Without knowing it, we speak in Freudian terms. But are his theories still relevant in today's society? Kate Holmquist reports.
Lie down on the couch, relax and think of Sigmund Freud: thick round spectacles, goatee, comical Viennese accent. The preposterous popular stereotype is familiar, but is the real Freud still relevant in an age of life coaching, Reiki, marriage counselling and CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy)?
Even if you have no time for psychoanalysis, you've still been influenced by Freud. Think of that last cosy dinner with intimate friends: maybe you shared concerns about relationships and feelings, enjoyed analysing each other's unconscious motivations, shared childhood memories and strange dreams.
You may have talked about sibling rivalry, neurosis and accidents that weren't really accidents at all. When one of your friends blurted "as I was telling my husb - I mean, boss", there was a moment's silence, as each of you pondered the meaning of her Freudian "slip".
Without knowing it, we tend to speak Freud, whose explorations a century ago revolutionised our thinking about the human mind and made us more attentive to the way we articulate our inner lives. He's been ranked alongside Paul the Apostle, Plato and Descartes in terms of his influence.
In layman's terms, Freud gave us three revolutionary concepts: the existence of an unconscious; the understanding that we don't always know what drives us; and the importance of the first five years of life in forming our personalities. He also invented the first structured "talk therapy".
Born 150 years ago this month, Freud was so revered in his own lifetime that even the Nazis allowed this Czech-born Jew to leave Vienna for London, leaving behind four sisters who were killed in the death camps.
Trained as a "nerve doctor", Freud suspected that many physical and emotional symptoms had their roots in the patient's childhood and inner life. He decided that instead of imposing therapy, he would attentively listen to his patients for however long it took, a novel idea at the time and still revolutionary in today's context of quick-fixes.
Always attentive to the "slip" - the unintended word that indicated the patient's true self - Freud concluded that his patients had unconscious drives, either sexual or aggressive, that made them ill because their symptoms protected them from what they were most afraid of - sexual intimacy, for example.
Freud's theories spawned an international psychoanalysis movement that, by the end of the last century, had gained an unfortunate popular reputation as a form of narcissistic, self-indulgence for the worried middle-classes willing to pay someone to listen to them prattle on two or three times a week for years on end. New Yorkers, in particular, gained a reputation for punctuating their conversations with "as I was telling my analyst".
Psychoanalysis lasts years, the results cannot be measured and it is expensive, so in the US, where psychoanalysis is out of fashion, health insurance companies encourage other forms of therapy that get proven results in 20 weeks or less. This has consequently affected the development of psychotherapy in Europe, where the trend is for more accessible forms of psychotherapy.
Even in France, where psychoanalysis is followed with almost religious fervour in intellectual life, analysis is under scrutiny.
Seventy per cent of French psychiatrists treat depression, phobias and other forms of mental unease with a type of psychoanalysis that was founded by Freud, and further developed using the ideas of Jacques Lacan, a linguist who believed the life of the unconscious is defined by language. (Melanie Klein and Carl Jung have influenced other streams of psychoanalysis.)
The Freudian-Lacanian establishment in France is still quaking from the publication last year of The Black Book of Psychoanalysis - How to Live, Think and Get On Better Without Freud, written by 40 experts from 10 countries.
The book argues that psychoanalysis has failed the French, who have the highest per capita consumption of anti-depressants and tranquillisers in the world. Among the "victims of psychoanalysts" are mothers of autistic children who have been told by psychoanalysts that their children's disorder has been caused by mothers' wishes that their children had never been born.
One contributor to the controversial black book, or "livre noire", is Filip Buekens, who states: "the Lacanians are incoherent to any reasonable human being".
Not so, say the 140 Irish Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysts working in areas as varied as addiction, Chinese medicine and youth work.
This Friday, May 12th, the Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland (APPI) will be holding Freud 150, where psychoanalysts will be talking about their work in a variety of areas.
The APPI was formed in the early 1990s by clinicians trained in the School of Psychotherapy, St Vincent's University Hospital, where the training delivered is Freudian-Lacanian.
The purpose of the day will be to give the public, as well as people working in the area of mental health, insights into the dynamics of the therapeutic doctor/patient relationship, says Dr Barry O'Donnell, psychoanalyst and spokesman for the APPI.
GPs, psychiatrists, social workers and others in the frontline dealing with patients should receive particular benefit from learning more about the Freudian concept of "transference".
This is the phenomena in which the "analysand", as psychoanalysts prefer to call the patient, begins to project the characteristics of the parent onto the analyst, venting feelings that have long been buried.
But why should the consumer opt for analysis, which requires long-term commitment and hard work, when briefer and ultimately less expensive therapies have proven to be effective for everything from depression to phobias?
O'Donnell explains the psychoanalyst's view that shorter term therapies, such as brief therapy and CBT, may successfully eradicate symptoms on a superficial level, while leaving the fundamental psychic pain of the patient intact.
"Psychoanalysis reaches the parts that other therapies cannot," he says.
As much an art as a science, psychoanalysis helps people to answer the eternal question of "whom am I?", without the therapist imposing any set programme, subjective gender definition or cure.
"Sometimes people prefer to live with their symptom. If their symptom has gone off-kilter, all they want is to have their symptom put back," O'Donnell says.
O'Donnell accepts that Freudian-Lacanian methods "will never be accepted by the public mental healthcare establishment" but he also argues that practitioners should be open-minded about the creative ways in which psychoanalysis can be used in conjunction with more mainstream therapies.
For doctors and psychologists participating in ongoing professional training, Freud 150 qualifies for CPD points from the Irish College of Psychiatrists, the Irish College of General Practitioners and the Psychological Society of Ireland.
Freud 150, Friday, May 12th, 9.15am, St Vincent's University Hospital, Elm Park, Dublin 4. Open to the public. Admission is €50. See www.appi.ie for further details or call Mary Barry on tel: 01-4900055.