Posts Tagged ‘Freud’

Stress, Illness and Points of View (1)

Monday, September 22nd, 2014

In October 2010, while lecturing in Europe, my wife and I spent a few days hiking in the beautiful Lauterbrunnen valley south of Interlaken in Switzerland.  Sometimes walking in a beautiful place can get you thinking about the larger picture.

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Sigmund Freud’s Biggest Slips

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Two weeks before Sigmund Freud’s fortieth birthday in 1896, he presented a lecture to his Viennese colleagues on the cause of the neuroses, to “show them the solution of a thousands-years-old problem.”  The evening ended in humiliation when one of the most distinguished listeners dismissed his work as a “scientific fairly tale.”  The talk even harmed his professional practice because he later wrote to a friend that a “password has been given out to abandon me.”  Though many scientific pioneers have been misjudged by their contemporaries, in this case the assessment by the audience was correct.

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