Freud Rage

As I alluded to in my last post, I'm a fan of psychiatry. It fascinates me to learn why I wake up every morning at 2:36am, drenched in sweat with images of Matt Damon in a giant diaper running through my head. I mean...why other people, who are not me, have that particular experience.

However, I have one big problem with the field that goes by the name of Sigmund Freud. Besides the fact that he owes me 12 bucks, I find him to be a bit loony. Which is unfortunate, seeing as how he is the face of psychiatry. Freud is to psychiatry as Ludovico Ariosto is to 16th century Italian poetry - you can't bring up the subject without conversation moving to that person.

But I'll let you judge for yourself. Here are some choice quotes from Kaplan & Sadock's Concise Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry, 2nd edition:

• "Sigmund Freud originally believed that anxiety stemmed from a physiological buildup of libido"
  
• "Freud viewed the phobia...to be the result of conflicts centered on an unresolved childhood oedipal situation"
  
• "Freud theorized...that unconscious homosexual tendencies are defended against by denial and projection" - re: delusions
  
• "[Freud] assumed there was a defensive retreat involved in the face of anxiety-provoking oedipal wishes" - re: OCD
  
• "Sigmund Freud saw fire as a symbol of sexuality. He believed the warmth radiated by fires evokes the sensation that accompanies a state of sexual excitation, and a flame's shape and movements suggest a phallus in activity" - re: pyromania
• Sigmund Freud believed that depression was the body's natural response to not actively interacting with a penis. He postulated that the cure for depression, regardless of gender, was to have a penis in hand.

See what I mean? Guy's crazy as a road lizard! Okay, so maybe I made the last one up. But I'm not entirely sure he would disagree. I can only assume he was projecting hs own feelings onto his patients, which would make him one horny, gay, mother-loving bastard. In which case, maybe he's not so bad after all.