interest of that, you know, that sort
Speaker 3: of thing. Is that? Did that really hold? Or was
Speaker 3: it just that I was in the hands of a
Speaker 3: very good person and given some time and space to
Speaker 3: think problems through.
Speaker 2: I publicly admit that if I had the time, I
Speaker 2: would love to undergo psychoanalysis.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I say that, and my wife says, you know,
Speaker 3: she'd leave me if I did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you did already, Yes, I did already.
Speaker 3: I did already, I see.
Speaker 4: But so you're lucky you did it before you marry.
Speaker 3: Right, that's it, that's it. She doesn't want me to
Speaker 3: know any more than I know.
Speaker 2: Right. Oh yeah, No, I understand that I may and
Speaker 2: it may may be better if both spouses do it
Speaker 2: than if only one does.
Speaker 3: I suppose so. But you know, it has changed very greatly.
Speaker 3: Freud thought he was a great scientist. He thought that
Speaker 3: analysis had to be scientific, so you should stand at
Speaker 3: some distance from the patient, not be empathetic, not be
Speaker 3: overly sympathetic, that the patient remain very anxious. And then
Speaker 3: he had these notions of what it was you were
Speaker 3: going to discover, and in particular, these repressed sexual desires
Speaker 3: and as I say that particular line of thought has
Speaker 3: just not.
Speaker 4: Fair, that do you not believe in the complex?
Speaker 3: I think the Oedipus complex is probably and many people
Speaker 3: thought this when Freud was alive, including some of his
Speaker 3: competitors like Jung. That's sort of a shorthand for an
Speaker 3: awareness that there are conflicts even in the best regulated
Speaker 3: of families. I just reviewed a book which is about
Speaker 3: Freud's visit to America. He became friendly with a man
Speaker 3: named James Jackson Putnam, who was an American neurologist helped
Speaker 3: spread psychoanalysis in this country. And there's a funny correspondence
Speaker 3: where Putnam writes a letter saying that he used to
Speaker 3: have fantasies, dreams that when he grew up he would
Speaker 3: sit in front of a fireplace and have a devoted
Speaker 3: wife and children and so on. And Freud writes back
Speaker 3: to the effect of, well, you're you know, you're Sadism
Speaker 3: and masochism obviously are coming to the fore the man
Speaker 3: who would not take yes for an answer, that.
Speaker 4: What's wrong with that fantasy?
Speaker 3: By the way, well it must be a repression of
Speaker 3: the reverse.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Freud could turn anything into the edifice complex.
Speaker 4: All right, so do you or don't you believe in it?
Speaker 3: I don't believe in it in that form. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think that what was valuable about Freud, and I
Speaker 3: think what its contemporaries admired, was that he was very
Speaker 3: open and frank about sex and aggression in an era.
Speaker 3: You know, this wasn't exactly Victorian England, but it was Habsburg, Austria,
Speaker 3: where these matters, although they were widely spoken about by
Speaker 3: the intelligencia, you know, we're still somewhat repressed. And I
Speaker 3: think bringing the possibility of conflict and desire even in
Speaker 3: ordinary intimate circumstances into the did.
Speaker 4: He did he help patience?
Speaker 3: Well, that's an interesting question. You know that his patients,
Speaker 3: the ones he wrote about, almost uniformly did less well
Speaker 3: than he said they did. He was working with very
Speaker 3: sick people. You know, we think of neurosis as a
Speaker 3: mild manner matter, but he was dealing with very disturbed people.
Speaker 3: And researchers have gone and found these patients and they
Speaker 3: went on to be rehospitalized and you know, have a
Speaker 3: very spotty careers and so on, and some of them
Speaker 3: lived long enough to be interviewed, and they were really
Speaker 3: still mentally ill at the time of interview many years later,
Speaker 3: so I don't think he had miraculous effects on his patients.
Speaker 3: Let's say that there are patients he didn't write about
Speaker 3: who have written memoirs and diaries, and some of them
Speaker 3: say they did quite well with him. But those accounts
Speaker 3: show some other problems, which is that he didn't really
Speaker 3: do psycho analysis. He was somebody who had strong opinions.
Speaker 3: He'd give people advice, he'd have them over for dinner,
Speaker 3: he'd lend them money. You know, it didn't look the
Speaker 3: way psychoanalysis he wrote about. It was a different, different thing.
Speaker 2: I'd like to tell you in a nutshell why I
Speaker 2: have always admired him because it often surprises people because
Speaker 2: I'm also very religious, and usually people think there's a
Speaker 2: conflict between Freud and religion. Freud himself was an atheist
Speaker 2: and no use for religion. He thought it was essentially,
Speaker 2: you know, some psychological construct or crutch that we needed,
Speaker 2: and that basically God and our Father were interchangeable. How
Speaker 2: we looked at God is how we looked at our father.
Speaker 2: And many people think his worst work is Moses and
Speaker 2: Monotheism anyway, So but I want to tell you in
Speaker 2: a nutshell and have you react. I think that what
Speaker 2: he said was, look, we are really messed up inside,
Speaker 2: and don't walk around with this idealistic notion of the
Speaker 2: Enlightenment that we are you know, basically wonderful beings who
Speaker 2: have just been you know, just been you know, somehow
Speaker 2: ruined by the the economics of our time or by
Speaker 2: our parents. But we are really, we really are a
Speaker 2: mess and that's a religious belief in my opinion as well.
Speaker 2: Peter Kramer, the psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry, My guest
Speaker 2: is book Sigmund Freud.
Speaker 4: This is the Ultimate Issues hour.
Speaker 1: We continue this episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right
Speaker 1: after this. Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: Hi, everybody, this is the Ultimate Issues are on the
Speaker 2: Dennis Prager Show. You can't get much more ultimate than
Speaker 2: the father of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and all the like.
Speaker 4: And there is a.
Speaker 2: New excellent brief biography and you know how much I
Speaker 2: adore brevity in writing by Peter Kramer, who is well
Speaker 2: known for writing on psychiatry. He's a professor of psychiatry
Speaker 2: at Brann University and in private practice in Providence. By
Speaker 2: the way of the two things, can you say which
Speaker 2: gives you more joy? The teaching of psychiatry or the
Speaker 2: practice of it?
Speaker 3: You know, I love working with patients, I'd say they
Speaker 3: you know. Number two for me, probably even before teaching,
Speaker 3: is writing. I love I write in the morning, I
Speaker 3: see patients in the afternoon, and it's just what I've
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4: When do you teach in the evening? Uh? No?
Speaker 3: I do you like tea during the day.
Speaker 4: I was wondering for a while.
Speaker 3: I try to cram at wedge a few things, and
Speaker 3: I got kids. There's a lot going on, but basically
Speaker 3: it's writing in the morning, seeing patients, all right.
Speaker 2: I was saying to you that a lot of religious
Speaker 2: people have a big problems with Freud and Freudian psychiatry
Speaker 2: and and the whole, the whole arena of much of
Speaker 2: that psychotherapy.
Speaker 3: No, I think you captured something, which is that you know,
Speaker 3: this is one of these figures who says rationality has
Speaker 3: its limits in human beings, and that is a philosophical
Speaker 3: and religious issue. And you know, science aside, whether you
Speaker 3: get it exactly right about dreams or the Oedipus complet
Speaker 3: that issue about our irrationality having a big part in
Speaker 3: our makeup is at the center of Freud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I say to my you know, to my
Speaker 2: religious audience, that he, you know, he understands how limited
Speaker 2: we are. He is no romanticist about human nature. And
Speaker 2: that's exactly what I got from religion.
Speaker 3: And you know, Freud certainly was, in a certain manner
Speaker 3: a good Jew. He never turned his back on Judaism.
Speaker 3: He you know, played cards with his male friends. That
Speaker 3: been a breath every week. He told Jewish jokes. He
Speaker 3: wasn't pretending not to be Jewish just because he was
Speaker 3: an atheist in the sense that all scientists at that
Speaker 3: moment were atheists. That was the that was the stance
Speaker 3: he had contempt for a belief in God. It's true.
Speaker 3: But this wrestling with Moses is also an interesting issue.
Speaker 3: I mean, he got the theological history wrong, he got
Speaker 3: the anthropology wrong. But at least he is trying to
Speaker 3: do something very brave in the face of the Nazis. Here,
Speaker 3: you know, with this change in Austrian politics, the Nazis
Speaker 3: were at the border, and here is Freud saying, we
Speaker 3: as Jews have to be honest with ourselves. This is
Speaker 3: a new way of looking at Moses. I mean there
Speaker 3: was something very touching about doing this, and this was
Speaker 3: really in his old age. I mean he was he
Speaker 3: was one of these bold, outspoken types from you know,
Speaker 3: adolescents till death.
Speaker 2: Give a couple of examples when you and I both
Speaker 2: believe he's been such a powerful force. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: the subtitle is a great subtitle for your book, The
Speaker 2: Making of the Modern Mind.
Speaker 4: Inventor. Yeah, yeah, he he made the modern mind.
Speaker 3: He did, and you know, as I say, he did
Speaker 3: it without necessarily being right on the science. He thought
Speaker 3: that these things like the Oedipus complex were discoveries, that
Speaker 3: he discovered natural laws the way Copernicus did or Darwin.
Speaker 3: He compared himself to those scientists and to Einstein repeatedly,
Speaker 3: and I think that and to who he was. But
Speaker 3: he captured that sense of there being a lot of
Speaker 3: absurdity in life, of symbols being important, of you know,
Speaker 3: what goes on in modern intellectual studies, you may like
Speaker 3: it or not. Where tag team wrestling may be looked
Speaker 3: at as a subject of serious inquiry. I mean, here
Speaker 3: Freud was looking at jokes and slips of the tongue
Speaker 3: and trying to find basic indicators about the culture and
Speaker 3: about the human mind in these very trivial, trivial products
Speaker 3: and trivial events. And that really just has shaped the
Speaker 3: way we look at the objects around us and think
Speaker 3: about I mean, to give the most humble example, say
Speaker 3: you're on a date and the person doesn't show up
Speaker 3: or shows up late and has some sort of quasi
Speaker 3: reasonable explanation, you will think, you know, maybe he or
Speaker 3: she is hostile, maybe there's something more going on that
Speaker 3: even the person, as he speaks doesn't know about. Well,
Speaker 3: that's freud, the notion of that of the un contract.
Speaker 4: That's such a great example.
Speaker 2: See, it's humbling that that's what I mean, or is
Speaker 2: one of the things that I meant. It is humbling
Speaker 2: to know how much of ourselves we don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's why, by the way, I said to you, I
Speaker 2: would love to undergo psychoanalysis. I want to know Dennis better.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a project you Well, it is, But.
Speaker 2: That's the that's it's not because I'm sick, it's because
Speaker 2: I want It's it's like we like to we like
Speaker 2: to explore outer space. To me, psychoanalysis is exploring inner space.
Speaker 3: And I think that probably is why most people undertake
Speaker 3: psychoanalysis as opposed to, say, you know, taking prozac or
Speaker 3: undergoing a brief cognitive therapy. I think if you're going
Speaker 3: four or five days a week, you're looking for some
Speaker 3: real insight and transformation.
Speaker 2: But I will tell you this, if I were to
Speaker 2: choose a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, that's what it would have
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 4: I would want a Freudian.
Speaker 3: One h And why is that?
Speaker 2: Because I have I would want them to tap into.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's all nonsense.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think that all of these almost Kakamami things,
Speaker 2: for example, obviously wouldn't be applicable to me. But I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know that penis envy is totally nonsense.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: Do you think it's not totally nonsense?
Speaker 3: Well, I think it is much too simple. If you
Speaker 3: think of the You know, if you were a woman
Speaker 3: in late nineteenth earliest twentieth century Vienna, and all the
Speaker 3: power you know, were really in the hands of all
Speaker 3: the explicit power were in the hands of men, you know,
Speaker 3: of course, you might wish that you had some more
Speaker 3: of the benefits that manhood brings, whether that is related
Speaker 3: to thinking, you know that you're having the fantasy that
Speaker 3: your penis was cut off, you know, which was what
Speaker 3: he imagined, that women thought that they were they were
Speaker 3: in a sense wounded or injured. You know that does
Speaker 3: seem a little nonsense.
Speaker 2: Agal, Yeah, I agree with that in the maturer woman.
Speaker 2: I always thought of it more than any younger girl.
Speaker 2: And I must tell you, and you know I'm not I
Speaker 2: don't want to saddle you with this, so you can say, Dennis,
Speaker 2: I completely disagree, and I will never talk to you again,
Speaker 2: or at least not publicly. But but I have viewed
Speaker 2: much of the feminist movement as a form of penis envy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in that whatever men do, that's what's really valuable, and
Speaker 2: so let us women model ourselves on the male model
Speaker 2: of achievement.
Speaker 3: Yes, I do disagree with you, do you know? I
Speaker 3: think that there's a lot to be said for power,
Speaker 3: and if you're in a culture, and I think this
Speaker 3: is less true now, and you know, you look at
Speaker 3: Madeline all right, and kind of Lisa Rice and Magufacture
Speaker 3: and so on, it certainly is less true now. But
Speaker 3: if you look at the culture over the past one
Speaker 3: hundred years, men have had so much more power. And
Speaker 3: then if you go back to times when women really
Speaker 3: couldn't own land or assume certain positions in the culture,
Speaker 3: become professionals of certain sorts, have positions, you know, within religions.
Speaker 3: I think there are lots of reasons women would be
Speaker 3: envious of men without.
Speaker 2: Having Yeah, but the feminist argument has not produced in
Speaker 2: my opinion, the average woman, I don't think, I think
Speaker 2: is less powerful today. She may have a bank account,
Speaker 2: but in terms of her influence. Uh, I mean, I think,
Speaker 2: for example, their women are far more sexualized in public
Speaker 2: life today than they were in Freud's time, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean, look at look at look at what Miss
Speaker 2: America contestant has to wear today compared to fifty years ago.
Speaker 2: In terms of the skimpiness of the bikini.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, that can be degrading or that can
Speaker 3: be liberating. I think that's you know, that's a close one.
Speaker 4: Ah, that is interesting.
Speaker 2: We'll continue in a moment the thoughtful Peter Kramer and
Speaker 2: will take calls one eight Praguer seven seven six his latest.
Speaker 4: Book on Freud.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Ultimate Issues Hora on the Dennis
Speaker 2: Prager Show, talking about the I think correctly stated by
Speaker 2: the author Peter Kramer, Professor of psychiatry at Brown University,
Speaker 2: the inventor of the modern Mind, and our take on
Speaker 2: Freud on psychiatry on all the insights here in a
Speaker 2: free wheeling discussion. We were just talking about penis envy
Speaker 2: and the silly or non silly notions that Freud had,
Speaker 2: and I was saying that if I were to undergo psychoanalysis,
Speaker 2: I would want a Freudian and that I don't fully
Speaker 2: dismiss that notion, especially in light of my view of
Speaker 2: the feminist movement, which I think exhibited it.
Speaker 4: And you don't agree, and I didn't think you would.
Speaker 2: And then I asked you, though you spoke about women
Speaker 2: in power, and I said, I thought that the average woman,
Speaker 2: not Madeline Albright, but the average woman Dr Kramer today,
Speaker 2: in fact has less power. And the average girl in
Speaker 2: high school and college feels that essentially her greatest power,
Speaker 2: I say, the averag girl, not every girl, is.
Speaker 4: In fact the flaunting of her body.
Speaker 3: Well, let me ask this question. If you could just
Speaker 3: drop down out of the you know, ozone and be
Speaker 3: born at any moment in history as a woman. When
Speaker 3: would that be? Because I think you wouldn't be in
Speaker 3: college for most of history. This is you know, the
Speaker 3: fact that a majority of people in college, I think
Speaker 3: certainly in the selective colleges are are women is absolutely unique.
Speaker 3: There's no moment like that in history. So, uh, you know, lawyers, doctors,
Speaker 3: it's right, well, women have assumed more of the burdens
Speaker 3: of men. But it's but I mean, I don't know
Speaker 3: how you would how you would answer that. But would
Speaker 3: you want to be in the fifties as a housewife
Speaker 3: or or would.
Speaker 2: You want to be you know, Well, the truth is
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's a very fair question, and I
Speaker 2: don't know the answer.
Speaker 3: I agree with the downside, and Freud would have agreed. Also.
Speaker 3: Freud was very interesting. He thought of as being one
Speaker 3: of these sexual liberation people. I think he was very
Speaker 3: aware of sexual repression, but he wasn't entirely against it.
Speaker 3: He thought that sexual repression in Leonardo DaVinci yes great
Speaker 3: art and science, and he was actually worried that he
Speaker 3: would be misunderstood as being in favor of much more
Speaker 3: sexual directors. He actually was very much of his time
Speaker 3: in that regard.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And to answer your question, I do an hour every
Speaker 2: week on my radio show on happiness.
Speaker 4: I wrote a book on it.
Speaker 2: I am very very concerned with that subject. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if the sum total of female happiness today
Speaker 2: is greater than the sum total of female happiness fifty
Speaker 2: years ago. I really when I say I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's not a euphemistic way of saying it isn't.
Speaker 4: I really don't know.
Speaker 2: But I don't know if all of that I have
Speaker 2: Peter Kramer, I talk to women all the time who did,
Speaker 2: in fact go to did go to graduate school, did
Speaker 2: become doctors, did become lawyers, did become business women, And
Speaker 2: we're and bought the whole idea that profession and vocation
Speaker 2: and professional achievement are roads to happiness, and now find
Speaker 2: themselves at thirty eight years of age alone and not
Speaker 2: quite as easy to find a husband as at twenty eight,
Speaker 2: let alone at that twenty two. And they say to me,
Speaker 2: you know, Dennis, I bought the whole feminist bill of goods,
Speaker 2: and I can't say that my happiness level is terribly high.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, they are these scientists who say happiness
Speaker 3: doesn't change much altogether, that it's somehow characteristic that we
Speaker 3: have or don't have at a certain level. You know,
Speaker 3: I think you're capturing what the upside and downside are.
Speaker 3: I think there is less divorce, say in the fifties
Speaker 3: and sixties, but when it happens, it's more catastrophic and
Speaker 3: also harder to get out of abusive marriages, and they're
Speaker 3: more probably more of them or is accepted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was just yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's a mixed The culture is very difficult.
Speaker 3: We certainly do have problems in our culture, and one
Speaker 3: of them is, you know, what happens to the to
Speaker 3: the forty fifty sixty year old woman who's single and
Speaker 3: doesn't want.
Speaker 2: To be Why would somebody go to a psychiatrist in
Speaker 2: your opinion, and not a psychologist.
Speaker 3: Well, I think medication is one of the issues, you know.
Speaker 3: That is to say, these medicines like prozac, zolof you know,
Speaker 3: the other ones you're familiar with, are often very helpful
Speaker 3: in helping people get out of dead ends or past roadblocks,
Speaker 3: and certainly to treat major mental illness. Like you know,
Speaker 3: my prior book before this was called Against Depression, and
Speaker 3: it was about the notion that depression is an entirely
Speaker 3: legitimate disease that affects us throughout the body, and so
Speaker 3: medication is important there. And I think the quality control
Speaker 3: on the training of psychiatrists is that they go through
Speaker 3: medical school, which you know it is fairly stringent. Stringent barrier.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll continue in a moment. Take your calls
Speaker 2: as well. Peter Kramer, his book is on Freud. This
Speaker 2: is the Ultimate Issues Hour. Your challenge is to psychiatry.
Speaker 2: Are welcome to on the Dennis Prager Show.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show, and this is
Speaker 2: the Ultimate Issues Hour. It's forty four minutes past the hour.
Speaker 2: My guest is Peter Kramer. We're talking about the whole
Speaker 2: world of Sigmund Freud and how he changed life and
Speaker 2: he is I think it's a great term inventor of
Speaker 2: the modern mind. And that is the short biography that
Speaker 2: he has in fact written about Freud, and I recommend
Speaker 2: it to you. And it is certainly no hey geography,
Speaker 2: which is a term for biography of the Saints. He
Speaker 2: hardly regards a Freud as a saint. I have a
Speaker 2: challenge I'd like to post to you as a psychiatrist,
Speaker 2: because I am a big defender of psychiatry to many
Speaker 2: of my callers.
Speaker 4: Who have a lot of dubious views of it.
Speaker 2: But I have an increasing worry about the entire psychotherapeutic world.
Speaker 2: And that is two it's there. They're related. One is
Speaker 2: I have met too many people who have who have
Speaker 2: undergone some form of psychotherapy, who have had their victim
Speaker 2: status reinforced. And I believe that they literally come out
Speaker 2: worse from therapy than they went in because they now
Speaker 2: blame their problems on everybody else, and they now have
Speaker 2: confirmation from a doctor that everybody else is responsible for
Speaker 2: their problems. And the other is the whole modus operandi
Speaker 2: of a psychotherapist is the opposite of anybody trying to
Speaker 2: get to the truth. Can you imagine a detective analyzing
Speaker 2: a homicide and only questioning one witness?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Well, I think psychotherapy, you know, is aware of those problems.
Speaker 3: You probably know Paul mcew, the former head of psychiatry
Speaker 3: at Johns Hopkins, who was very critical of this victimization tendency.
Speaker 3: And I think most psychotherapists and by the way, I
Speaker 3: should I said something about psychiatry versus psychology before. I
Speaker 3: have great respect for psychotherapists of all stripes, psychologists, social workers,
Speaker 3: clinical neuros specialists. They're terrific people up and down the line.
Speaker 3: I think most of psychotherapy really is to get people
Speaker 3: back functioning better. And the measure of psychotherapy is that
Speaker 3: you're doing better, not that you feel sorry or for
Speaker 3: yourself or have more people to blame, but you know
Speaker 3: that you're out and about achieving your goals. So I
Speaker 3: think that you know that is is that side of
Speaker 3: the question, and when the second part is the.
Speaker 2: Second part is the modus operandi where you're only interviewing
Speaker 2: one witness to the reality, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's true, and I think that there's a
Speaker 3: reason for it, which is a lot of what goes
Speaker 3: on in psychotherapy has to do with empathy. It has
Speaker 3: to do with not necessarily knowing the external truth, but
Speaker 3: really sitting and seeing the world from the perspective of
Speaker 3: the other person, and that turns out to be powerful
Speaker 3: in ways that sometimes gets people to move off the dime.
Speaker 3: But psychotherapists have thought a lot about this, and there
Speaker 3: certainly are therapies where collateral, you know, people are brought
Speaker 3: in either to be interviewed about what's gone on, or
Speaker 3: where people are sent out sort of in fact finding
Speaker 3: missions in their own lives to interview people and bring
Speaker 3: back the results. And then there are couple therapies and
Speaker 3: family therapies where you hear plenty from other people, and
Speaker 3: group therapies where people get also plenty of back about,
Speaker 3: you know, their characteristic ways of tripping themselves up. So
Speaker 3: there's some variety there, but I think both those criticisms
Speaker 3: also are are valid.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go to some calls. Matt in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: You're on with doctor Peter Kramer and Dennis Prager High.
Speaker 5: Hi, how are you both doing? I just I wanted
Speaker 5: to comment. I thought it was fascinating when I was
Speaker 5: in college learning about freyd that here's someone who I
Speaker 5: absolutely think is disgusting when it comes to his comments
Speaker 5: on society and different atheistic views. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: in an age of increasing materialism, he was this person
Speaker 5: coming up with this new notion that there's this huge
Speaker 5: cauldron of unexplored ideas in a time when people wanted
Speaker 5: to just say, oh, it's just the human animal, it's
Speaker 5: just the mind, there's no spirit. He actually, I think,
Speaker 5: without meaning to, did a better job of describing what
Speaker 5: the Christian world or and even the Jewish world would
Speaker 5: call the spirit and the soul and the mind and
Speaker 5: the battle between the conscience and the and the flesh,
Speaker 5: better than than almost anywhere outside of the Bible.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting, you know, I don't start with your premises,
Speaker 3: but the you know, the notion that people are well
Speaker 3: worth exploring, that you're going to discover a lot of
Speaker 3: complexity that the mind has layers. He certainly brought those
Speaker 3: concepts to the four A lot of what Freud did
Speaker 3: was not truly novel. Their philosophers have gone back and said, look,
Speaker 3: the ego, the in the superrego look a lot like
Speaker 3: categories that Socrates was said to have spoken about having
Speaker 3: to do with reason and desire and you know, social awareness,
Speaker 3: and that what he's doing is really ancient Greek philosophy
Speaker 3: in this modern uh you know, vocabulary. So I think
Speaker 3: he is one of these figures in a tradition, you know,
Speaker 3: in a tradition of Western ways of looking at the self.
Speaker 2: Okay, over to Minneapolis and Thomas. Hi, Thomas, you're all
Speaker 2: with Peter Kramer and Dennis Praeger.
Speaker 3: I'm a I added Christian, and I think that there's
Speaker 3: way more toward what makes a person's mental makeup than.
Speaker 4: The sex drive.
Speaker 3: Mm.
Speaker 4: Well, I think so did Freud.
Speaker 3: And so and by the way, so does modern psychiatry
Speaker 3: and psychology. I think the sex drive is important. There
Speaker 3: seem to be, you know, drives for self preservation, all
Speaker 3: kinds of hungers. And then there's curiosity. I think one
Speaker 3: of the one of the big things that Freud tried
Speaker 3: to eliminate that we very much recognize as sort of
Speaker 3: striving for competence and mastery and understanding, which curiosity, which
Speaker 3: really seems also to be innate in human beings, you know,
Speaker 3: whatever their sexual state.
Speaker 2: Among the patients that you see, why would you say
Speaker 2: the greatest single problem in general is today.
Speaker 3: Well, I've written a lot about depression and minor depression,
Speaker 3: so it's a skewed sample. I see a lot of
Speaker 3: people with mood disorders, and I think some of that
Speaker 3: is related to their circumstances, which can have been quite bad,
Speaker 3: you know, both growing up and currently and some of
Speaker 3: it is probably genetics. So we're looking at you know,
Speaker 3: we're looking at compex puts problems. There are people who
Speaker 3: come in with what you're i think pointing toward, which
Speaker 3: are these more existential problems. I think they're men who
Speaker 3: are very successful in their career and say, but I'm
Speaker 3: not satisfied what really is there in life? And you
Speaker 3: point out women who find limitations in the life, and
Speaker 3: you know you see a fair share of that.
Speaker 2: All right, let me recommend your book again. It is
Speaker 2: Freud in the Eminent Lives series by Harper Collins, Peter Kramer,
Speaker 2: the author, and I look forward to our next meeting.
Speaker 4: Thank you, You're very welcome.
Speaker 2: I'll have some thoughts on this, and I'd like to
Speaker 2: explain to you why I have incorporated Freud into my
Speaker 2: own religious worldview when we come back on the Ultimate
Speaker 2: Issues hour of the Dennis Praeger Show.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: All right, ay, my friends, Dennis Prager here, I like
Speaker 2: to explain to you, in light of this being the
Speaker 2: Ultimate Issues hour and the interview, I just conducted with
Speaker 2: Peter Kramer, the psychiatrist who just wrote this short, fine
Speaker 2: book on Freud. A lot of religious people like myself,
Speaker 2: who are like myself and their religiosity, are surprised at
Speaker 2: my openness to Freud. And I'll tell you in a
Speaker 2: nutshell why I explained it earlier, and I'll develop it
Speaker 2: further now. Freud knocks one of the most destroys. Not knocks,
Speaker 2: he destroys one of the most pernicious myths of the
Speaker 2: secular humanistic age known as the Age of Enlightenment or
Speaker 2: the Age of Reason, and that is that we are
Speaker 2: basically good souls, we are basically good, and that we
Speaker 2: are basically rational. And he shows how naive those views are.
Speaker 2: He did not have a particularly optimistic view of human nature,
Speaker 2: nor do I, nor does the Judeo Christian value system.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons for the need for religion and
Speaker 2: for the need for God is in fact, because we
Speaker 2: are so messy inside, and it gives us a way
Speaker 2: to act independent.
Speaker 4: Of our psychological state.
Speaker 2: You may be morose, and you may be unhappy, and
Speaker 2: you may be embittered, and you may have been wounded
Speaker 2: by a mother or father, a spouse, a child, a brother,
Speaker 2: a sister, or a friend. But you still have to
Speaker 2: act in a certain way. And there still is a
Speaker 2: good God who governs the universe. And so I take
Speaker 2: all of his insights. I just don't end with his insights.
Speaker 2: I take them all, and I realize that religion gives
Speaker 2: me a behavioral way to live. It tells me how
Speaker 2: to live, how to make a good life despite whatever
Speaker 2: goes on in my psyche. It's not a clean place.
Speaker 2: I can make peace with that. I make peace with
Speaker 2: the fact that the human being is filled with a
Speaker 2: lot of if you will, awful thoughts, sinful thoughts, whatever.
Speaker 4: They may be.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, and that is why there is religion
Speaker 2: to help me act in a way that I don't
Speaker 2: live in the world of those of those thoughts. That's
Speaker 2: a great thing, But I'm not going to be one
Speaker 2: of those religious people who live in denial or one
Speaker 2: of those secular people who live in denial about what
Speaker 2: our nature is. And so Freud helped. You just can't
Speaker 2: end with it. He doesn't give you. He doesn't give
Speaker 2: you answers nearly as much as he gives you the
Speaker 2: pathology that make up the human being. Dennis Prager here
Speaker 2: tomorrow night. I speak in in your Belinda, California and
Speaker 2: Orange County, California. It's on the Prager Radio dot com
Speaker 2: or call seven one four six nine three oh seven
Speaker 2: seven O seven one four six nine three oh seven
Speaker 2: seven O tomorrow night, Orange County. Thanks for listening, my friends.
Speaker 2: I'm Dennis Prager.
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