Resumo de Passions Of The Mind

A BIOGRAPHY OF SIGMUND FREUD : It was the closing years of the 19th Century. Vienna was the medical capital of Europe then. A young practicing doctor was struggling to make a mark in the medical field. His experience with many of his patients repeatedly brought him to the question of the mind in treating diseases. His close friend then, a senior doctor was having a women patient who was suffering from paralysis beneath her hips. Apparently there was no clinical evidence of any pathological symptoms. As a last resort the doctor gave her an injection. Before giving it the doctor told the patient that it would either make her walk in one minute or she would die instantly. And the patient got up and started walking within half a minute after the injection was given. The young doctor was surprised to learn from his mentor that the injection contained nothing but pure water! The young doctor was none other than SIGMUND FREUD, the man who gave a scientific foundation for the study of human mind. We find this anecdote in Irving Stone?s ?Passions of the Mind?, a well researched authoritative biography of Sigmund Freud. This being the 150th birth anniversary of the great genius, mankind would do well to revive its interest in him and learn from him.

The common belief goes that Freud was obsessed with sex and all his works are related to sex and its impact on the human psyche. Nothing can be farther from truth. Sex was only a part and an important part of course, of his great study of the human mind. For example, we can take his discovery of male hysteria. Previously it was believed that hysteria is a psychic problem of women exclusively. Freud?s training with Dr. Charcot, that famous French physician, gave him the clues. When he presented his paper on male hysteria in Vienna, the entire medical community was thunderstruck and even his mentor was afraid of associating himself with Freud. He walked alone in the dark streets of Vienna after that lecture. Excessive drinking or smoking on the part of men and women is the result of emotional imbalances i.e., hysteria. Obsessive neurosis can be cited as another case, though sometimes sexual guilt may also be associated with it. A guilty person tries to ?wash off? his guilt by repeatedly and obsessively washing his hands.( We remember Lady Macbeth) Freud?s interpretation of dreams, his study and practice of hypnosis, and his immense body of scientific work on psychiatry made him a great authority in the field and he was highly respected worldwide. He could not reach top position of the medical faculty for the simple reason that he was born in Jewish family.

Freud lived for more than ninety years and even in his nineties, with his frail health and repeated surgeries for oral cancer ( he was an inordinate smoker), his will power and personality was such that his gaze at the Nazis who came to arrest him unnerved them and they dared not lay their hands on him. However, the occupation of Austria by Nazis made him leave Austria. Freud worked in London in his last years.

But for Freud, mankind would not have been freed from guilt complex that was prevalent because it was not in possession of scientific knowledge of the sexual impulse. The name Freud instantly brings to one?s mind the famous term ?Oedipus Complex?. Irving Stone deals with this point extensively in his work. All said and done, Freud was a man of high moral principles, a loving and faithful husband who remained loyal to his beloved wife throughout his long life, and a wonderful father.

For the layman who can not comprehend the complex concepts of psychiatry and psycho-analysis, Irving Stone has rendered an excellent service by writing this voluminous but extremely readable book.
SATHYA

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