Psychoanalysis: Therapy’s Controversial Origins

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2025

⏱️ 93 minutes

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Summary

Dr. Rick and Forrest explore the ideas, context, and legacy of psychoanalysis, the often-controversial origin point for modern therapy. They discuss psychoanalysis’ early history and key concepts like the unconscious mind, repression, inner conflict, and transference. Alongside those major contributions, they wrestle with what hasn’t aged so well: the reductionism, murky ethics, and deep entanglements with colonialism and the Victorian worldview. This episode is both a tribute to and a critique of psychoanalysis as a rich, flawed, and deeply influential starting point for modern therapy. Key Topics: 0:00: Introduction: Why do this episode? 3:40: Appreciating historical and cultural context in therapy 7:15: What is psychoanalysis? 10:35: Freud’s key insight, and the five “big ideas” of psychoanalysis 18:00: The structure of the mind 24:00: Repression, catharsis, and “experiencing out” 27:35: Transference, countertransference, and defenses 29:10: Freud’s psychosexual theory and its legacy 32:55: What psychoanalysis looks like in practice today 41:05: Historical origins: Freud, hysteria, and the “talking cure” 46:45: Freud’s philosophical influences and colonial context 52:00: The moral and political implications of psychoanalytic theory 58:10: Freud’s personal contradictions and complicated legacy 1:07:50: Recap Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, [follow this link](https://www.patreon.com/beingwellpodcast) Sponsors Try Daily30+, the 30+ plant prebiotic supplement from ZOE. Go to zoe.com/daily30 today, and you’ll get a free bright yellow ZOE tin and a magnetic scoop. Join hundreds of thousands of people who are taking charge of their health. Learn more and join Function at functionhealth.com/BEINGWELL. For a limited time, get Headspace FREE for 60 days. Go to Headspace.com/BEINGWELL60. Listen now to the Life Kit podcast from NPR. Go to Zocdoc.com/BEING to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/beingwell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to being well. I'm Forrest Hanson. If you're new to the podcast, thanks for joining us today. And if you've listened before, welcome back.
0:15.2	Today we're going to be focusing on what is probably the most influential and the most controversial approach in all of psychology,
0:22.9	psychoanalysis.
0:24.8	If you're listening to this podcast, you've probably seen those cartoons of somebody lying on
0:29.5	a couch with a silent therapist just out of view.
0:33.2	But behind those cliches is a set of ideas that fundamentally changed Western medicine's
0:38.0	understanding of mental illness.
0:40.3	The radical take of psychoanalysis was that symptoms could be caused by psychological forces
0:46.0	rather than purely physical ones, and that we might not even be aware of those forces
0:51.1	as they operated inside of us.
0:53.8	It popularized or introduced concepts
0:55.7	like the unconscious mind, repression, psychological defenses, and transference, all of which come up
1:02.1	on this podcast regularly. At the same time, psychoanalysis didn't exist in a vacuum. It came out
1:08.4	of a particular moment in European history. It was shaped by the
1:12.1	philosophical currents of that era, and it was deeply intertwined, often in very complicated
1:18.1	and uncomfortable ways, with the broader social beliefs that dominated that period.
1:24.1	So this is the first of two episodes we're going to be doing on psychoanalysis. In the first half of today's episode, we're going to be talking about what psychoanalysis
1:30.9	actually is, including its key ideas and the clinical techniques those ideas led to.
1:36.2	Then in the second half, I want to have more of a meta-conversation about all of this.
1:40.7	What was going on in the world that led to these ideas and how should that inform what
1:44.9	we take from psychoanalysis today and what's maybe best left in the past? Then the next time
1:51.3	that we talk about psychoanalysis, our second episode, we're going to be talking more about the
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