January 6, 2026 • 35 mins
On Today's Show: Prager explores the complex legacy of Sigmund Freud with Peter Kramer, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University. They delve into Freud's impact on modern thought, discussing his ideas on the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, and the role of sex in shaping human behavior.
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Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Here thousands of
hours of Dennis's lectures courses in classic radio programs. Had
to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. Go to Dennisprager dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
All right, everybody, welcome to the Ultimate Issues Hour, an
hour each week devoted to the great questions of life.
And I think I got a signal from Heaven as
it were, to move Peter Kramer over into the Ultimate
Issues Hour. So it's actually worked out better for you,
and it worked out better, I think, for the show,
So thank you for your patience. Peter Kramer is a
(01:03):
professor of psychiatry at Brown University, a well known psychiatrist.
And there is a there is a series of biographies,
short biographies that have been put out. They're eminent, called
Eminent Lives, and he was given the honor and it
is an honor to write the one on Freud, whom,
as I reminded you folks earlier in the show, I
(01:26):
was my nominee either he or Hitler, and I'm not
comparing them. Although it's amazing how people will pervert what
you say. I'm a veteran of having my words perverted
there in no way related, but those were my two
nominees for Person of the Century. Time eventually picked Albert Einstein,
(01:46):
which was just a safe pick. But the effects of
those two individuals, one for ill and one perhaps, I
guess I'm a mixed bag. I have been to the
great consternation of many of my listeners. I have been
a fan of a Freud. I thought the man was
the genius of the twentieth century, for good and for ill.
(02:07):
But I really believe he was a genius in opening
up the unconscious and all of the ideas that he had.
Do you agree, first of all, on the effect that
he has had on modern man?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Enormous effect, you know. I think you have to when
you write a short biography, choose one challenge or a
couple and say these are the ones I'm going to
look at. And I think what's happened to Freud over
the past twenty years or so is that his stock
really has gone down as a scientist and even as
a person of character. I think, as we know more
(02:42):
about what he's done through witnesses, you know, beyond himself,
he looks less good. But he has had this enormous
influence on how we experience ourselves, so that that contrast
that paradox, how you can be less and less respected
as a scientist and yet have this enormous influence on
(03:02):
how modern man lives with himself. You know, that seemed
to me my challenge.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Well, it is a challenge. So the question is, and
there are people who believe this, many people that psychoanalysis
and psychotherapy, at least in so far as they are
related to psychiatry, are not based on science and therefore
are more harmful than good.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well, I think psychotherapy is done well. There was psychotherapy
before Freud. Most psychotherapy today doesn't have very direct links
to Freud, and psychotherapy is still one of the really
important treatments for mental illness, for minor mental illness, for growth,
for education. But the particular additions that Freud made about
(03:45):
infantile sexuality, some of the things he said about the
nature of the unconscious just have not nature of dreams
have not held up as well as probably everybody expected
fifty years ago they would hold up.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
What do you think of psychoanalysis itself? And for those
who don't know the difference psychotherapy is if you go
to a psychologist or you go to any therapist and
you talk through your problems. Psychiatry is somebody who does
that and also has an MD and can prescribe prescription drugs.
And then there was psychoanalysis where you go about four
times a week and what is it for about two
(04:21):
hours of session?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Well, no, usually the same fifty minutes.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Fifty minutes, yeah, and you but it is about that
much a week, right.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
It can be four or five times a week, and
of course doing that is a different experience. You really
come in touch with aspects of yourself. The psychiatrists psychoanalyst
becomes very important in your fantasies and imagination.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Have you undergone psychoanalysis?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I have? I have, and it was a Freudian psychoanalysis.
I was in London, where Freud had moved after he
left Vienna. Anna Freud was still in London, his daughter.
I was at that institute where you know, they presided,
and I was a patient and I thought it did
me a great deal of good. Although you have to
(05:07):
ask was it for the reasons that people imagined at
the time, you know, was it important to bring forth
the Oedipus complex, this notion of having a sexual incestuous
interest in your mother? And being willing to murder your
father in the interest of that, you know, that sort
of thing. Is that? Did that really hold? Or was
(05:27):
it just that I was in the hands of a
very good person and given some time and space to
think problems through.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I publicly admit that if I had the time, I
would love to undergo psychoanalysis.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yes, well, I say that, and my wife says, you know,
she'd leave me if I did.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Yeah, but you did already, Yes, I did already.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I did already, I see.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
But so you're lucky you did it before you marry.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right, that's it, that's it. She doesn't want me to
know any more than I know.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Right. Oh yeah, No, I understand that I may and
it may may be better if both spouses do it
than if only one does.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I suppose so. But you know, it has changed very greatly.
Freud thought he was a great scientist. He thought that
analysis had to be scientific, so you should stand at
some distance from the patient, not be empathetic, not be
overly sympathetic, that the patient remain very anxious. And then
he had these notions of what it was you were
(06:23):
going to discover, and in particular, these repressed sexual desires
and as I say that particular line of thought has
just not.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Fair, that do you not believe in the complex?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I think the Oedipus complex is probably and many people
thought this when Freud was alive, including some of his
competitors like Jung. That's sort of a shorthand for an
awareness that there are conflicts even in the best regulated
of families. I just reviewed a book which is about
Freud's visit to America. He became friendly with a man
(06:56):
named James Jackson Putnam, who was an American neurologist helped
spread psychoanalysis in this country. And there's a funny correspondence
where Putnam writes a letter saying that he used to
have fantasies, dreams that when he grew up he would
sit in front of a fireplace and have a devoted
wife and children and so on. And Freud writes back
(07:18):
to the effect of, well, you're you know, you're Sadism
and masochism obviously are coming to the fore the man
who would not take yes for an answer, that.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
What's wrong with that fantasy?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
By the way, well it must be a repression of
the reverse.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Freud could turn anything into the edifice complex.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
All right, so do you or don't you believe in it?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
I don't believe in it in that form. I mean,
I think that what was valuable about Freud, and I
think what its contemporaries admired, was that he was very
open and frank about sex and aggression in an era.
You know, this wasn't exactly Victorian England, but it was Habsburg, Austria,
where these matters, although they were widely spoken about by
(08:03):
the intelligencia, you know, we're still somewhat repressed. And I
think bringing the possibility of conflict and desire even in
ordinary intimate circumstances into the did.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
He did he help patience?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Well, that's an interesting question. You know that his patients,
the ones he wrote about, almost uniformly did less well
than he said they did. He was working with very
sick people. You know, we think of neurosis as a
mild manner matter, but he was dealing with very disturbed people.
And researchers have gone and found these patients and they
went on to be rehospitalized and you know, have a
(08:41):
very spotty careers and so on, and some of them
lived long enough to be interviewed, and they were really
still mentally ill at the time of interview many years later,
so I don't think he had miraculous effects on his patients.
Let's say that there are patients he didn't write about
who have written memoirs and diaries, and some of them
say they did quite well with him. But those accounts
(09:02):
show some other problems, which is that he didn't really
do psycho analysis. He was somebody who had strong opinions.
He'd give people advice, he'd have them over for dinner,
he'd lend them money. You know, it didn't look the
way psychoanalysis he wrote about. It was a different, different thing.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I'd like to tell you in a nutshell why I
have always admired him because it often surprises people because
I'm also very religious, and usually people think there's a
conflict between Freud and religion. Freud himself was an atheist
and no use for religion. He thought it was essentially,
you know, some psychological construct or crutch that we needed,
(09:43):
and that basically God and our Father were interchangeable. How
we looked at God is how we looked at our father.
And many people think his worst work is Moses and
Monotheism anyway, So but I want to tell you in
a nutshell and have you react. I think that what
he said was, look, we are really messed up inside,
(10:05):
and don't walk around with this idealistic notion of the
Enlightenment that we are you know, basically wonderful beings who
have just been you know, just been you know, somehow
ruined by the the economics of our time or by
our parents. But we are really, we really are a
(10:25):
mess and that's a religious belief in my opinion as well.
Peter Kramer, the psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry, My guest
is book Sigmund Freud.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
This is the Ultimate Issues hour.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
We continue this episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right
after this. Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Hi, everybody, this is the Ultimate Issues are on the
Dennis Prager Show. You can't get much more ultimate than
the father of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and all the like.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
And there is a.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
New excellent brief biography and you know how much I
adore brevity in writing by Peter Kramer, who is well
known for writing on psychiatry. He's a professor of psychiatry
at Brann University and in private practice in Providence. By
the way of the two things, can you say which
gives you more joy? The teaching of psychiatry or the
(11:21):
practice of it?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
You know, I love working with patients, I'd say they
you know. Number two for me, probably even before teaching,
is writing. I love I write in the morning, I
see patients in the afternoon, and it's just what I've
what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
When do you teach in the evening? Uh? No?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I do you like tea during the day.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
I was wondering for a while.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I try to cram at wedge a few things, and
I got kids. There's a lot going on, but basically
it's writing in the morning, seeing patients, all right.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I was saying to you that a lot of religious
people have a big problems with Freud and Freudian psychiatry
and and the whole, the whole arena of much of
that psychotherapy.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
No, I think you captured something, which is that you know,
this is one of these figures who says rationality has
its limits in human beings, and that is a philosophical
and religious issue. And you know, science aside, whether you
get it exactly right about dreams or the Oedipus complet
that issue about our irrationality having a big part in
(12:24):
our makeup is at the center of Freud.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, exactly, I say to my you know, to my
religious audience, that he, you know, he understands how limited
we are. He is no romanticist about human nature. And
that's exactly what I got from religion.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
And you know, Freud certainly was, in a certain manner
a good Jew. He never turned his back on Judaism.
He you know, played cards with his male friends. That
been a breath every week. He told Jewish jokes. He
wasn't pretending not to be Jewish just because he was
an atheist in the sense that all scientists at that
moment were atheists. That was the that was the stance
(13:07):
he had contempt for a belief in God. It's true.
But this wrestling with Moses is also an interesting issue.
I mean, he got the theological history wrong, he got
the anthropology wrong. But at least he is trying to
do something very brave in the face of the Nazis. Here,
you know, with this change in Austrian politics, the Nazis
(13:27):
were at the border, and here is Freud saying, we
as Jews have to be honest with ourselves. This is
a new way of looking at Moses. I mean there
was something very touching about doing this, and this was
really in his old age. I mean he was he
was one of these bold, outspoken types from you know,
adolescents till death.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Give a couple of examples when you and I both
believe he's been such a powerful force. I mean, you're
the subtitle is a great subtitle for your book, The
Making of the Modern Mind.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Inventor. Yeah, yeah, he he made the modern mind.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
He did, and you know, as I say, he did
it without necessarily being right on the science. He thought
that these things like the Oedipus complex were discoveries, that
he discovered natural laws the way Copernicus did or Darwin.
He compared himself to those scientists and to Einstein repeatedly,
and I think that and to who he was. But
he captured that sense of there being a lot of
(14:24):
absurdity in life, of symbols being important, of you know,
what goes on in modern intellectual studies, you may like
it or not. Where tag team wrestling may be looked
at as a subject of serious inquiry. I mean, here
Freud was looking at jokes and slips of the tongue
and trying to find basic indicators about the culture and
(14:47):
about the human mind in these very trivial, trivial products
and trivial events. And that really just has shaped the
way we look at the objects around us and think
about I mean, to give the most humble example, say
you're on a date and the person doesn't show up
or shows up late and has some sort of quasi
(15:08):
reasonable explanation, you will think, you know, maybe he or
she is hostile, maybe there's something more going on that
even the person, as he speaks doesn't know about. Well,
that's freud, the notion of that of the un contract.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
That's such a great example.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
See, it's humbling that that's what I mean, or is
one of the things that I meant. It is humbling
to know how much of ourselves we don't know. Yeah,
that's why, by the way, I said to you, I
would love to undergo psychoanalysis. I want to know Dennis better.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Well, there's a project you Well, it is, But.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
That's the that's it's not because I'm sick, it's because
I want It's it's like we like to we like
to explore outer space. To me, psychoanalysis is exploring inner space.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
And I think that probably is why most people undertake
psychoanalysis as opposed to, say, you know, taking prozac or
undergoing a brief cognitive therapy. I think if you're going
four or five days a week, you're looking for some
real insight and transformation.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
But I will tell you this, if I were to
choose a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, that's what it would have
to be.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
I would want a Freudian.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
One h And why is that?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Because I have I would want them to tap into.
I don't think it's all nonsense.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I don't think that all of these almost Kakamami things,
for example, obviously wouldn't be applicable to me. But I don't.
I don't know that penis envy is totally nonsense.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Do you think it's not totally nonsense?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Well, I think it is much too simple. If you
think of the You know, if you were a woman
in late nineteenth earliest twentieth century Vienna, and all the
power you know, were really in the hands of all
the explicit power were in the hands of men, you know,
of course, you might wish that you had some more
(16:59):
of the benefits that manhood brings, whether that is related
to thinking, you know that you're having the fantasy that
your penis was cut off, you know, which was what
he imagined, that women thought that they were they were
in a sense wounded or injured. You know that does
seem a little nonsense.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Agal, Yeah, I agree with that in the maturer woman.
I always thought of it more than any younger girl.
And I must tell you, and you know I'm not I
don't want to saddle you with this, so you can say, Dennis,
I completely disagree, and I will never talk to you again,
or at least not publicly. But but I have viewed
much of the feminist movement as a form of penis envy. Yeah,
(17:37):
in that whatever men do, that's what's really valuable, and
so let us women model ourselves on the male model
of achievement.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yes, I do disagree with you, do you know? I
think that there's a lot to be said for power,
and if you're in a culture, and I think this
is less true now, and you know, you look at
Madeline all right, and kind of Lisa Rice and Magufacture
and so on, it certainly is less true now. But
if you look at the culture over the past one
hundred years, men have had so much more power. And
then if you go back to times when women really
(18:10):
couldn't own land or assume certain positions in the culture,
become professionals of certain sorts, have positions, you know, within religions.
I think there are lots of reasons women would be
envious of men without.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Having Yeah, but the feminist argument has not produced in
my opinion, the average woman, I don't think, I think
is less powerful today. She may have a bank account,
but in terms of her influence. Uh, I mean, I think,
for example, their women are far more sexualized in public
life today than they were in Freud's time, right, I mean,
(18:48):
I mean, look at look at look at what Miss
America contestant has to wear today compared to fifty years ago.
In terms of the skimpiness of the bikini.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Well, you know, that can be degrading or that can
be liberating. I think that's you know, that's a close one.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Ah, that is interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
We'll continue in a moment the thoughtful Peter Kramer and
will take calls one eight Praguer seven seven six his latest.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Book on Freud.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
You're listening to the Ultimate Issues Hora on the Dennis
Prager Show, talking about the I think correctly stated by
the author Peter Kramer, Professor of psychiatry at Brown University,
the inventor of the modern Mind, and our take on
Freud on psychiatry on all the insights here in a
free wheeling discussion. We were just talking about penis envy
(19:39):
and the silly or non silly notions that Freud had,
and I was saying that if I were to undergo psychoanalysis,
I would want a Freudian and that I don't fully
dismiss that notion, especially in light of my view of
the feminist movement, which I think exhibited it.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
And you don't agree, and I didn't think you would.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And then I asked you, though you spoke about women
in power, and I said, I thought that the average woman,
not Madeline Albright, but the average woman Dr Kramer today,
in fact has less power. And the average girl in
high school and college feels that essentially her greatest power,
I say, the averag girl, not every girl, is.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
In fact the flaunting of her body.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Well, let me ask this question. If you could just
drop down out of the you know, ozone and be
born at any moment in history as a woman. When
would that be? Because I think you wouldn't be in
college for most of history. This is you know, the
fact that a majority of people in college, I think
certainly in the selective colleges are are women is absolutely unique.
(20:50):
There's no moment like that in history. So, uh, you know, lawyers, doctors,
it's right, well, women have assumed more of the burdens
of men. But it's but I mean, I don't know
how you would how you would answer that. But would
you want to be in the fifties as a housewife
or or would.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
You want to be you know, Well, the truth is
I don't know. It's a very fair question, and I
don't know the answer.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I agree with the downside, and Freud would have agreed. Also.
Freud was very interesting. He thought of as being one
of these sexual liberation people. I think he was very
aware of sexual repression, but he wasn't entirely against it.
He thought that sexual repression in Leonardo DaVinci yes great
art and science, and he was actually worried that he
(21:37):
would be misunderstood as being in favor of much more
sexual directors. He actually was very much of his time
in that regard.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
And to answer your question, I do an hour every
week on my radio show on happiness.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
I wrote a book on it.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I am very very concerned with that subject. And I
don't know if the sum total of female happiness today
is greater than the sum total of female happiness fifty
years ago. I really when I say I don't know,
it's not a euphemistic way of saying it isn't.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
I really don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
But I don't know if all of that I have
Peter Kramer, I talk to women all the time who did,
in fact go to did go to graduate school, did
become doctors, did become lawyers, did become business women, And
we're and bought the whole idea that profession and vocation
and professional achievement are roads to happiness, and now find
(22:35):
themselves at thirty eight years of age alone and not
quite as easy to find a husband as at twenty eight,
let alone at that twenty two. And they say to me,
you know, Dennis, I bought the whole feminist bill of goods,
and I can't say that my happiness level is terribly high.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Well, you know, they are these scientists who say happiness
doesn't change much altogether, that it's somehow characteristic that we
have or don't have at a certain level. You know,
I think you're capturing what the upside and downside are.
I think there is less divorce, say in the fifties
and sixties, but when it happens, it's more catastrophic and
(23:15):
also harder to get out of abusive marriages, and they're
more probably more of them or is accepted.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Yeah, I was just yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
You know, it's it's a mixed The culture is very difficult.
We certainly do have problems in our culture, and one
of them is, you know, what happens to the to
the forty fifty sixty year old woman who's single and
doesn't want.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
To be Why would somebody go to a psychiatrist in
your opinion, and not a psychologist.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Well, I think medication is one of the issues, you know.
That is to say, these medicines like prozac, zolof you know,
the other ones you're familiar with, are often very helpful
in helping people get out of dead ends or past roadblocks,
and certainly to treat major mental illness. Like you know,
(24:05):
my prior book before this was called Against Depression, and
it was about the notion that depression is an entirely
legitimate disease that affects us throughout the body, and so
medication is important there. And I think the quality control
on the training of psychiatrists is that they go through
medical school, which you know it is fairly stringent. Stringent barrier.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
All right, we'll continue in a moment. Take your calls
as well. Peter Kramer, his book is on Freud. This
is the Ultimate Issues Hour. Your challenge is to psychiatry.
Are welcome to on the Dennis Prager Show.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show, and this is
the Ultimate Issues Hour. It's forty four minutes past the hour.
My guest is Peter Kramer. We're talking about the whole
world of Sigmund Freud and how he changed life and
he is I think it's a great term inventor of
the modern mind. And that is the short biography that
(25:13):
he has in fact written about Freud, and I recommend
it to you. And it is certainly no hey geography,
which is a term for biography of the Saints. He
hardly regards a Freud as a saint. I have a
challenge I'd like to post to you as a psychiatrist,
because I am a big defender of psychiatry to many
of my callers.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
Who have a lot of dubious views of it.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
But I have an increasing worry about the entire psychotherapeutic world.
And that is two it's there. They're related. One is
I have met too many people who have who have
undergone some form of psychotherapy, who have had their victim
(25:55):
status reinforced. And I believe that they literally come out
worse from therapy than they went in because they now
blame their problems on everybody else, and they now have
confirmation from a doctor that everybody else is responsible for
their problems. And the other is the whole modus operandi
(26:18):
of a psychotherapist is the opposite of anybody trying to
get to the truth. Can you imagine a detective analyzing
a homicide and only questioning one witness?
Speaker 4 (26:31):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Well, I think psychotherapy, you know, is aware of those problems.
You probably know Paul mcew, the former head of psychiatry
at Johns Hopkins, who was very critical of this victimization tendency.
And I think most psychotherapists and by the way, I
should I said something about psychiatry versus psychology before. I
have great respect for psychotherapists of all stripes, psychologists, social workers,
(26:58):
clinical neuros specialists. They're terrific people up and down the line.
I think most of psychotherapy really is to get people
back functioning better. And the measure of psychotherapy is that
you're doing better, not that you feel sorry or for
yourself or have more people to blame, but you know
that you're out and about achieving your goals. So I
(27:19):
think that you know that is is that side of
the question, and when the second part is the.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Second part is the modus operandi where you're only interviewing
one witness to the reality, right.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I mean, that's true, and I think that there's a
reason for it, which is a lot of what goes
on in psychotherapy has to do with empathy. It has
to do with not necessarily knowing the external truth, but
really sitting and seeing the world from the perspective of
the other person, and that turns out to be powerful
in ways that sometimes gets people to move off the dime.
(27:55):
But psychotherapists have thought a lot about this, and there
certainly are therapies where collateral, you know, people are brought
in either to be interviewed about what's gone on, or
where people are sent out sort of in fact finding
missions in their own lives to interview people and bring
back the results. And then there are couple therapies and
family therapies where you hear plenty from other people, and
(28:17):
group therapies where people get also plenty of back about,
you know, their characteristic ways of tripping themselves up. So
there's some variety there, but I think both those criticisms
also are are valid.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
All right, let's go to some calls. Matt in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
You're on with doctor Peter Kramer and Dennis Prager High.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Hi, how are you both doing? I just I wanted
to comment. I thought it was fascinating when I was
in college learning about freyd that here's someone who I
absolutely think is disgusting when it comes to his comments
on society and different atheistic views. But at the same time,
in an age of increasing materialism, he was this person
coming up with this new notion that there's this huge
(28:58):
cauldron of unexplored ideas in a time when people wanted
to just say, oh, it's just the human animal, it's
just the mind, there's no spirit. He actually, I think,
without meaning to, did a better job of describing what
the Christian world or and even the Jewish world would
call the spirit and the soul and the mind and
the battle between the conscience and the and the flesh,
(29:23):
better than than almost anywhere outside of the Bible.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Well, it's interesting, you know, I don't start with your premises,
but the you know, the notion that people are well
worth exploring, that you're going to discover a lot of
complexity that the mind has layers. He certainly brought those
concepts to the four A lot of what Freud did
was not truly novel. Their philosophers have gone back and said, look,
(29:46):
the ego, the in the superrego look a lot like
categories that Socrates was said to have spoken about having
to do with reason and desire and you know, social awareness,
and that what he's doing is really ancient Greek philosophy
in this modern uh you know, vocabulary. So I think
he is one of these figures in a tradition, you know,
(30:09):
in a tradition of Western ways of looking at the self.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Okay, over to Minneapolis and Thomas. Hi, Thomas, you're all
with Peter Kramer and Dennis Praeger.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I'm a I added Christian, and I think that there's
way more toward what makes a person's mental makeup than.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
The sex drive.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Mm.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Well, I think so did Freud.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
And so and by the way, so does modern psychiatry
and psychology. I think the sex drive is important. There
seem to be, you know, drives for self preservation, all
kinds of hungers. And then there's curiosity. I think one
of the one of the big things that Freud tried
to eliminate that we very much recognize as sort of
striving for competence and mastery and understanding, which curiosity, which
(30:53):
really seems also to be innate in human beings, you know,
whatever their sexual state.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Among the patients that you see, why would you say
the greatest single problem in general is today.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Well, I've written a lot about depression and minor depression,
so it's a skewed sample. I see a lot of
people with mood disorders, and I think some of that
is related to their circumstances, which can have been quite bad,
you know, both growing up and currently and some of
it is probably genetics. So we're looking at you know,
we're looking at compex puts problems. There are people who
(31:31):
come in with what you're i think pointing toward, which
are these more existential problems. I think they're men who
are very successful in their career and say, but I'm
not satisfied what really is there in life? And you
point out women who find limitations in the life, and
you know you see a fair share of that.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
All right, let me recommend your book again. It is
Freud in the Eminent Lives series by Harper Collins, Peter Kramer,
the author, and I look forward to our next meeting.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Thank you, You're very welcome.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I'll have some thoughts on this, and I'd like to
explain to you why I have incorporated Freud into my
own religious worldview when we come back on the Ultimate
Issues hour of the Dennis Praeger Show.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
All right, ay, my friends, Dennis Prager here, I like
to explain to you, in light of this being the
Ultimate Issues hour and the interview, I just conducted with
Peter Kramer, the psychiatrist who just wrote this short, fine
book on Freud. A lot of religious people like myself,
who are like myself and their religiosity, are surprised at
(32:48):
my openness to Freud. And I'll tell you in a
nutshell why I explained it earlier, and I'll develop it
further now. Freud knocks one of the most destroys. Not knocks,
he destroys one of the most pernicious myths of the
secular humanistic age known as the Age of Enlightenment or
(33:09):
the Age of Reason, and that is that we are
basically good souls, we are basically good, and that we
are basically rational. And he shows how naive those views are.
He did not have a particularly optimistic view of human nature,
nor do I, nor does the Judeo Christian value system.
(33:33):
One of the reasons for the need for religion and
for the need for God is in fact, because we
are so messy inside, and it gives us a way
to act independent.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Of our psychological state.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
You may be morose, and you may be unhappy, and
you may be embittered, and you may have been wounded
by a mother or father, a spouse, a child, a brother,
a sister, or a friend. But you still have to
act in a certain way. And there still is a
good God who governs the universe. And so I take
all of his insights. I just don't end with his insights.
(34:15):
I take them all, and I realize that religion gives
me a behavioral way to live. It tells me how
to live, how to make a good life despite whatever
goes on in my psyche. It's not a clean place.
I can make peace with that. I make peace with
the fact that the human being is filled with a
(34:37):
lot of if you will, awful thoughts, sinful thoughts, whatever.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
They may be.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yes, that's right, and that is why there is religion
to help me act in a way that I don't
live in the world of those of those thoughts. That's
a great thing, But I'm not going to be one
of those religious people who live in denial or one
of those secular people who live in denial about what
(35:04):
our nature is. And so Freud helped. You just can't
end with it. He doesn't give you. He doesn't give
you answers nearly as much as he gives you the
pathology that make up the human being. Dennis Prager here
tomorrow night. I speak in in your Belinda, California and
(35:27):
Orange County, California. It's on the Prager Radio dot com
or call seven one four six nine three oh seven
seven O seven one four six nine three oh seven
seven O tomorrow night, Orange County. Thanks for listening, my friends.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
This has been timeless wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit Dennisprager
dot com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses
in classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational
Bibles
Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Here thousands of
hours of Dennis's lectures courses in classic radio programs. Had
to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. Go to Dennisprager dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
All right, everybody, welcome to the Ultimate Issues Hour, an
hour each week devoted to the great questions of life.
And I think I got a signal from Heaven as
it were, to move Peter Kramer over into the Ultimate
Issues Hour. So it's actually worked out better for you,
and it worked out better, I think, for the show,
So thank you for your patience. Peter Kramer is a
(01:03):
professor of psychiatry at Brown University, a well known psychiatrist.
And there is a there is a series of biographies,
short biographies that have been put out. They're eminent, called
Eminent Lives, and he was given the honor and it
is an honor to write the one on Freud, whom,
as I reminded you folks earlier in the show, I
(01:26):
was my nominee either he or Hitler, and I'm not
comparing them. Although it's amazing how people will pervert what
you say. I'm a veteran of having my words perverted
there in no way related, but those were my two
nominees for Person of the Century. Time eventually picked Albert Einstein,
(01:46):
which was just a safe pick. But the effects of
those two individuals, one for ill and one perhaps, I
guess I'm a mixed bag. I have been to the
great consternation of many of my listeners. I have been
a fan of a Freud. I thought the man was
the genius of the twentieth century, for good and for ill.
(02:07):
But I really believe he was a genius in opening
up the unconscious and all of the ideas that he had.
Do you agree, first of all, on the effect that
he has had on modern man?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Enormous effect, you know. I think you have to when
you write a short biography, choose one challenge or a
couple and say these are the ones I'm going to
look at. And I think what's happened to Freud over
the past twenty years or so is that his stock
really has gone down as a scientist and even as
a person of character. I think, as we know more
(02:42):
about what he's done through witnesses, you know, beyond himself,
he looks less good. But he has had this enormous
influence on how we experience ourselves, so that that contrast
that paradox, how you can be less and less respected
as a scientist and yet have this enormous influence on
(03:02):
how modern man lives with himself. You know, that seemed
to me my challenge.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Well, it is a challenge. So the question is, and
there are people who believe this, many people that psychoanalysis
and psychotherapy, at least in so far as they are
related to psychiatry, are not based on science and therefore
are more harmful than good.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well, I think psychotherapy is done well. There was psychotherapy
before Freud. Most psychotherapy today doesn't have very direct links
to Freud, and psychotherapy is still one of the really
important treatments for mental illness, for minor mental illness, for growth,
for education. But the particular additions that Freud made about
(03:45):
infantile sexuality, some of the things he said about the
nature of the unconscious just have not nature of dreams
have not held up as well as probably everybody expected
fifty years ago they would hold up.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
What do you think of psychoanalysis itself? And for those
who don't know the difference psychotherapy is if you go
to a psychologist or you go to any therapist and
you talk through your problems. Psychiatry is somebody who does
that and also has an MD and can prescribe prescription drugs.
And then there was psychoanalysis where you go about four
times a week and what is it for about two
(04:21):
hours of session?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Well, no, usually the same fifty minutes.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Fifty minutes, yeah, and you but it is about that
much a week, right.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
It can be four or five times a week, and
of course doing that is a different experience. You really
come in touch with aspects of yourself. The psychiatrists psychoanalyst
becomes very important in your fantasies and imagination.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Have you undergone psychoanalysis?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I have? I have, and it was a Freudian psychoanalysis.
I was in London, where Freud had moved after he
left Vienna. Anna Freud was still in London, his daughter.
I was at that institute where you know, they presided,
and I was a patient and I thought it did
me a great deal of good. Although you have to
(05:07):
ask was it for the reasons that people imagined at
the time, you know, was it important to bring forth
the Oedipus complex, this notion of having a sexual incestuous
interest in your mother? And being willing to murder your
father in the interest of that, you know, that sort
of thing. Is that? Did that really hold? Or was
(05:27):
it just that I was in the hands of a
very good person and given some time and space to
think problems through.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I publicly admit that if I had the time, I
would love to undergo psychoanalysis.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yes, well, I say that, and my wife says, you know,
she'd leave me if I did.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Yeah, but you did already, Yes, I did already.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I did already, I see.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
But so you're lucky you did it before you marry.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right, that's it, that's it. She doesn't want me to
know any more than I know.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Right. Oh yeah, No, I understand that I may and
it may may be better if both spouses do it
than if only one does.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I suppose so. But you know, it has changed very greatly.
Freud thought he was a great scientist. He thought that
analysis had to be scientific, so you should stand at
some distance from the patient, not be empathetic, not be
overly sympathetic, that the patient remain very anxious. And then
he had these notions of what it was you were
(06:23):
going to discover, and in particular, these repressed sexual desires
and as I say that particular line of thought has
just not.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Fair, that do you not believe in the complex?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I think the Oedipus complex is probably and many people
thought this when Freud was alive, including some of his
competitors like Jung. That's sort of a shorthand for an
awareness that there are conflicts even in the best regulated
of families. I just reviewed a book which is about
Freud's visit to America. He became friendly with a man
(06:56):
named James Jackson Putnam, who was an American neurologist helped
spread psychoanalysis in this country. And there's a funny correspondence
where Putnam writes a letter saying that he used to
have fantasies, dreams that when he grew up he would
sit in front of a fireplace and have a devoted
wife and children and so on. And Freud writes back
(07:18):
to the effect of, well, you're you know, you're Sadism
and masochism obviously are coming to the fore the man
who would not take yes for an answer, that.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
What's wrong with that fantasy?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
By the way, well it must be a repression of
the reverse.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Freud could turn anything into the edifice complex.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
All right, so do you or don't you believe in it?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
I don't believe in it in that form. I mean,
I think that what was valuable about Freud, and I
think what its contemporaries admired, was that he was very
open and frank about sex and aggression in an era.
You know, this wasn't exactly Victorian England, but it was Habsburg, Austria,
where these matters, although they were widely spoken about by
(08:03):
the intelligencia, you know, we're still somewhat repressed. And I
think bringing the possibility of conflict and desire even in
ordinary intimate circumstances into the did.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
He did he help patience?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Well, that's an interesting question. You know that his patients,
the ones he wrote about, almost uniformly did less well
than he said they did. He was working with very
sick people. You know, we think of neurosis as a
mild manner matter, but he was dealing with very disturbed people.
And researchers have gone and found these patients and they
went on to be rehospitalized and you know, have a
(08:41):
very spotty careers and so on, and some of them
lived long enough to be interviewed, and they were really
still mentally ill at the time of interview many years later,
so I don't think he had miraculous effects on his patients.
Let's say that there are patients he didn't write about
who have written memoirs and diaries, and some of them
say they did quite well with him. But those accounts
(09:02):
show some other problems, which is that he didn't really
do psycho analysis. He was somebody who had strong opinions.
He'd give people advice, he'd have them over for dinner,
he'd lend them money. You know, it didn't look the
way psychoanalysis he wrote about. It was a different, different thing.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I'd like to tell you in a nutshell why I
have always admired him because it often surprises people because
I'm also very religious, and usually people think there's a
conflict between Freud and religion. Freud himself was an atheist
and no use for religion. He thought it was essentially,
you know, some psychological construct or crutch that we needed,
(09:43):
and that basically God and our Father were interchangeable. How
we looked at God is how we looked at our father.
And many people think his worst work is Moses and
Monotheism anyway, So but I want to tell you in
a nutshell and have you react. I think that what
he said was, look, we are really messed up inside,
(10:05):
and don't walk around with this idealistic notion of the
Enlightenment that we are you know, basically wonderful beings who
have just been you know, just been you know, somehow
ruined by the the economics of our time or by
our parents. But we are really, we really are a
(10:25):
mess and that's a religious belief in my opinion as well.
Peter Kramer, the psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry, My guest
is book Sigmund Freud.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
This is the Ultimate Issues hour.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
We continue this episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right
after this. Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Hi, everybody, this is the Ultimate Issues are on the
Dennis Prager Show. You can't get much more ultimate than
the father of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and all the like.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
And there is a.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
New excellent brief biography and you know how much I
adore brevity in writing by Peter Kramer, who is well
known for writing on psychiatry. He's a professor of psychiatry
at Brann University and in private practice in Providence. By
the way of the two things, can you say which
gives you more joy? The teaching of psychiatry or the
(11:21):
practice of it?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
You know, I love working with patients, I'd say they
you know. Number two for me, probably even before teaching,
is writing. I love I write in the morning, I
see patients in the afternoon, and it's just what I've
what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
When do you teach in the evening? Uh? No?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I do you like tea during the day.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
I was wondering for a while.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I try to cram at wedge a few things, and
I got kids. There's a lot going on, but basically
it's writing in the morning, seeing patients, all right.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I was saying to you that a lot of religious
people have a big problems with Freud and Freudian psychiatry
and and the whole, the whole arena of much of
that psychotherapy.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
No, I think you captured something, which is that you know,
this is one of these figures who says rationality has
its limits in human beings, and that is a philosophical
and religious issue. And you know, science aside, whether you
get it exactly right about dreams or the Oedipus complet
that issue about our irrationality having a big part in
(12:24):
our makeup is at the center of Freud.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, exactly, I say to my you know, to my
religious audience, that he, you know, he understands how limited
we are. He is no romanticist about human nature. And
that's exactly what I got from religion.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
And you know, Freud certainly was, in a certain manner
a good Jew. He never turned his back on Judaism.
He you know, played cards with his male friends. That
been a breath every week. He told Jewish jokes. He
wasn't pretending not to be Jewish just because he was
an atheist in the sense that all scientists at that
moment were atheists. That was the that was the stance
(13:07):
he had contempt for a belief in God. It's true.
But this wrestling with Moses is also an interesting issue.
I mean, he got the theological history wrong, he got
the anthropology wrong. But at least he is trying to
do something very brave in the face of the Nazis. Here,
you know, with this change in Austrian politics, the Nazis
(13:27):
were at the border, and here is Freud saying, we
as Jews have to be honest with ourselves. This is
a new way of looking at Moses. I mean there
was something very touching about doing this, and this was
really in his old age. I mean he was he
was one of these bold, outspoken types from you know,
adolescents till death.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Give a couple of examples when you and I both
believe he's been such a powerful force. I mean, you're
the subtitle is a great subtitle for your book, The
Making of the Modern Mind.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Inventor. Yeah, yeah, he he made the modern mind.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
He did, and you know, as I say, he did
it without necessarily being right on the science. He thought
that these things like the Oedipus complex were discoveries, that
he discovered natural laws the way Copernicus did or Darwin.
He compared himself to those scientists and to Einstein repeatedly,
and I think that and to who he was. But
he captured that sense of there being a lot of
(14:24):
absurdity in life, of symbols being important, of you know,
what goes on in modern intellectual studies, you may like
it or not. Where tag team wrestling may be looked
at as a subject of serious inquiry. I mean, here
Freud was looking at jokes and slips of the tongue
and trying to find basic indicators about the culture and
(14:47):
about the human mind in these very trivial, trivial products
and trivial events. And that really just has shaped the
way we look at the objects around us and think
about I mean, to give the most humble example, say
you're on a date and the person doesn't show up
or shows up late and has some sort of quasi
(15:08):
reasonable explanation, you will think, you know, maybe he or
she is hostile, maybe there's something more going on that
even the person, as he speaks doesn't know about. Well,
that's freud, the notion of that of the un contract.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
That's such a great example.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
See, it's humbling that that's what I mean, or is
one of the things that I meant. It is humbling
to know how much of ourselves we don't know. Yeah,
that's why, by the way, I said to you, I
would love to undergo psychoanalysis. I want to know Dennis better.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Well, there's a project you Well, it is, But.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
That's the that's it's not because I'm sick, it's because
I want It's it's like we like to we like
to explore outer space. To me, psychoanalysis is exploring inner space.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
And I think that probably is why most people undertake
psychoanalysis as opposed to, say, you know, taking prozac or
undergoing a brief cognitive therapy. I think if you're going
four or five days a week, you're looking for some
real insight and transformation.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
But I will tell you this, if I were to
choose a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, that's what it would have
to be.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
I would want a Freudian.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
One h And why is that?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Because I have I would want them to tap into.
I don't think it's all nonsense.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I don't think that all of these almost Kakamami things,
for example, obviously wouldn't be applicable to me. But I don't.
I don't know that penis envy is totally nonsense.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Do you think it's not totally nonsense?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Well, I think it is much too simple. If you
think of the You know, if you were a woman
in late nineteenth earliest twentieth century Vienna, and all the
power you know, were really in the hands of all
the explicit power were in the hands of men, you know,
of course, you might wish that you had some more
(16:59):
of the benefits that manhood brings, whether that is related
to thinking, you know that you're having the fantasy that
your penis was cut off, you know, which was what
he imagined, that women thought that they were they were
in a sense wounded or injured. You know that does
seem a little nonsense.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Agal, Yeah, I agree with that in the maturer woman.
I always thought of it more than any younger girl.
And I must tell you, and you know I'm not I
don't want to saddle you with this, so you can say, Dennis,
I completely disagree, and I will never talk to you again,
or at least not publicly. But but I have viewed
much of the feminist movement as a form of penis envy. Yeah,
(17:37):
in that whatever men do, that's what's really valuable, and
so let us women model ourselves on the male model
of achievement.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yes, I do disagree with you, do you know? I
think that there's a lot to be said for power,
and if you're in a culture, and I think this
is less true now, and you know, you look at
Madeline all right, and kind of Lisa Rice and Magufacture
and so on, it certainly is less true now. But
if you look at the culture over the past one
hundred years, men have had so much more power. And
then if you go back to times when women really
(18:10):
couldn't own land or assume certain positions in the culture,
become professionals of certain sorts, have positions, you know, within religions.
I think there are lots of reasons women would be
envious of men without.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Having Yeah, but the feminist argument has not produced in
my opinion, the average woman, I don't think, I think
is less powerful today. She may have a bank account,
but in terms of her influence. Uh, I mean, I think,
for example, their women are far more sexualized in public
life today than they were in Freud's time, right, I mean,
(18:48):
I mean, look at look at look at what Miss
America contestant has to wear today compared to fifty years ago.
In terms of the skimpiness of the bikini.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Well, you know, that can be degrading or that can
be liberating. I think that's you know, that's a close one.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Ah, that is interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
We'll continue in a moment the thoughtful Peter Kramer and
will take calls one eight Praguer seven seven six his latest.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Book on Freud.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
You're listening to the Ultimate Issues Hora on the Dennis
Prager Show, talking about the I think correctly stated by
the author Peter Kramer, Professor of psychiatry at Brown University,
the inventor of the modern Mind, and our take on
Freud on psychiatry on all the insights here in a
free wheeling discussion. We were just talking about penis envy
(19:39):
and the silly or non silly notions that Freud had,
and I was saying that if I were to undergo psychoanalysis,
I would want a Freudian and that I don't fully
dismiss that notion, especially in light of my view of
the feminist movement, which I think exhibited it.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
And you don't agree, and I didn't think you would.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And then I asked you, though you spoke about women
in power, and I said, I thought that the average woman,
not Madeline Albright, but the average woman Dr Kramer today,
in fact has less power. And the average girl in
high school and college feels that essentially her greatest power,
I say, the averag girl, not every girl, is.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
In fact the flaunting of her body.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Well, let me ask this question. If you could just
drop down out of the you know, ozone and be
born at any moment in history as a woman. When
would that be? Because I think you wouldn't be in
college for most of history. This is you know, the
fact that a majority of people in college, I think
certainly in the selective colleges are are women is absolutely unique.
(20:50):
There's no moment like that in history. So, uh, you know, lawyers, doctors,
it's right, well, women have assumed more of the burdens
of men. But it's but I mean, I don't know
how you would how you would answer that. But would
you want to be in the fifties as a housewife
or or would.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
You want to be you know, Well, the truth is
I don't know. It's a very fair question, and I
don't know the answer.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I agree with the downside, and Freud would have agreed. Also.
Freud was very interesting. He thought of as being one
of these sexual liberation people. I think he was very
aware of sexual repression, but he wasn't entirely against it.
He thought that sexual repression in Leonardo DaVinci yes great
art and science, and he was actually worried that he
(21:37):
would be misunderstood as being in favor of much more
sexual directors. He actually was very much of his time
in that regard.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
And to answer your question, I do an hour every
week on my radio show on happiness.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
I wrote a book on it.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I am very very concerned with that subject. And I
don't know if the sum total of female happiness today
is greater than the sum total of female happiness fifty
years ago. I really when I say I don't know,
it's not a euphemistic way of saying it isn't.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
I really don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
But I don't know if all of that I have
Peter Kramer, I talk to women all the time who did,
in fact go to did go to graduate school, did
become doctors, did become lawyers, did become business women, And
we're and bought the whole idea that profession and vocation
and professional achievement are roads to happiness, and now find
(22:35):
themselves at thirty eight years of age alone and not
quite as easy to find a husband as at twenty eight,
let alone at that twenty two. And they say to me,
you know, Dennis, I bought the whole feminist bill of goods,
and I can't say that my happiness level is terribly high.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Well, you know, they are these scientists who say happiness
doesn't change much altogether, that it's somehow characteristic that we
have or don't have at a certain level. You know,
I think you're capturing what the upside and downside are.
I think there is less divorce, say in the fifties
and sixties, but when it happens, it's more catastrophic and
(23:15):
also harder to get out of abusive marriages, and they're
more probably more of them or is accepted.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Yeah, I was just yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
You know, it's it's a mixed The culture is very difficult.
We certainly do have problems in our culture, and one
of them is, you know, what happens to the to
the forty fifty sixty year old woman who's single and
doesn't want.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
To be Why would somebody go to a psychiatrist in
your opinion, and not a psychologist.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Well, I think medication is one of the issues, you know.
That is to say, these medicines like prozac, zolof you know,
the other ones you're familiar with, are often very helpful
in helping people get out of dead ends or past roadblocks,
and certainly to treat major mental illness. Like you know,
(24:05):
my prior book before this was called Against Depression, and
it was about the notion that depression is an entirely
legitimate disease that affects us throughout the body, and so
medication is important there. And I think the quality control
on the training of psychiatrists is that they go through
medical school, which you know it is fairly stringent. Stringent barrier.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
All right, we'll continue in a moment. Take your calls
as well. Peter Kramer, his book is on Freud. This
is the Ultimate Issues Hour. Your challenge is to psychiatry.
Are welcome to on the Dennis Prager Show.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show, and this is
the Ultimate Issues Hour. It's forty four minutes past the hour.
My guest is Peter Kramer. We're talking about the whole
world of Sigmund Freud and how he changed life and
he is I think it's a great term inventor of
the modern mind. And that is the short biography that
(25:13):
he has in fact written about Freud, and I recommend
it to you. And it is certainly no hey geography,
which is a term for biography of the Saints. He
hardly regards a Freud as a saint. I have a
challenge I'd like to post to you as a psychiatrist,
because I am a big defender of psychiatry to many
of my callers.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
Who have a lot of dubious views of it.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
But I have an increasing worry about the entire psychotherapeutic world.
And that is two it's there. They're related. One is
I have met too many people who have who have
undergone some form of psychotherapy, who have had their victim
(25:55):
status reinforced. And I believe that they literally come out
worse from therapy than they went in because they now
blame their problems on everybody else, and they now have
confirmation from a doctor that everybody else is responsible for
their problems. And the other is the whole modus operandi
(26:18):
of a psychotherapist is the opposite of anybody trying to
get to the truth. Can you imagine a detective analyzing
a homicide and only questioning one witness?
Speaker 4 (26:31):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Well, I think psychotherapy, you know, is aware of those problems.
You probably know Paul mcew, the former head of psychiatry
at Johns Hopkins, who was very critical of this victimization tendency.
And I think most psychotherapists and by the way, I
should I said something about psychiatry versus psychology before. I
have great respect for psychotherapists of all stripes, psychologists, social workers,
(26:58):
clinical neuros specialists. They're terrific people up and down the line.
I think most of psychotherapy really is to get people
back functioning better. And the measure of psychotherapy is that
you're doing better, not that you feel sorry or for
yourself or have more people to blame, but you know
that you're out and about achieving your goals. So I
(27:19):
think that you know that is is that side of
the question, and when the second part is the.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Second part is the modus operandi where you're only interviewing
one witness to the reality, right.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I mean, that's true, and I think that there's a
reason for it, which is a lot of what goes
on in psychotherapy has to do with empathy. It has
to do with not necessarily knowing the external truth, but
really sitting and seeing the world from the perspective of
the other person, and that turns out to be powerful
in ways that sometimes gets people to move off the dime.
(27:55):
But psychotherapists have thought a lot about this, and there
certainly are therapies where collateral, you know, people are brought
in either to be interviewed about what's gone on, or
where people are sent out sort of in fact finding
missions in their own lives to interview people and bring
back the results. And then there are couple therapies and
family therapies where you hear plenty from other people, and
(28:17):
group therapies where people get also plenty of back about,
you know, their characteristic ways of tripping themselves up. So
there's some variety there, but I think both those criticisms
also are are valid.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
All right, let's go to some calls. Matt in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
You're on with doctor Peter Kramer and Dennis Prager High.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Hi, how are you both doing? I just I wanted
to comment. I thought it was fascinating when I was
in college learning about freyd that here's someone who I
absolutely think is disgusting when it comes to his comments
on society and different atheistic views. But at the same time,
in an age of increasing materialism, he was this person
coming up with this new notion that there's this huge
(28:58):
cauldron of unexplored ideas in a time when people wanted
to just say, oh, it's just the human animal, it's
just the mind, there's no spirit. He actually, I think,
without meaning to, did a better job of describing what
the Christian world or and even the Jewish world would
call the spirit and the soul and the mind and
the battle between the conscience and the and the flesh,
(29:23):
better than than almost anywhere outside of the Bible.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Well, it's interesting, you know, I don't start with your premises,
but the you know, the notion that people are well
worth exploring, that you're going to discover a lot of
complexity that the mind has layers. He certainly brought those
concepts to the four A lot of what Freud did
was not truly novel. Their philosophers have gone back and said, look,
(29:46):
the ego, the in the superrego look a lot like
categories that Socrates was said to have spoken about having
to do with reason and desire and you know, social awareness,
and that what he's doing is really ancient Greek philosophy
in this modern uh you know, vocabulary. So I think
he is one of these figures in a tradition, you know,
(30:09):
in a tradition of Western ways of looking at the self.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Okay, over to Minneapolis and Thomas. Hi, Thomas, you're all
with Peter Kramer and Dennis Praeger.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I'm a I added Christian, and I think that there's
way more toward what makes a person's mental makeup than.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
The sex drive.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Mm.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Well, I think so did Freud.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
And so and by the way, so does modern psychiatry
and psychology. I think the sex drive is important. There
seem to be, you know, drives for self preservation, all
kinds of hungers. And then there's curiosity. I think one
of the one of the big things that Freud tried
to eliminate that we very much recognize as sort of
striving for competence and mastery and understanding, which curiosity, which
(30:53):
really seems also to be innate in human beings, you know,
whatever their sexual state.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Among the patients that you see, why would you say
the greatest single problem in general is today.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Well, I've written a lot about depression and minor depression,
so it's a skewed sample. I see a lot of
people with mood disorders, and I think some of that
is related to their circumstances, which can have been quite bad,
you know, both growing up and currently and some of
it is probably genetics. So we're looking at you know,
we're looking at compex puts problems. There are people who
(31:31):
come in with what you're i think pointing toward, which
are these more existential problems. I think they're men who
are very successful in their career and say, but I'm
not satisfied what really is there in life? And you
point out women who find limitations in the life, and
you know you see a fair share of that.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
All right, let me recommend your book again. It is
Freud in the Eminent Lives series by Harper Collins, Peter Kramer,
the author, and I look forward to our next meeting.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Thank you, You're very welcome.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I'll have some thoughts on this, and I'd like to
explain to you why I have incorporated Freud into my
own religious worldview when we come back on the Ultimate
Issues hour of the Dennis Praeger Show.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
All right, ay, my friends, Dennis Prager here, I like
to explain to you, in light of this being the
Ultimate Issues hour and the interview, I just conducted with
Peter Kramer, the psychiatrist who just wrote this short, fine
book on Freud. A lot of religious people like myself,
who are like myself and their religiosity, are surprised at
(32:48):
my openness to Freud. And I'll tell you in a
nutshell why I explained it earlier, and I'll develop it
further now. Freud knocks one of the most destroys. Not knocks,
he destroys one of the most pernicious myths of the
secular humanistic age known as the Age of Enlightenment or
(33:09):
the Age of Reason, and that is that we are
basically good souls, we are basically good, and that we
are basically rational. And he shows how naive those views are.
He did not have a particularly optimistic view of human nature,
nor do I, nor does the Judeo Christian value system.
(33:33):
One of the reasons for the need for religion and
for the need for God is in fact, because we
are so messy inside, and it gives us a way
to act independent.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Of our psychological state.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
You may be morose, and you may be unhappy, and
you may be embittered, and you may have been wounded
by a mother or father, a spouse, a child, a brother,
a sister, or a friend. But you still have to
act in a certain way. And there still is a
good God who governs the universe. And so I take
all of his insights. I just don't end with his insights.
(34:15):
I take them all, and I realize that religion gives
me a behavioral way to live. It tells me how
to live, how to make a good life despite whatever
goes on in my psyche. It's not a clean place.
I can make peace with that. I make peace with
the fact that the human being is filled with a
(34:37):
lot of if you will, awful thoughts, sinful thoughts, whatever.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
They may be.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yes, that's right, and that is why there is religion
to help me act in a way that I don't
live in the world of those of those thoughts. That's
a great thing, But I'm not going to be one
of those religious people who live in denial or one
of those secular people who live in denial about what
(35:04):
our nature is. And so Freud helped. You just can't
end with it. He doesn't give you. He doesn't give
you answers nearly as much as he gives you the
pathology that make up the human being. Dennis Prager here
tomorrow night. I speak in in your Belinda, California and
(35:27):
Orange County, California. It's on the Prager Radio dot com
or call seven one four six nine three oh seven
seven O seven one four six nine three oh seven
seven O tomorrow night, Orange County. Thanks for listening, my friends.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
This has been timeless wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit Dennisprager
dot com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses
in classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational
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