1
00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:06,600
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey

2
00:00:06,680 --> 00:00:11,200
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bogebam here. History has not been kind

3
00:00:11,280 --> 00:00:13,640
Speaker 1: to Sigmund Freud. Were once believed to be among the

4
00:00:13,680 --> 00:00:16,840
Speaker 1: greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. But if Old Sigmund

5
00:00:16,840 --> 00:00:21,720
Speaker 1: were somehow around today, it's unlikely he died. Everyone in

6
00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:23,720
Speaker 1: the room would probably be trying to act as if

7
00:00:23,720 --> 00:00:26,440
Speaker 1: he wasn't there, treating him like that crazy old uncle,

8
00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:32,120
Speaker 1: rolling their eyes at his embarrassingly politically incorrect insistences. Sigmund Freud,

9
00:00:32,200 --> 00:00:35,320
Speaker 1: the father of psychoanalysis, the man who introduced us to

10
00:00:35,360 --> 00:00:37,599
Speaker 1: the id, the ego, and the super ego, and who

11
00:00:37,640 --> 00:00:41,400
Speaker 1: offered up ideas like repression and defense mechanisms and penis

12
00:00:41,479 --> 00:00:44,760
Speaker 1: envy and the Oedipus complex, is not the towering figure

13
00:00:44,800 --> 00:00:48,600
Speaker 1: he once was. Still, as much as some might try,

14
00:00:48,760 --> 00:00:51,519
Speaker 1: we can't seem to shake entirely clear of him or

15
00:00:51,560 --> 00:00:55,160
Speaker 1: his ideas. Let's start with the Oedipus Complex, one of

16
00:00:55,200 --> 00:00:58,760
Speaker 1: Freud's most well known theories. Remember the story of Oedipus

17
00:00:58,840 --> 00:01:02,880
Speaker 1: from Greek mythology. Abandoned at birth, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy

18
00:01:02,960 --> 00:01:06,560
Speaker 1: by unknowingly killing his real father, a king and marrying

19
00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:11,000
Speaker 1: the king's widow, Oedipus's mother. Oedipus then fathered four children

20
00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:14,679
Speaker 1: with her. After finding out what was what, Mom hung herself.

21
00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:17,360
Speaker 1: Oedipus gouged his eyes out, and it was a legit

22
00:01:17,440 --> 00:01:22,600
Speaker 1: Greek tragedy. Freud's Edible complex plays off of that. His

23
00:01:22,720 --> 00:01:25,520
Speaker 1: theory goes that there's a totally normal stage of development

24
00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:28,480
Speaker 1: between the ages of three and six years, during which

25
00:01:28,560 --> 00:01:32,360
Speaker 1: children experience unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the

26
00:01:32,400 --> 00:01:36,360
Speaker 1: opposite sex and simultaneous jealousy for and rivalry with their

27
00:01:36,440 --> 00:01:39,959
Speaker 1: parents of the same sex, along with couches in a

28
00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:42,959
Speaker 1: doctor's office. These symbolism that lies in dreams and the

29
00:01:43,040 --> 00:01:46,040
Speaker 1: power of the unconscious. The Oedipus complex is one of

30
00:01:46,080 --> 00:01:50,000
Speaker 1: Freud's main contributions to the field, the theory that little

31
00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:52,120
Speaker 1: boys want their mothers and hate their fathers, and that

32
00:01:52,240 --> 00:01:56,840
Speaker 1: little girls desire their dads and despise their moms. It's

33
00:01:56,880 --> 00:01:59,640
Speaker 1: a theory with all sorts of psycho sexual correlates that

34
00:01:59,760 --> 00:02:03,640
Speaker 1: is widely discounted these days because simply it has no

35
00:02:03,760 --> 00:02:07,960
Speaker 1: scientific basis. In fact, Freud was in effect just theorizing,

36
00:02:08,320 --> 00:02:11,640
Speaker 1: throwing things out there, and today that's not nearly enough.

37
00:02:13,080 --> 00:02:16,320
Speaker 1: We spoke with psychiatrist Joel Paris, a professor at McGill

38
00:02:16,400 --> 00:02:19,040
Speaker 1: University in Montreal and a research associate in the Department

39
00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:23,280
Speaker 1: of Psychiatry at Jewish General Hospital there. He said, I

40
00:02:23,400 --> 00:02:26,280
Speaker 1: just think that people quietly buried it and stopped talking

41
00:02:26,320 --> 00:02:29,600
Speaker 1: about it. If you speak to an intelligent psychoanalyst, they'd

42
00:02:29,600 --> 00:02:32,720
Speaker 1: say that isn't really the main thing. We don't believe

43
00:02:32,760 --> 00:02:37,400
Speaker 1: that anymore as fields like neuroscience have grown in importance,

44
00:02:37,520 --> 00:02:40,400
Speaker 1: as scientists have concocted ways to look more closely at

45
00:02:40,400 --> 00:02:43,160
Speaker 1: the brain and how it works, the Oedipus complex and

46
00:02:43,200 --> 00:02:47,160
Speaker 1: many of Freud's other theories just haven't held up. Paris said,

47
00:02:47,560 --> 00:02:49,600
Speaker 1: I wrote a short book looking at what the evidence

48
00:02:49,639 --> 00:02:53,200
Speaker 1: actually shows, both in theory and in practice. There are

49
00:02:53,240 --> 00:02:55,359
Speaker 1: some things that should be kept and that are supported

50
00:02:55,360 --> 00:02:58,760
Speaker 1: by evidence, but there's a lot that shouldn't be. In particular,

51
00:02:58,840 --> 00:03:02,200
Speaker 1: psychoanalysis as a therapy doesn't have the support except in

52
00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:04,600
Speaker 1: a very brief form where you see people maybe for

53
00:03:04,639 --> 00:03:09,000
Speaker 1: a few months, and that's called brief psychodynamic therapy that

54
00:03:09,080 --> 00:03:13,519
Speaker 1: has scientific evidence for it. Early in twenty nineteen, the

55
00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:18,480
Speaker 1: book pairs mentioned and evidence based critique of contemporary psychoanalysis research, theory,

56
00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:22,320
Speaker 1: and clinical practice was published. In it, he calls for

57
00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:25,840
Speaker 1: psychoanalysis to tie itself more closely to a scientific and

58
00:03:25,919 --> 00:03:29,920
Speaker 1: clinical base. The field's very existence, he argues, depends upon it.

59
00:03:31,280 --> 00:03:35,520
Speaker 1: He wrote in a paper on the subject, quote, psychoanalysis

60
00:03:35,520 --> 00:03:38,040
Speaker 1: claimed to be a science, but did not function like one.

61
00:03:38,520 --> 00:03:41,880
Speaker 1: It failed to operationalize its hypotheses, to test them with

62
00:03:41,920 --> 00:03:45,200
Speaker 1: empirical methods, or to remove constructs that failed to gain

63
00:03:45,280 --> 00:03:48,800
Speaker 1: scientific support. The field may only survive if it's prepared

64
00:03:48,840 --> 00:03:52,160
Speaker 1: to dismantle its structure as a separate discipline and rejoin

65
00:03:52,200 --> 00:03:57,680
Speaker 1: academia and clinical science. And this isn't a new point

66
00:03:57,680 --> 00:04:01,640
Speaker 1: of view. Frederick Cruz, one of the world's foremost freud critics,

67
00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:05,400
Speaker 1: wrote more than twenty years ago, independent studies have begun

68
00:04:05,440 --> 00:04:07,960
Speaker 1: to converge toward a verdict that was once considered a

69
00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:11,440
Speaker 1: sign of extremism or even neurosis, that there is literally

70
00:04:11,600 --> 00:04:15,680
Speaker 1: nothing to be said scientifically or therapeutically to the advantage

71
00:04:15,680 --> 00:04:19,520
Speaker 1: of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas.

72
00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:25,200
Speaker 1: Hoof analyze that another of Freud's ideas was that every

73
00:04:25,240 --> 00:04:27,440
Speaker 1: memory we have is stored in our minds, but that

74
00:04:27,520 --> 00:04:30,760
Speaker 1: some are repressed because of childhood trauma or other reasons.

75
00:04:31,279 --> 00:04:35,120
Speaker 1: Those repressed memories, he said, could only be mined through psychoanalysis.

76
00:04:35,839 --> 00:04:38,400
Speaker 1: That premise has also taken a beating as science has

77
00:04:38,400 --> 00:04:43,680
Speaker 1: discovered more about the intricacies and capabilities of the brain. Still,

78
00:04:43,839 --> 00:04:46,800
Speaker 1: even time can't take away the fact that Freud was

79
00:04:46,960 --> 00:04:49,920
Speaker 1: inarguably one of the most famous thinkers of his era

80
00:04:50,320 --> 00:04:54,279
Speaker 1: and has remained somewhat influential far beyond it even today.

81
00:04:54,360 --> 00:04:57,480
Speaker 1: A few of Freud's ideas survive, and in some instances

82
00:04:57,920 --> 00:05:02,160
Speaker 1: may be better than what's offered by modern science. Paris said,

83
00:05:02,680 --> 00:05:05,760
Speaker 1: a lot of people in my profession today just write prescriptions.

84
00:05:05,800 --> 00:05:08,200
Speaker 1: That's all they do all day, and I think they

85
00:05:08,240 --> 00:05:10,720
Speaker 1: do patients a great disservice because they don't know how

86
00:05:10,720 --> 00:05:13,960
Speaker 1: to listen to them or understand their life stories. I

87
00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:16,360
Speaker 1: think the problem with Freud was he had been trained

88
00:05:16,400 --> 00:05:19,360
Speaker 1: as a neuroscientist in the late nineteenth century, but there

89
00:05:19,360 --> 00:05:21,800
Speaker 1: were no tools to apply scientific methods to what he

90
00:05:21,880 --> 00:05:25,359
Speaker 1: was doing, so he just speculated. He actually thought that

91
00:05:25,400 --> 00:05:28,000
Speaker 1: you could sort of X ray people's minds by having

92
00:05:28,040 --> 00:05:31,159
Speaker 1: them lie on a couch and free associate. It's not true,

93
00:05:32,200 --> 00:05:35,000
Speaker 1: but I think that the whole idea of understanding people's

94
00:05:35,040 --> 00:05:37,520
Speaker 1: life story is something we should not get rid of.

95
00:05:37,960 --> 00:05:40,520
Speaker 1: We need to listen to people. Let's not take all

96
00:05:40,520 --> 00:05:43,479
Speaker 1: of the psychology out of psychiatry, but let's try to

97
00:05:43,520 --> 00:05:51,520
Speaker 1: stick to theories where the science is really good. Today's

98
00:05:51,560 --> 00:05:54,240
Speaker 1: episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler clayg.

99
00:05:54,680 --> 00:05:56,600
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios. How

100
00:05:56,600 --> 00:05:58,720
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. From more in this and lots of other

101
00:05:58,760 --> 00:06:00,760
Speaker 1: topics that may or may not have anything to do

102
00:06:00,800 --> 00:06:04,040
Speaker 1: with your mother, visit our home planet has Stuffworks dot com,

103
00:06:04,080 --> 00:06:06,400
Speaker 1: and for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the

104
00:06:06,400 --> 00:06:09,080
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

105
00:06:09,120 --> 00:06:10,040
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.