Sigmund Freud was a strange dude. The father of psychoanalysis must have had more than a few problems of his own. Let’s examine some aspects of his life and you be the judge:
- While at the University of Vienna, he spent 4 weeks dissecting hundreds of eels in an unsuccessful search for their male reproductive organs. ( I guess I don’t have Freud’s intellectual curiosity because I would have called it a day before the first eel)
- Freud developed the idea of stages of development i.e. oral, anal, and phallic. (Looks like we know what was on his mind).
- Freud believed all children have an ‘Oedipal complex’, which includes a desire for sexual relations with a parent. ( speak for yourself Sigmund)
- Freud was addicted to tobacco, even after being diagnosed with cancer of the mouth. Freud believed addictions were a substitute for masturbation. (Now why didn’t I ever think of using that as a reason to get patients to stop smoking?)
- Not exactly a darling of the feminist movement, he came up with the idea of girls having ‘penis envy’. (I wonder why he didn’t think boys have ‘breast envy’.)
- Freud recommended cocaine as a treatment for depression and morphine addiction. He used it himself for his own depression, and also got several of his friends addicted.
- Freud was Jewish and experienced anti-Semitism throughout his life. He thought that was part of what made him see things differently. He became atheist and felt religion was just an illusion. He was also pessimistic about the future of civilization. (Without God, I understand the pessimism. Also, if religion was just an illusion, does that mean the anti-Semitism was just an illusion too?)
- Freud moved to London to escape Nazism. He died in 1939, right before Hitler really got going. This is a shame as I would have loved to see Freud’s explanation for Hitler. (It probably would have been that Hitler was mad at the world due to ‘penis envy’.)
Freud’s work is responsible for the classic notion of a psychiatrist sitting and talking with a patient who is lying on a couch 
and reliving their childhood to find the source of their problems. Most modern psychologists are no longer doing Freudian psychoanalysis. Instead, the focus is on CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) which tries to change thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. CBT may be combined with medications. CBT makes more practical sense by treating patient’s present and future emotions, rather than reviewing the past.
Most, if not, all of us have had times in our lives filled with thoughts of depression, anxiety, or poor self-image. We have negative thoughts at these times and often mentally beat ourselves up over past and current issues. Some event or series of events probably got these negative thoughts started. Possibilities include:
- Some sort of past abuse
- Suffering a loss
- Fear
- Alcohol or drug use
- Past criticism
- Letting someone down
- An illness
- Relationship problems
- Failure to perform as expected
- Regretting something that we did
- Regretting something that we didn’t do
Now, one could spend hours, days, or even a lifetime reliving the past trying to figure out where our negative thoughts started – a la Freud. Whether we figure it out or not, the real question is what are we going to do about it going forward? The answer is that we need to let go, accept it, and change the negative thoughts to positive thoughts. CBT, which was introduced in the last blog, has tools that can be used to make it happen.
Our negative thoughts frequently involve beating ourselves up over something we did or didn’t do. We must learn to forgive ourselves in order to stop these negative thoughts. CBT asks us to look at the situation as if it was your friend instead of you. Almost all of the time, we would say that we would tell a friend that whatever happened was not a big deal and we should just forgive, forget, and move on. This technique is very successful. But what if we really did something seriously wrong and we are not able to forgive ourselves? This is where adding the application of Christian faith to CBT is essential. Let’s look at 3 advantages of the Christian faith that can turn our lives to the positive:
First, forgiveness is a paramount In the Christian faith. After all, Jesus died for us so that our sins are forgiven. Moreover, if God forgives, we really must forgive ourselves. If God forgives us and we don’t forgive ourselves, then we’re really saying that our opinion is more important than God’s. Therefore, we need to forgive ourselves, turn to positive thoughts, and use it to move forward to serve God.
The second attribute of the Christian faith that we should utilize is the concept of eternity. No matter what the problem is, ask yourself is it really going to matter 5, 10, 50, 100 or more years from now? Thanks to God’s saving grace, the answer will be no. Will we all get along in heaven? …the answer is yes. Will there be grudges or shame in heaven? … The answer is no as Christ has lifted us all up.
Third, God gave us a purpose to our lives, which is to serve Him. We serve Him by sharing Christ’s teaching, 
which includes helping each other, spreading love, peace, hope, faith, and sharing His Word. This positive purpose to our lives should provide us the drive and need to move forward in positive fashion. We don’t accomplish the purpose by moping, worrying, and agonizing over negative thoughts.
I encourage you to employ all of these concepts, get off the couch, pat yourself on the back, and move forward.
Next time: Gratitude
Now I have heard some doctors say that CBT and faith are not really compatible. The reasoning was that faith relies on the spiritual belief while CBT relies on western scientific deduction. They felt CBT was what people should turn to when faith was not working to solve the problem.
I’m a sports fan. I Grew up in the 1960’s watching sports-all sports, but mostly baseball, basketball, and football. In baseball, I was a San Francisco Giants fan back when they had Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal. Willie Mays was my favorite; he was a great hitter and could run and catch balls over his shoulder long before Odell Beckham Jr. was even born. He was certainly one of the best players ever. He also did all of this growing up as a black kid in a segregated America. I love seeing someone overcoming such adversities – really something to admire.
much easier to criticize others. In the old days, people actually talked to each other and therefore chose their words more carefully. Being insulting and critical is simple to do via electronic communication and hard to do via old fashioned, ‘real’ communication. Some in our neighborhood are taking advantage of this electronic simplicity and criticizing the innocent and kicking others when they are down. There have been extreme cases of this sort of cyber-bullying in the news that have even led the victims to suicide.
Consider this:
contact suggestions.
There was a study done of commuters using either trains or buses. They were divided into 3 groups: one group was told to talk to strangers, one group was told to sit in solitude, and one group was told to do their normal commute. Going into it, the ones told to talk to strangers thought it would be a negative experience but they actually reported the most positive experience and an improved sense of well-being.5
like that is becoming more and more the case. Families are fractured-single parent homes for instance. Liberals vs conservatives. Red states vs blue states. Politically correct vs incorrect. Everywhere public discourse is becoming less and less civil. Disagreement all over the place. Everybody has their own idea of what they think is important.
eople are made to have relationships. The amazing thing is how good relationships can have a positive benefit on our physical health. Let’s look at some of the data1:
epression is one of the most common complaints that I see in my general internal medicine practice. Some of these patients are in a very dark mood with a variety of problems such as chronic pain, debility, job problems, financial problems, loss of a loved one, social isolation, and suffered physical and verbal abuse. Time and time again I’ve heard people tell me that it is their faith that keeps them afloat; it is their faith that has helped them endure and fight off any suicidal thoughts.
church visits. So, from a pure numbers standpoint, is going to church worth it? Well, if you go to church routinely, then let’s assume you spend 2 hours every week, for 50 weeks a year gives us 100 hours a year spent on church services (this could be more if your clergy is extremely long-winded). If the average life is about 80 years, then 80 times 100 gives us 8000 hours over a lifetime as a ballpark figure for us to spend going to church. There are 8760 actual hours in a year. That means that if you attend church regularly, then you spend about a year of your life going to church.
are less than 50%11). Faith is key to improving not only the health, but also the quality of life of these people.