WEBVTT - Does Sigmund Freud Still Matter? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.600 Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:11.200 brain Stuff, Lauren bogebam here. History has not been kind 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:13.640 to Sigmund Freud. Were once believed to be among the 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.840 greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. But if Old Sigmund 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:21.720 were somehow around today, it's unlikely he died. Everyone in 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:23.720 the room would probably be trying to act as if 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:26.440 he wasn't there, treating him like that crazy old uncle, 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:32.120 rolling their eyes at his embarrassingly politically incorrect insistences. Sigmund Freud, 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.320 the father of psychoanalysis, the man who introduced us to 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:37.599 the id, the ego, and the super ego, and who 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:41.400 offered up ideas like repression and defense mechanisms and penis 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:44.760 envy and the Oedipus complex, is not the towering figure 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.600 he once was. Still, as much as some might try, 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:51.519 we can't seem to shake entirely clear of him or 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:55.160 his ideas. Let's start with the Oedipus Complex, one of 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:58.760 Freud's most well known theories. Remember the story of Oedipus 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.880 from Greek mythology. Abandoned at birth, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:06.560 by unknowingly killing his real father, a king and marrying 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:11.000 the king's widow, Oedipus's mother. Oedipus then fathered four children 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:14.679 with her. After finding out what was what, Mom hung herself. 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:17.360 Oedipus gouged his eyes out, and it was a legit 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:22.600 Greek tragedy. Freud's Edible complex plays off of that. His 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:25.520 theory goes that there's a totally normal stage of development 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:28.480 between the ages of three and six years, during which 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:32.360 children experience unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:36.360 opposite sex and simultaneous jealousy for and rivalry with their 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:39.959 parents of the same sex, along with couches in a 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:42.959 doctor's office. These symbolism that lies in dreams and the 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.040 power of the unconscious. The Oedipus complex is one of 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:50.000 Freud's main contributions to the field, the theory that little 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.120 boys want their mothers and hate their fathers, and that 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:56.840 little girls desire their dads and despise their moms. It's 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.640 a theory with all sorts of psycho sexual correlates that 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:03.640 is widely discounted these days because simply it has no 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:07.960 scientific basis. In fact, Freud was in effect just theorizing, 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:11.640 throwing things out there, and today that's not nearly enough. 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.320 We spoke with psychiatrist Joel Paris, a professor at McGill 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:19.040 University in Montreal and a research associate in the Department 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:23.280 of Psychiatry at Jewish General Hospital there. He said, I 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:26.280 just think that people quietly buried it and stopped talking 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:29.600 about it. If you speak to an intelligent psychoanalyst, they'd 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:32.720 say that isn't really the main thing. We don't believe 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:37.400 that anymore as fields like neuroscience have grown in importance, 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:40.400 as scientists have concocted ways to look more closely at 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:43.160 the brain and how it works, the Oedipus complex and 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:47.160 many of Freud's other theories just haven't held up. Paris said, 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:49.600 I wrote a short book looking at what the evidence 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:53.200 actually shows, both in theory and in practice. There are 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:55.359 some things that should be kept and that are supported 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:58.760 by evidence, but there's a lot that shouldn't be. In particular, 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:02.200 psychoanalysis as a therapy doesn't have the support except in 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:04.600 a very brief form where you see people maybe for 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:09.000 a few months, and that's called brief psychodynamic therapy that 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:13.519 has scientific evidence for it. Early in twenty nineteen, the 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:18.480 book pairs mentioned and evidence based critique of contemporary psychoanalysis research, theory, 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.320 and clinical practice was published. In it, he calls for 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:25.840 psychoanalysis to tie itself more closely to a scientific and 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.920 clinical base. The field's very existence, he argues, depends upon it. 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:35.520 He wrote in a paper on the subject, quote, psychoanalysis 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:38.040 claimed to be a science, but did not function like one. 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.880 It failed to operationalize its hypotheses, to test them with 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:45.200 empirical methods, or to remove constructs that failed to gain 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.800 scientific support. The field may only survive if it's prepared 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:52.160 to dismantle its structure as a separate discipline and rejoin 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:57.680 academia and clinical science. And this isn't a new point 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:01.640 of view. Frederick Cruz, one of the world's foremost freud critics, 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:05.400 wrote more than twenty years ago, independent studies have begun 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:07.960 to converge toward a verdict that was once considered a 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:11.440 sign of extremism or even neurosis, that there is literally 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:15.680 nothing to be said scientifically or therapeutically to the advantage 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:19.520 of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas. 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:25.200 Hoof analyze that another of Freud's ideas was that every 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:27.440 memory we have is stored in our minds, but that 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.760 some are repressed because of childhood trauma or other reasons. 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:35.120 Those repressed memories, he said, could only be mined through psychoanalysis. 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.400 That premise has also taken a beating as science has 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:43.680 discovered more about the intricacies and capabilities of the brain. Still, 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:46.800 even time can't take away the fact that Freud was 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:49.920 inarguably one of the most famous thinkers of his era 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:54.279 and has remained somewhat influential far beyond it even today. 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:57.480 A few of Freud's ideas survive, and in some instances 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:02.160 may be better than what's offered by modern science. Paris said, 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.760 a lot of people in my profession today just write prescriptions. 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:08.200 That's all they do all day, and I think they 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:10.720 do patients a great disservice because they don't know how 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:13.960 to listen to them or understand their life stories. I 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:16.360 think the problem with Freud was he had been trained 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:19.360 as a neuroscientist in the late nineteenth century, but there 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:21.800 were no tools to apply scientific methods to what he 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.359 was doing, so he just speculated. He actually thought that 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:28.000 you could sort of X ray people's minds by having 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.159 them lie on a couch and free associate. It's not true, 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.000 but I think that the whole idea of understanding people's 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:37.520 life story is something we should not get rid of. 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:40.520 We need to listen to people. Let's not take all 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.479 of the psychology out of psychiatry, but let's try to 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:51.520 stick to theories where the science is really good. Today's 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:54.240 episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler clayg. 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:56.600 Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios. How 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:58.720 Stuff Works. From more in this and lots of other 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:00.760 topics that may or may not have anything to do 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:04.040 with your mother, visit our home planet has Stuffworks dot com, 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.400 and for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:09.080 I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:10.040 to your favorite shows.