KNTV PHILOSOPHY

SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939)

The 'Father of Psychoanalysis', Sigmund Freud plumbed the deepest recesses of the human mind in his quest to unravel the mysteries of the subconscious.

PROGRAMME OUTLINE

00:00 – 03:58

Kierky and Nietzsche try unsuccessfully to influence viewers with an exercise in suggestibility.

03:59 – 06:52
WHAT was Freud's big idea?

Freud revolutionised the treatment of mental illness. Using 'free association', he asked patients to talk without censoring themselves. He believed that childhood experiences influence adult behaviour. In his 'Oedipus complex' theory, he probed the subconscious emotions of boys whom, he said, desired their mothers and were jealous of their fathers.

Freud's patients would often become overwrought, which Freud called 'catharsis'.

06:53 – 11.30
WHO was Sigmund Freud?

A brainy boy who adored his mother, Freud went on to do neurological research at Vienna University. He gave lengthy lectures and gathered a big following. He occasionally fainted under stress, and relaxed by playing cards and walking. Cocaine was a legal drug in Freud's time, and Freud prescribed it to his patients and to his friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow, who developed an acute case of 'cocaine psychosis' and died a few years later.

11:32 – 15:18
WHAT was the world like when Freud was around?

Freud's home city of Vienna was a cultured centre, famous for dancing, surrealist art and music. In 1885 Karl Benz, of Mercedes-Benz fame, invented the first motor car. Towards the end of the First World War there were food shortages and life was hard.

Freud wrote about the psychology of jokes, from simple kids' word games through more complex verbal riddles to practical stunts.

15:19 – 19:36
WHY did Freud's ideas happen?

People didn't understand mental illness until Freud came along, and patients were often treated unkindly. Freud was influenced by Breuer, who cured one patient's fear of water. Charcot, who treated psychosis with hypnosis, was another of Freud's important mentors.

Kierky and Nietzsche explain how the psyche, or sense of self, is divided into the ego, the face we show to the world; the super ego, our conscience; and the id, which governs our primitive drives. Psychoanalysis tries to understand and alter the subconscious influences that create 'abnormal behaviour'.

19:37 – 24:00
WHERE have Freud's ideas left us now?

Freud had startling new insights into behaviours that were previously dismissed as 'mad'. He helped psychiatrists to a deeper understanding of mental workings. He was the first person to explain the connection between mind and body, and to show how the effects of mental stresses can manifest themselves as physical symptoms. Psychoanalysis has founded a worldwide industry, which has helped millions of people to work through their problems.