The Truth About Sigmund Freud

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History Hit

Scandal, Sex, Education, History, Society

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's the one we've all been waiting for!

The Oedipus Complex; the oral, anal and phallic stages; penis envy; psychoanalysis - we've all heard of Sigmund Freud's work. But who was he?

What did Freud really think about sex and sexuality? What was his own sex life like? And finally, why do we owe so much of today's understandings of psychology to a woman called Anna O?

Kate is joined by Carolyn Laubender, Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex. Her previous book is 'The Political Clinic: Psychoanalysis and Social Change in the Twentieth Century'.

This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello again, my lovely betwixters. It's me. Do you remember earlier this year when we went
0:04.6	completely mad and we did a betwixt live show? Well, it went so well that we are now doing it
0:10.7	again next year. Only we are doing two shows. We have one in Edinburgh on the 23rd of May and one in
0:17.6	London Town on the 25th of May. And tickets are available right now, just in time for Christmas.
0:24.3	Go to Fanefanef-A-N-E.com.com.
0:27.0	And we will see you there.
0:30.3	Hello, my lovely betwixters.
0:32.0	It's me, Kate Lister.
0:33.4	This is Betwix the Sheeds.
0:35.6	And as you probably know, we do like to get a little bit smutty around here.
0:39.0	But for some reason, that isn't really clear to anybody, apart from the lawyers, I have to tell you that it's going to get a bit saucy around here. So here we go. This is an adult podcast, book, my adults, to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering arranged adult subjects. and you should be an adult too.
0:52.7	We call that the fair do's warning because, well,
0:54.7	fair do's, we did tell you it was going to get rude.
0:57.1	Right, on with the show. arranged adult subjects and you should be an adult too. We call that the fair do's warning because
0:54.3	well, fair do's, we did tell you it was going to get rude. Right, on with the show.
1:02.2	Dreams of flying, dreams of falling, dreams of climbing, dreams where all your teeth are falling out.
1:08.1	Have you ever had that one? That's a weird one. Slips of the tongue,
1:11.8	jokes, painting, writing, inventing hysteria, obsession, anxiety phobias, and what is sucking your
1:17.9	thumb all about? All of these things, maybe not the teeth thing, but the rest of those things,
1:24.4	Sigmund Freud linked to sex. Of course he did.
1:28.7	He linked just about everything to sex.
1:31.5	And I guess that is all something to do with the subconsciousness.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.