SIGMUND FREUD UNDER ANALYSIS - NOVA - Discovery/History/Psychology (documentary)

[Narrator:] Sigmund Freud revolutionized our thinking about the human mind.

But who was this man?

And how do his theories hold up today?

[Professor Peter Gray:] Freud really believed that he had come upon

certain insights about the way the mind works

that he regarded as remarkable

and quite original.

[Dr. Francis Crick:] Mind you, he did have many insights,

but if you ask in straight scientific terms,

I'd be very surprised if much of it survives.

[Narrator:] Tonight on NOVA: Freud Under Analysis.

Major funding for NOVA is provided by this station

and other public television stations nationwide.

Additional funding was provided by

the Johnson and Johnson family of companies,

supplying health-care products worldwide.

And by Allied Signal, a technology leader

in aerospace, electronics, automotive products,

and engineered materials.

[Music]

[Narrator:] Sigmund Freud is heralded as one of the great thinkers

of the 20th century, famous for his ideas

on dreams, childhood sexuality, and the role of the unconscious.

Freud saw himself as a scientist

who had discovered a method of understanding

the mysteries of the mind,

which he called psychoanalysis.

But how scientific is psychoanalysis?

And how well do Freud's ideas stand up to

our modern understanding of the mind?

Freud revolutionized the way we think about ourselves,

but today there is a widening gap between the popular

and the scientific views of Freud.

[Peter Gray:] We live, clearly, in a Freudian

world, and it is quite unthinkable

to envision the world without his language,

without his ideas, however well or ill

they are expressed.

[Dr. Francis Crick:] There's no doubt that his ideas

appeal to the imagination of the time,

partly because they are revolutionary

and partly because they seem to fit in to

the general way of thinking.

And so they have a very large cultural impact,

and yet the probability is, they won't be correct.

[Narrator:] The Freudian Revolution began

here in Vienna. These films, taken in the late 1920s

show Freud's followers. They came from all over

the world to the city that was known as

the center of psychoanalysis.

Some were physicians like Freud, others were

intellectuals drawn to Vienna by the excitement

of being part of a new movement.

But most came to learn Freud's radical

new form of treatment.

They entered his famous consulting rooms

at Bergasse 19, in the hopes of undergoing

a training analysis with the master himself.

When these films were taken, Freud was in his 70s.

His daughter Anna, herself an analyst,

was a constant companion.

Psychoanalysis was Freud's passion.

During the day he saw patients,

at night he spent hours reading or writing.

He was tireless in his devotion to what he called

his new science.

His ideas were so powerful, so potent,

that they have dramatically influenced

almost every discipline, including literature,

art, and medicine.

But the Freudian legacy is a complicated one.

Although he wanted psychoanalysis to stand

on its own as a science, it is known today

mainly as a form of therapy.

As a young doctor in the 1930s, Joseph Wortis

traveled to Vienna to undergo a training

analysis with Freud.

Now a psychiatrist at the State University of New York,

Dr. Wortis describes his first session:

[Dr. Wortis:] I was rather surprised at his

physical appearance; he was then well into

his 70s and he was extremely small and frail,

and at the same time, quite energetic.

He spoke in a vigorous sort of professorial style,

clipping his syllables, and he was direct and to the point.

He said he would be glad to take me on,

he stated his fee, which would be

the equivalent of twenty dollars an hour,

which seems very little nowadays, but in those

days in Vienna, it was a substantial fee,

and he said my responsibilities would be

simply to expose my thoughts, my feelings,

to be candid, to discuss my dreams, and he

did not set a specific goal. I think his assumption

was that in time, material would turn up,

which he would interpret or, as he would say,

bring to consciousness, and that's how

the analytic process would unfold.

I would come in and say, "Herr Professor,

I had some really good dreams last night,"

and he would say, "Fine, let's talk about them."

And he would approach them with a real interest

and zest, and if I was able to pitch in with

some interpretations that he liked,

he would say, "This was a very good session."

On the other hand, if I was skeptical

and resistant, he would show his disappointment

and sometimes his irritation, in no uncertain way.

And he would say "You have no right to be skeptical."

He said, "First you should learn about analysis."

[Narrator:] When the Freud Museum opened

in London in the summer of 1986, many of Freud's

followers, those who did learn about the analysis,

gathered to pay tribute.

Among them was an historian from Yale University,

Professor Peter Gay, the author of a new biography

of Freud.

The museum is in the house

where Freud lived the last year of his life,

after having fled Vienna during the Nazi occupation.

He brought with him many of his prized possessions:

His writing desk, his collection of antiquities,

and the famous couch.

Professor Peter Gay:

[Peter Gay:] As you look around his study,

and above all, his consulting room,

you can see he had really two passions,

and they blended into one.

One was psychology, he said, "I have

a tyrant psychology," and he welcomed

that tyrant. And the other was, of course,

collecting antiquities, which he collected

avidly, as soon as he could afford them,

which was from the late 1880s on.

Freud said, "These are characteristic

of what I do. I too am an archeologist.

I like to dig, and what I dig at, of course,

and dig into, is the human mind."

And that metaphor of digging as

an archeologist, whether it is finding

those treasures or digging into ancient Rome,

as he says in one of his books, does bring this together.

And his own sense was, this collecting took

him back to a kind of childhood of humanity,

as he once said. And this is, of course,

very close to the work that he was doing when

he sat in his chair analyzing patients,

going back to their childhood as well.

[Narrator:] Vienna at the turn of the century

was a city of contradictions.

It was dominated by the Victorian ethic

of strict morality, at the same time it was

also a city excited by new ideas coming from

a vibrant, artistic, and intellectual community.

But Freud's Vienna, was a world of science

and medicine.

[Peter Gay:] His friends were doctors,

his education - his medical education -

was crucial for him, much more important

than I think it might be for any ordinary

physician, because he absorbed with it,

not merely medical knowledge, of which he

had a great deal and which he used as

a psychologist, rather than as a doctor,

but also a philosophy - a view of the world,

a completely secular, materialistic view -

into which he fitted his psychology.

[Narrator:] Freud distinguished himself

academically at a very young age.

He was a prolific writer and avid reader

in the arts, humanities, and sciences.

He attended the University of Vienna

to study medicine, one of the few professions

with opportunities for a young, Jewish man.

Freud was schooled in the scientific methods

of the 19th century laboratory, which stressed

the importance of experimentation, observation,

and measurement.

He became an expert in neurology.

These drawings illustrate his interest in

the brain and nervous system.

His experiments with nerve cells lead him

to invent a new method of dyeing tissue samples

for study.

Freud also experimented with cocaine.

He used it himself for at least 10 years.

He was enthusiastic about its therapeutic properties

and speculated on its potential as an anesthetic

for the eye, publishing several papers,

including "On Cocaine".

During these years, he was greatly influenced

by his university professors, especially

Enst von Brucke, an adherent

of the Helmholtz School of Thought,

scientists who believed that everything

was reducible to chemical and physical forces.

In the scientific mind of the 19th century,

all phenomena could be logically understood.

But Freud, now 30 years old and engaged

to be married, was warned by his teachers

that he would never make enough money as a researcher.

They encouraged him to work with patients,

and open a private practice.

For several years, Freud worked

in psychiatric hospitals and clinics.

As his practice grew, he became interested

in hysteria, a nervous disorder in which patients

experience physical symptoms, but have

no underlying physical disease.

He began using a new, controversial technique,

hypnosis. Discouraged with the results, however,

he turned to his colleague and close friend,

Joseph Breuer, for advise.

As Freud later described, it was

from these conversations that

psychoanalysis began to take form.

[Peter Gay:] For sometime, when he was asked

who was the founder of psychoanalysis,

he would not say, "I am the founder,"

but rather he would use his friend and collaborator,

and somewhat older Viennese physician,

Joseph Breuer, because Breuer had told him

the story of one of his - of Breuer's patients.

The story of a young, intelligent, well-educated

woman who develops all kinds of bizarre

psychological symptoms. She forgets her German,

for example. She finds herself unable to drink

water out of a glass. She has long lapses

of attention, which appear to be hysterical

in some sense, and of course that is how later

it will be called: A very complicated case of hysteria.

Now Breuer, more or less by accident,

comes upon the way of dealing with

and disposing of these symptoms.

He does so by asking her, or she in a way

suggests this to him (and her share

in the cure is very important) that that

should all be talked out. That she should see

if she could remember what this reminded

her of. This becomes, then, the famous

talking cure.

[Narrator:] At first Freud talked to his patients

while they were in a hypnotic state.

He believed hysterical symptoms

were related to painful events from childhood.

He thought that if his patients could remember

and talk about the first time they experienced

their symptoms, they would be relieved of their suffering.

Gradually, he abandoned his use of hypnosis.

In one of his most well-known cases,

Fraulein Elizabeth von R,

Freud wrote about the method he used

to help patients recall their earliest memories:

"I made her lie down and keep her eyes shut.

Throughout the analysis, I made use of

the technique of bringing out pictures

and ideas by means of pressing

on the patient's head. When I pressed her head,

she would maintain that nothing occurred to her.

I would repeat my pressure, but still nothing appeared.

Perhaps, I said, she had not been sufficiently attentive,

or perhaps her idea was not the right one.

This, I told her, was not her affair.

She was under an obligation to remain

completely objective and say whatever

came into her head, whether

it was appropriate or not.

Freud began working with a technique

he called "Free Association",

encouraging his patients to talk freely

without interruption or suggestion.

[Peter Gay:] Freud was a famous observer

and a fine listener. Listening became for him

the crucial art; it was not just something

passive, like not talking.

It was a kind of not talking that was

in some very important way, productive,

and meant the storing-up in the mind

of relevant material that could then

be used later and brought to bear

when the time was right.

This was a matter of tact.

So there's a good deal of art

to psychoanalysis, as he saw it.

And above all, beyond the art,

he always himself certainly believed,

and I'm willing, by the way, to go

along with him on this,

that he was really a scientist,

a scientist of the mind.

And he was working towards

and understanding how people work,

not just how his patients work.

[Narrator:] In 1895, Breuer and Freud

published their findings in studies on hysteria.

Freud detailed the case histories

of six patients, and outlined for the first time,

the techniques that would become

the foundation of psychoanalysis.

These included Free Association and Transference,

the process in which a patient

transfers feelings from previous relationships

onto the relationship with the analyst.

But within a year, Freud announced

another major discovery: His seduction theory.

He claimed that hysteria was caused by

sexual abuses or seductions

that took place in childhood.

He based this new theory

on the testimony of his patients.

[Peter Gay:] Freud was essentially

treating his patients, trying to do two things,

which were separate, but he hoped

not incompatible. On the one hand

he was trying to cure, or at least reduce

the strain of the neurotic problems

with which they had come.

It was simply in that sense a therapy,

like others, but he thought better than others.

And secondly, he was using his patients

as guinea pigs; that is to say, they were

part of the laboratory.

I think of his consulting room

as his one and only laboratory.

[Narrator:] The seduction theory was not

well-received by Freud's medical

and academic colleagues.

They rejected his conclusions;

even Breuer broke with him.

Freud retreated into a period

of intellectual isolation.

During that time, he shared his ideas

mainly with one person, a friend

and colleague, Wilhelm Fleiss.

Fleiss was a physician in Berlin.

During the 15-year period of their friendship,

they corresponded almost weekly,

sharing personal and professional ambitions.

Freud confided to Fleiss that he had a grand vision:

To create a universal theory of the mind

from his understanding of abnormal behavior.

He wrote to Fleiss his project

for a scientific psychology.

Frank Sulloway is an historian of science

at Harvard University. He believes

that the project shows how important

Freud's scientific aspirations were

in formulating his theories.

[Frank Sulloway:] The project was

Freud's tremendously ambitious attempt

to reduce the workings of the mind

to basic notions of natural science.

And in Freud's day, this included

a reliance upon the Neuron Theory,

which was just emerging,

and the notion that explained mental activity

by explanations involving movements of energy

between neurons within the brain,

or between various cellular elements.

And Freud concocted -

and I think you have to use the word "concocted" -

the most incredibly, ingenious and imaginitive

scheme for explaining virtually

every kind of mental activity,

from thought to judgment to problems dear

to his heart in psychopathology,

such as repression and various forms

of neurosis, hysterical attacks.

[Narrator:] Freud soon abandoned the project,

but the movement of energy through the body

and the mind, especially sexual energy,

remained a key Freudian motif.

[Frank Sulloway:] It's very important

to appreciate why Freud

was so fanatical about sex

as a cause of neurosis.

Why did he pick sex?
He could have picked lots of things.

It's not just the repression

that, let's say sex was undergoing,

in the Victorian period.

Sex was much more important to Freud;
sex was a biochemical phenomenon,

it was a physiological phenomenon.

And somebody who was looking for

a theory of the mind

that can be based upon a natural science foundation,

sex is crucial. It provides what Freud once called

"the indispensable organic foundation,

which much underlie all forms of disease."

So, for Freud, sex was a plausible natural science

form of pathology, and it takes on its importance

in Freudian theory, precisely because of that link

to biology and to natural science.

[Narrator:] The Freud-Fleiss correspondence

indicates that sexuality did become the central

concept in Freud's thinking.

But one critic, Jeffrey Masson,

who translated the letters,

believes they also reveal Freud's willingness

to explore with Fleiss
some extreme sexual notions.

[Jeffrey Masson:] What's so fascinated me

in reading the letters was the degree

of Freud's involvement with Fleiss.

In the beginning they seem to have found

one another in this vast scientific desert;

two men who could think the same way,

could think alike.

Fleiss developed a series of rather strange,

even bizarre notions, about the relationship

between the female genitalia and the nose,

what he called the nasal reflex neurosis.

Mainly the things that happened in the genitals

were reflected in the nose, and he felt that

he sometimes had to intervene with surgery.

And Freud, for a very long period,

believed in this, accepted Fleiss' ideas,

and felt, in fact, that they were

really in harmony with his own.

Now I think, in retrospect, we would say

that they were not in harmony, and Freud no doubt,

some years later, would have recognized this himself.

But for a period of time,
Fleiss was enormously influential.

[Narrator:] Freudian scholars are aware

of the controversial aspects of Freud's relationship

to Fleiss. But most analysts, like Dr. Harold Blum,

value the letters as an important record

of the evolution of Freud's major ideas.

The Freud-Fleiss letters are now part

of a large collection at the Library of Congress

in Washington D.C.

[Dr. Harold Blum:] The Freud-Fleiss correspondence

is of extraordinary importance as a record

of the first self-analysis ever accomplished.

The Freud self-analysis was a systematic

self-exploration begun in October 1896,

after the death of his father.

He proceeded to accomplish what no one had

ever done before: To analyze himself,

so that he was both doctor and patient,

although Fleiss served as a confidant

and as a kind of proto-analyst, and Freud

was reporting the results

of his analytic discoveries to Fleiss

in these very letters.

At that period, dreams provided

the greatest insights for him.

And he proceeded in a very systematic way

to regularly analyze himself on a daily basis,

making a record, writing down his dreams,

and proceeding to analyze them.

[Narrator:] By writing down his dreams

and free-associating, Freud recalled events

from his youth. He related in a letter to Fleiss

the important details of his self-analysis.

He had discovered intense feelings of love for his mother,

jealousy and hatred for his father,

what he would later call "The Oedipus Complex".

Freud believed that dreams provided access

to a deeper understanding of behavior.

[Narrator reading Freud:] "I found the dream represented a particular

state of affairs as I should have wished it to be.

Thus the content of the dream was the fulfillment

of a wish, and its motive was a wish.

If we adopt the method of interpreting dreams,

we shall find that dreams really have a meaning."

[Narrator:] Freud concluded that dreams revealed

sexual and aggressive wishes from childhood.

He published this radical new vision in 1900,

"Interpretation of Dreams," what he called his most original work.

He felt he had come upon a universal truth,

the idea of infantile sexuality,

that everyone was sexual from birth.

[Dr. Jacob Arlow:] He decided to ask the patients to do with dreams

what he had asked them to do in connection with their symptoms,

namely, to discuss each element to see what came to their mind.

If they permitted themselves to speak freely and without criticism

of their thoughts.

In this way, he began to see that dreams expressed a wish from childhood,

usually a sexual wish,

but did not express it directly,

but in a disguised and distorted way.

When he describes some of his interpretations of dreams

to his good friend and colleague, Wilhelm Fleiss,

Fleiss said to him that the interpretations sounded like jokes,

and bad ones at that.

Far from being offended, what Freud did

was take the idea seriously and to investigate

what was it that brought the pleasure from jokes.

[Narrator:] Freud wanted to demonstrate that psychoanalysis

had applications beyond its use as a treatment for neuroses,

that it was the key to the workings of the mind.

In rapid succession, Freud published, "Jokes and their Relationships to the Unconscious"

and "Psychopathology of everyday life,"

in which he described how slips of the tongue

or forgetfulness

revealed conflicts about hidden thoughts or feelings.

Freud now saw the mind divided into three areas:

The Unconscious, the place of sexual and aggressive wishes,

urges, memories, and fantasies,

the Preconscious, a gatekeeper that permitted or prevented

wishes from entering consciousness,

and the Conscious mind, the seat of awareness.

Freud believed that when unconscious wishes were in conflict,

or when blocked by the preconscious,

they came out anyway in slips of the tongue,

dreams, or as neurotic symptoms.

[Peter Gay:] I think Freud really believed

that he had come upon certain insights about the nature of the mind,

the way the mind works, that he regarded as remarkable

and quite original.

Although, he was very well aware that there were other

psychologists, philosophers, poets, novelists,

who had come upon ideas that he himself had,

as he said, "laboriously" had to find through his own laboratory,

the patients on the couch.

[Narrator:] Freud considered dreams, infantile sexuality,

and the unconscious to be his great ideas.

He said, "The poets and philosophers before me

discovered the unconscious, but I have discovered

the scientific means by which it can be studied."

But, most of the scientific community in Vienna

found his ideas to be peculiar and extreme.

[Frank Sulloway:] Freud's notion of the unconscious

is a very uniquely Freudian one.

It supposes that there's actually an area of the mind

that gets sealed off in the course of human development

within which tempestuous instincts are struggling for release,

but can't find proper release owing to this phenomenon

of having them sealed off.

And that's the unconscious mind.

It's a very animal-like unconscious.

It has all of these wild and tempestuous instincts

inside of it.

And, when we speak of an unconscious behavior,

that's a different sense of the word than Freud thought.

Freud's was a very dynamic unconscious,

and it's one that is much more plausible

in the context of biological notions of his day that

that unconscious was our animal evolutionary past

for Freud.

And, in that animal evolutionary past

are things that are incompatible with modern civilization.

But, there's no way to escape it

because we are forced to inherit all of these things

from the past and to repeat them.

So, Freud's unconscious is alive, powerful,

sealed-off, and dangerous.

And, it's part of a 19th century thinking about

the organism and evolution.

[Narrator:] In 1905, Freud published three essays on

the theory of sexuality,

linking what he had named the psycho-sexual stages of development:

oral, anal, phallic, and genital

to personality traits.

The public was outraged by his use of sexual language

in reference to children.

Privately, Freud admitted to Fleiss that his new ideas

on sexuality had serious implications for his original seduction theory

about the cause of hysteria.

He wrote to Fleiss that he had been mistaken.

He now believed that what his patients had described as

sexual abuse was really fantasy,

the result of childhood wishes.

This change in Freud's thinking has become one of the hot spots

in Freudian scholarship.

In 1984, Jeffrey Masson published this book.

He charged that Freud abandoned his seduction theory,

not because of new evidence provided by his work with patients,

but because of other pressures.

[Dr. Harold Blum:] What became clear to me as I was reading these letters

was that there were pressures on Freud that were

of a non-scientific nature.

For example, the response from his medical and scientific colleagues

was a very negative one.

They refused to believe with Freud that these events

could possibly take place.

And he was quite sensitive to this.

Remember, he was a young physician.

He was just beginning his medical and psychiatric practice.

It was important to him in order to have referrals

and to have the kind of respect

to become a member of the scientific community

and of the university scientific community

to persuade his colleagues that he had something new to offer.

And they were rejecting his ideas about seduction.

[Dr. Jacob Arlow:] The abatement of the seduction theory,

like every other change that Freud made,

was based on the analysis of his findings.

He was constantly re-examining his material and his ideas,

and correlating theory and findings.

This, of course, is the method of science.

At first, in the situation and at the time

that he was working,

he believed the stories that his patients told him

of their having been seduced by some older person

who had already matured sexually,

and that these were the basis of traumatic memories

that caused hysteria.

It was natural for Freud to take these stories at face value

because at that particular time, it was believed

that the sexual life of the individual began with puberty.

Nonetheless, Freud's patients were telling him

that they had sexual fantasies and sexual wishes during childhood.

How ever could he explain this

except with the idea that something must have happened

to stimulate these individuals, these patients, prematurely

into sexuality, that is the result of some kind of seduction.

[Dr. Harold Blum:] Why really should we care about something

that seems like a rather remote historical question?

Well, I think the answer is

some analysts from the time of Freud - on,

were convinced that Freud gave up the seduction hypothesis

for purely scientific reasons.

And once they believed this, his ideas became really doctrine

within psychoanalysis and then spread to psychology

and to psychiatry in general, so that his views

about reality versus fantasy

came to play an enormous role in our society.

And they have been taken over from psychiatry and psychology,

more or less into the general population,

so that we see this, even in the judicial system,

when a woman is talking about rape

or a child is talking about having been abused,

the first tendency is to believe that this may be

nothing more than a fantasy.

Ultimately, that derives from Freud.

[Narrator:] Many of the controversies surrounding Freud

have centered on the question of whether psychoanalysis

is a science.

Freud, himself, thought it had broader applications.

In the years following his major publications

on childhood sexuality,

Freud applied psychoanalytic principles to

religion, history, literature, and anthropology.

He also had created a new model of the mind:

the id, ego, and superego.

These three forces represented the

interplay of passion, rationality, and moral judgment.

His ideas were so powerful that many intellectuals

were drawn to psychoanalysis as a way to understand

larger, social, and philosophical questions:

war and peace, love and hate, religion and morality.

Freud often spend his summers in the country

outside of Vienna.

He found comfort spending time with his wife, their six children,

and a loyal group of friends,

including Princess Marie Bonaparte of Greece,

whom Freud had analyzed.

Initially, a small group of adventurous followers

gathered around him, some famous and some not.

But, they attracted attention to Freud

and the new field of psychoanalysis.

[Peter Gay:] Freud was, let's say, the first ten years

of psychoanalytic practice, let us say from the middle of the 1890s

to 1905-6, anything but famous.

He may have exaggerated a little bit how isolated he was.

He had admirers.

By 1906-7, there were in fact even some distinguished, professional admirers.

[Narrator:] By 1911, the International Association of Analysts

had grown up around Freud.

Psychoanalysis was largely rejected by

the traditional scientific community.

These early analysts saw themselves at the forefront

of a new intellectual movement

and they banded together against a hostile outside world.

But, there was also dissent within the group.

Carl Jung, one of Freud's most ardent admirers,

claimed that Freud had over-emphasized

the importance of childhood sexuality.

And later, Karen Horney, another analyst,

who had charged that Freud had grossly misunderstood female psychology,

a charge that was echoed throughout the coming years.

World War I became a turning point in the history

of psychoanalysis.

Overnight, it gained wider credibility.

Techniques derived from psychoanalysis

were thought to be useful in treating soldiers

who had been shell-shocked in battle.

After WWI, European interest in Freudian methods grew.

In Berlin, the first training institute was opened.

In Vienna, a psychoanalytic clinic was started

by the members of the Vienna Society.

These institutes were essential to the growth of psychoanalysis,

but Frank Sulloway contends there was a price to be paid.

[Frank Sulloway:] Freud and his followers took a very crucial step

in the 1920s, approximately, when they decided to

have their own institutes for training,

given hostility to psychoanalysis within the universities

to establish their own centers of learning and of training

outside of universities.

This, essentially, removed psychoanalysis from a 2,000 year tradition

of criticism and growth of knowledge.

And I think for Freud, it was a short-term gain.

Psychoanalysis proliferated with its own teaching mechanisms

but it was a long-term disaster, I think.

[Narrator:] The 1920's were an exciting time for psychoanalysis.

Many analysts, like Franz Alexander of the Berlin Institute,

would eventually leave Europe and spread psychoanalysis to America.

A. A. Brill, an American analyst, had translated

most of Freud's work into English.

Ernest Jones, Freud's biographer, would help found

the American Psychoanalytic Association.

In Europe, Psychoanalysis generally remained outside

the medical and academic establishments.

But, in America, it would be different.

[Frank Sulloway:] The American reception and interpretation of Freud

was a very optimistic reception and interpretation.

American analysts often believed that they could cure

the most severe of neuroses, even psychoses,

that they could treat, for example, schizophrenics.

This was something Freud had never felt.

There was something about psychoanalysis

that suggested to Americans, as representatives

of a new nation, of a frontier nation,

a wonderful buoyant optimism about the mind

and the kinds of things that doctors could do for the mind.

[Narrator:] The press played a role in popularizing psychoanalysis.

Sometimes, in a sensational way.

By the 1930's, most Americans were at least familiar

with Freud and his new psychology.

[Peter Gay:] The magazines were interested in

the sensational figure.

There he was, this bearded Viennese doctor,

talking about sex all the time, so it seemed.

Encouraging promiscuity, he seemed to be just perfect

for the 1920's and the age of Fitzgerald and so on.

This, of course, had nothing to do with

the austerity of his doctrine or

something that didn't bother the Weekly's

or even the newspapers at all.

[Dr. Joseph Wortis:] Everybody was reading books

about the psychoanalysis and trying to understand their own problems

in this way.

And this kind of accommodated themselves to this interest

by concentrating themselves on psychoanalytic techniques.

It was very well-suited to the demands of private practice.

Psychiatrists would only need to have a hotel room

to practice in.

And there seemed to be an endless demand for services

for psychoanalytic treatment.

[Man:] "May I have your last name?"

[Narrator:] During WWII, American army psychiatrists

used a modified form of psychoanalysis in

combination with other techniques to treat soldiers.

In the 40's and 50's, there was an increased interest

in psychotherapies, or "talking" therapies, which were

based in psychoanalytic theory.

[Doctor:] "I noticed you saw a vision of your father.

Tell me something about that. What happened?"

[Patient:] "Well, I guess it was a dream."

[Doctor:] "Well, describe the dream. What did you see in the dream?"

[Patient:] "I dreamt that I was home. My brother was home."

[Narrator:] After the war, it was considered prestigious

for psychiatrists to enhance their medical education

with 6 to 10 years of additional training

at an analytic institute.

[Narrator:] This introductory training film was made in 1962

by analysts from the Chicago Institute to demonstrate

the proper methods of working with patients.

[Patient:] "I don't know whether I need to be here or not.

As a matter of fact, I've had a little trouble with jobs,

but that's about all."

[Doctor:] "Just jobs?"

[Narrator:] Analysts were taught the techniques of free association

and transference.

These techniques continued to distinguish psychoanalysis

and analytically-based therapies from the growing number

of other "talking" therapies.

Analysts believed, as did Freud, that an individual

develops complex patterns of behavior early in life

and that these patterns inevitably surface

in the analysis through the process of transference.

[Patient:] "I get this feeling lately that you're critical of me,

that you're hounding me, that you're down on me

about something.

What did I do that was so bad?

I don't know what brings this on.

Over and over, the same troubles.

Now, you.

I don't know how to handle situations like this.

I'm just stumped. I've been thinking maybe I better

clear out.

Maybe you and I ought to call the thing quits.

Just like the jobs. Just like my old man.

I just had to get out of the family and forget about it."

[Narrator:] During the 1950's and 60's, pyschoanalysis

was considered by many to be the preferred form of treatment

for people with emotional problems.

But, it was expensive and lengthy.

It required four to five sessions a week

for at least two years.

And, even during a period of relative success,

psychoanalysis was under attack.

In 1952, an article appeared stating that the outcome

for a patient undergoing an analysis was no better

than that of someone who had received no therapy.

The article, by the British behavioral psychologist,

Hans Eysenck, was later refuted.

But, criticism like this challenged psychoanalysis

to demonstrate its effectiveness through controlled

scientific studies.

For Freud, his patients confirmed his ideas.

They provided him with the material to develop

the theory of psychoanalysis.

And, what his patients revealed in their sessions,

proved its validity.

Although Freud saw hundreds of patients, he only

wrote extensive cases for 12 of them.

These 12 cases and the case-study method

became the foundation of psychoanalytic training.

Today, many analysts still consider the case-study method

sufficient proof.

[Dr. Jacob Arlow:] Freud's standard of proof

was the conclusions that he could draw from the data

that he got within the analytic situation

while he was treating patients.

This is the investigative tool of psychoanalysis.

There is no way of drawing conclusions about psychoanalytic

hypotheses if you leave out the data that you get

from the analytic situation.

[Frank Sulloway:] They're not proving anything by listening to patients

confirm their expectations.

in rigorous ways.

This isn't proof we're testing in

Psychoanalysis needs to get itself back into

settings where it can be tested in experimental

and extra-clinical ways.

It needs to take a hard look at areas of the theory

that have been problematical and it needs to go on

and I think the hardest thing is for the analysts themselves to do this.

They don't have the kind of training or background

to treat psychoanalysis as the kind of natural science

it once was.

[Peter Gay:] I think, in part, the attitude towards

experimentation, this negative attitude,

was, if the word 'fault' is correct, Freud's own fault.

But, one might argue that the continuation of this attitude,

to the extent of it persists, is the responsibility

of those who don't cut themselves loose from Freud

simply on the grounds that Freud himself had said this

and that's good enough for them.

And we all know that that's not what would be called

a scientific attitude, for sure.

[Narrator:] Although psychoanalysis was the original form of psychotherapy,

it is among the least practiced today.

The American Psychoanalytic Association, with its membership of 2,500,

is small compared to the number of mental health professionals

in this country.

There is an intense pressure on this community

to prove the effectiveness of psychoanalysis.

But, providing proof is difficult.

The length and private nature of the process

do not lend themselves easily to scientific scrutiny.

How, then, should psychoanalysis be assessed today?

There are many differing views, including those held by critics

who are themselves, analysts.

Dr. Thomas Szasz.

[Szasz:] Well, what Freud developed or what he contended

that he develop, really are two interlocking systems.

One, a theory of human behavior, both normal

and abnormal.

And a system of therapy, of treating and relieving mental diseases.

Now, he felt that these were mutually confirmatory.

In my view, so-called psychoanalytic theory,

was not really qualified at all as a scientific theory

because it is more like a "Weltanschauung,"

an ideology of how human beings should be and should behave.

That is legitimate, but that is not science.

It's an ideology - perhaps it is the best modern word for it.

It's a secular religion.

Now, the therapy, again, unless one believes that

there is an illness which is being treated,

it's not a therapy but a way of helping people.

And the two are actually really quite simple.

It is quite possible to accept a great deal

of therapeutic ideas and methods

and reject virtually all of the theory,

which is my position.

[Narrator:] The body of scientific evidence

to support Freudian theory, is so far small and inconclusive.

At the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven,

researchers are exploring aspects of Freudian theory

by observing young children.

The study focuses on 4-6 year olds,

the age Freud called the most critical phase of development,

the Oedipal stage.

These researchers acknowledge the importance of many factors

in the growth of the child.

But, like Freud, they see sexual conflict as a key factor,

conflict having to do with sexual identity and feelings toward their parents.

The sessions are videotaped to be studied later.

[Child:] "He has little pants, exactly a girl with a short haircut.

Can you put this on? Can you put this on please?

A dress with pants. Have you ever seen that?"

[Doctor:] "Have you?"

[Child:] "Yes."

[Narrator:] The research team studies the tapes,

looking for the language patterns, the interaction the child has

with her analyst, and themes in her play.

They believe these act as clues to understanding

a child's inner feelings,

especially relating to sexual identity.

[Doctor:] "She's working out if it's a boy or a girl,

and she says at first that it's a boy.

She then takes the pants down and says, 'No, it's a girl.'

And she's able to deal with the incongruity

by saying, 'Well, it's a girl with short hair and pants.'

I think that the curiosity and perhaps some of the conflict

that one sees in children at this age is something that she's

working on in this moment."

[Narrator:] The methods of this study depends on observation

and interpretation by the researchers,

most of whom are analysts.

The study may be useful in expanding upon Freud's ideas,

but it does not meet the rigorous demands of the scientific method.

Other researchers are conducting controlled experiments

and the evidence provided by these studies has moved

the field of child development beyond Freud.

Dr. Jerome Kagan.

[Kagan:] Freud was perhaps the boldest theorist

we've had in psychology.

He believed strongly that the major determinants

of the child's normal growth and pathological growth

could be fixed to certain experiences in the opening years of life.

But, he ignored the maturational changes that

are occurring in the child's central nervous system

that permit new mental or intellectual abilities,

and those, in turn, permit the child to relate

him or herself to the parents and to the outside world.

And that, it seems to me, was the mistake that he made

in the rest of his theorizing by trying to make

sexual energy, sexual conflict, sexual anxiety

the key central primary cause of both normal

and pathological development.

[Narrator:] Dr. Kagan and his colleagues at Harvard University

believe that early experience is important in the development

of the individual.

But, they also believe that the genetic make-up of a child

can be a contributor to the development of

personality traits.

The researchers here use observational methods

along with other experimental techniques

to gather information about a child's

predisposition to certain emotions like

boldness, shyness, and in this case, anxiety.

These tests are designed to meet the criteria of the experimental method.

They have control groups, are repeatable, and provide data

from which researchers can predict behavior.

Advances in the field of psychology and biology

are now beginning to answer some of the same questions

posed by Freud almost 100 years ago.

In England, a nobel laureate and one of the scientists

who discovered the structure of DNA, Dr. Francis Crick,

has turned his attention to the study of the brain,

including memory and dreams.

How does he assess Freud?

[Dr. Francis Crick:] Freud was a very strange case

because he started off being interested in

the physiology of the brain

and wanting to try to relate that physiology to psychology.

And he wrote an essay on this, so-called "Project."

What we know is, is that the ideas he had about physiology

were really wrong.

When you look at the ideas, they don't seem very plausible,

at least not to me.

But, they seemed to be based on an old-fashioned idea of the mind

and people interested in information processing as I do,

would regard as rather naive

and heavily culturally determined, let's put it that way.

Which, of course, is why he had such a great appeal.

Mind you, he did have insights.

He did make people realize a lot of their behavior,

their motives for their behavior wasn't what they thought they were.

He did make it clear that people were more influenced

by sexual reasons in the 19th century

than they were prepared to admit.

Maybe it's different nowadays, and so on.

And a lot of other things of that sort.

But, if you ask in strict scientific terms,

I'd very surprised if much of it survives.

Freud thought that dreams were wish fulfillment.

He thought that was his great idea.

But, when you read his account and how

he had to twist things to fit the theory,

it's very difficult to accept this.

And I'm not sure that all Freudians now accept that key idea of his.

And then, of course, he had other aspects of dreams,

some of which are more complex

and we would feel that that's all too fancy,

that it's all too easy to interpret dreams

without having any check on what the interpretation is.

So, we're inclined to leave all that on one side

and say that's for the future.

We understand so little of the brain at the moment,

it's really a waste of time inventing all these things.

People love to do it, but in the past,

they liked to believe that dreams foretold the future.

Very few people believe that now, but they like to think

there's some deep significance in their dreams.

We would think it's just an accidental by-product

produced by random waves and so on and you

shouldn't read too much into it.

[Dr. Szosz:] I agree, as many of the most prominent

natural scientists, biologists, and philosophers of science

who have contended that psychoanalysis is not a science.

It has nothing to do with science.

It is an ideology and it is, of course, significant,

not for it being a science or for its impact on science,

which I think is real,

but as a cultural phenomenon.

It's a historical phenomenon.

It's obvious that psychoanalysis and Freud,

and here, one nearly should compare him to someone like Marx,

or other religious figures who had a tremendous impact

on how we live today.

[Peter Gay:] The issue, really, is one of names here

which I think is not where we should stay.

Is it a science or not?

The question really is this: Are these assertions

made by psychoanalysts, let's see,

either the global ones, such as the development of a child

through various stages, or the more narrow ones,

namely, the interpretations the analyst makes during the hour.

Are they in any sense reliable?

Or are they just ad hoc assertions that you could read about in a novel?

And agree because they're well-stated or

disagree because they're not well-stated.

And I would think that one would have to suggest is

that the kind of organized discipline or science

that psychoanalysis claims to be, and I think with justice,

is one in which proof and disproof are extremely difficult

given the nature of the material, but that any other psychology

dealing with fundamental human mental realities

faces the same problem.

[Narrator:] In 1936, Freud celebrated his golden wedding anniversary

with his wife, Martha.

They were surrounded by friends and a family

that now included many grandchildren.

But, this was one of the last celebrations Freud was to hold

near his home in Vienna.

In 1938, when the Nazis invaded Austria,

he fled to England.

In London, Freud was a celebrity.

He was honored by the royal society.

They asked him to sign the official charter book

in which his name would appear with the signatures

of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

He was considered for a Nobel Prize several times

but was never chosen.

The award he valued most was the Goethe Prize,

given not for his scientific contribution,

but for his literary achievements.

Freud had become the most famous psychologist

in the world,

but he never achieved the full acceptance

of the scientific community.

These films are among the last taken of Freud.

This was the occasion of his 83rd birthday.

He was quite frail, exhausted from a 16-year battle with cancer.

He died at his home on September 23, 1939.

In one of the only recordings of his voice,

Freud summarized his life's work.

[Freud's voice reading the following]