Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bogebam here. History has not been kind
Speaker 1: to Sigmund Freud. Were once believed to be among the
Speaker 1: greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. But if Old Sigmund
Speaker 1: were somehow around today, it's unlikely he died. Everyone in
Speaker 1: the room would probably be trying to act as if
Speaker 1: he wasn't there, treating him like that crazy old uncle,
Speaker 1: rolling their eyes at his embarrassingly politically incorrect insistences. Sigmund Freud,
Speaker 1: the father of psychoanalysis, the man who introduced us to
Speaker 1: the id, the ego, and the super ego, and who
Speaker 1: offered up ideas like repression and defense mechanisms and penis
Speaker 1: envy and the Oedipus complex, is not the towering figure
Speaker 1: he once was. Still, as much as some might try,
Speaker 1: we can't seem to shake entirely clear of him or
Speaker 1: his ideas. Let's start with the Oedipus Complex, one of
Speaker 1: Freud's most well known theories. Remember the story of Oedipus
Speaker 1: from Greek mythology. Abandoned at birth, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy
Speaker 1: by unknowingly killing his real father, a king and marrying
Speaker 1: the king's widow, Oedipus's mother. Oedipus then fathered four children
Speaker 1: with her. After finding out what was what, Mom hung herself.
Speaker 1: Oedipus gouged his eyes out, and it was a legit
Speaker 1: Greek tragedy. Freud's Edible complex plays off of that. His
Speaker 1: theory goes that there's a totally normal stage of development
Speaker 1: between the ages of three and six years, during which
Speaker 1: children experience unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the
Speaker 1: opposite sex and simultaneous jealousy for and rivalry with their
Speaker 1: parents of the same sex, along with couches in a
Speaker 1: doctor's office. These symbolism that lies in dreams and the
Speaker 1: power of the unconscious. The Oedipus complex is one of
Speaker 1: Freud's main contributions to the field, the theory that little
Speaker 1: boys want their mothers and hate their fathers, and that
Speaker 1: little girls desire their dads and despise their moms. It's
Speaker 1: a theory with all sorts of psycho sexual correlates that
Speaker 1: is widely discounted these days because simply it has no
Speaker 1: scientific basis. In fact, Freud was in effect just theorizing,
Speaker 1: throwing things out there, and today that's not nearly enough.
Speaker 1: We spoke with psychiatrist Joel Paris, a professor at McGill
Speaker 1: University in Montreal and a research associate in the Department
Speaker 1: of Psychiatry at Jewish General Hospital there. He said, I
Speaker 1: just think that people quietly buried it and stopped talking
Speaker 1: about it. If you speak to an intelligent psychoanalyst, they'd
Speaker 1: say that isn't really the main thing. We don't believe
Speaker 1: that anymore as fields like neuroscience have grown in importance,
Speaker 1: as scientists have concocted ways to look more closely at
Speaker 1: the brain and how it works, the Oedipus complex and
Speaker 1: many of Freud's other theories just haven't held up. Paris said,
Speaker 1: I wrote a short book looking at what the evidence
Speaker 1: actually shows, both in theory and in practice. There are
Speaker 1: some things that should be kept and that are supported
Speaker 1: by evidence, but there's a lot that shouldn't be. In particular,
Speaker 1: psychoanalysis as a therapy doesn't have the support except in
Speaker 1: a very brief form where you see people maybe for
Speaker 1: a few months, and that's called brief psychodynamic therapy that
Speaker 1: has scientific evidence for it. Early in twenty nineteen, the
Speaker 1: book pairs mentioned and evidence based critique of contemporary psychoanalysis research, theory,
Speaker 1: and clinical practice was published. In it, he calls for
Speaker 1: psychoanalysis to tie itself more closely to a scientific and
Speaker 1: clinical base. The field's very existence, he argues, depends upon it.
Speaker 1: He wrote in a paper on the subject, quote, psychoanalysis
Speaker 1: claimed to be a science, but did not function like one.
Speaker 1: It failed to operationalize its hypotheses, to test them with
Speaker 1: empirical methods, or to remove constructs that failed to gain
Speaker 1: scientific support. The field may only survive if it's prepared
Speaker 1: to dismantle its structure as a separate discipline and rejoin
Speaker 1: academia and clinical science. And this isn't a new point
Speaker 1: of view. Frederick Cruz, one of the world's foremost freud critics,
Speaker 1: wrote more than twenty years ago, independent studies have begun
Speaker 1: to converge toward a verdict that was once considered a
Speaker 1: sign of extremism or even neurosis, that there is literally
Speaker 1: nothing to be said scientifically or therapeutically to the advantage
Speaker 1: of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas.
Speaker 1: Hoof analyze that another of Freud's ideas was that every
Speaker 1: memory we have is stored in our minds, but that
Speaker 1: some are repressed because of childhood trauma or other reasons.
Speaker 1: Those repressed memories, he said, could only be mined through psychoanalysis.
Speaker 1: That premise has also taken a beating as science has
Speaker 1: discovered more about the intricacies and capabilities of the brain. Still,
Speaker 1: even time can't take away the fact that Freud was
Speaker 1: inarguably one of the most famous thinkers of his era
Speaker 1: and has remained somewhat influential far beyond it even today.
Speaker 1: A few of Freud's ideas survive, and in some instances
Speaker 1: may be better than what's offered by modern science. Paris said,
Speaker 1: a lot of people in my profession today just write prescriptions.
Speaker 1: That's all they do all day, and I think they
Speaker 1: do patients a great disservice because they don't know how
Speaker 1: to listen to them or understand their life stories. I
Speaker 1: think the problem with Freud was he had been trained
Speaker 1: as a neuroscientist in the late nineteenth century, but there
Speaker 1: were no tools to apply scientific methods to what he
Speaker 1: was doing, so he just speculated. He actually thought that
Speaker 1: you could sort of X ray people's minds by having
Speaker 1: them lie on a couch and free associate. It's not true,
Speaker 1: but I think that the whole idea of understanding people's
Speaker 1: life story is something we should not get rid of.
Speaker 1: We need to listen to people. Let's not take all
Speaker 1: of the psychology out of psychiatry, but let's try to
Speaker 1: stick to theories where the science is really good. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler clayg.
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