Bringing Basic Freud to the Whole Student Body

Several years ago as a candidate, I grew tired of being asked because of my training: “Do people really still practice psychoanalysis?”

I decided to do something about this question and approached Stanford University's Continuing Studies Department to propose a survey course about psychoanalysis. Several of my analytic colleagues helped me design and also taught in the course, which had a waiting list the first year it was offered. As I watched these students, who had no previous knowledge about psychoanalysis, crowd around the instructors during the breaks and after the course, I was convinced that this was a good means of introducing psychoanalysis to others and also dispelling the myth of the cold, aloof analyst.

Sam Chase, an experienced and enthusiastic teacher in the first course, helped redesign the course before its second year so that it had a more coherent form. The revised course was entitled “Freud's Models of the Mind: the Mysteries of the Unconscious.” Aimed at teaching basic psychoanalytic concepts to the lay public, it starts with an overview of Freud's life and his culture and then goes on to review his basic theories, using his writings as well as recent writings to explain the concepts covered. The lecturers (who now include Wendy Stern, Jonathan Dunn, Barbara McSwain, Chase, and me) cover Freud's structural model, dreams, trauma, memory, neurosis and psychosis, and a contemporary application of the theories to the clinical situation. The readings extend from some of Freud's papers to fairy tales. We also use contemporary movies to illustrate trauma and psychosis.

The course, now in its third year, continues to be popular. The online catalog and hard copy catalog combined reach over 4500 people in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are now three additional psychoanalytic courses being taught through Stanford's Continuing Studies during the year, which generates much needed publicity for psychoanalysis.

More importantly, we envision that some of these students will become intrigued with the mind and analysis and thus will pursue careers as analysts.

Our course has led to requests for consultation, speaking in other Stanford courses, and an appeal from some undergraduates to have the course available to them. Most of the students in the course already have graduate degrees. Many of them have been scientists, engineers, and others who were initially very skeptical about the “science of the mind.” Since many of the instructors use current neurophysiology to explain some of Freud's original hypotheses and others use clinical examples that everyone has some experience with, these skeptical scientists are at least more open to the idea, if not persuaded, that these theories are more than just conjecture. This in turn stimulates many more questions that keep all of the teachers thinking and reading more extensively in order to accurately address these difficult questions.

Chase and I have been invited to lecture in a course that was a part of the students' living situation. It was a cultural survey course that briefly covered Freud's works and his clinical thinking. We had dinner with the students, each of us at a different table with about 10 students each. These eager students kept us talking nonstop until their faculty intervened and announced that it was time for the lecture.

Accepted in Med School

It was this experience, plus the appeal from the undergraduate students, that led us to redesign the course once again and approach Stanford Medical School with the offer to teach the course there. It was recently accepted as a preclinical elective for January 2006. The chairman of the Stanford Curriculum Committee, an internist, said in his reply to me: “I want to take this course myself.” As a preclinical elective, the course will be open to any Stanford University Medical student, undergraduate, graduate, resident, or fellow.

The course, which is supported by a grant from the American Psychoanalytic Foundation, has the same basic design and teachers as the Continuing Studies course, but will in addition cover psychosomatic symptom formation, the role of dreams in medical illness, and trauma that results in physiological symptoms. Our goal is to inform physicians about the relationship between the mind and psychosomatic conditions so that they may make referrals with a sense of hope rather than exasperation. More importantly, we envision that some of these students will become intrigued with the mind and analysis and thus will pursue careers as analysts.

All the instructors in this course have been very generous with their time and their commitment to its development. The writing of this article reflects our combined efforts even though it is in the first person. The courses followed the same path. They began with my vision, but without the help of other colleagues, particularly Sam Chase, they would not have developed and expanded as they have.

Wendy Stern, one of the teachers, states, “It was an undergraduate course such as this one that inspired me to become an analyst.” We hope some of our students will one day say the same.