Sigmund Freud

Hedda Bolgar, a psychologist old enough to have attended Sigmund Freud's lectures in Vienna but youthful enough to have treated patients until just a few weeks ago, has died. She was 103. Her mind was sharp, her zest for work keen, and her social calendar full until shortly before her death on Monday, said Allen Yasser, her longtime friend and colleague. "It took me a month to get a dinner date with her, and we were virtually family," said Yasser, a psychologist and psychoanalyst.

Hedda Bolgar, a psychologist old enough to have attended Sigmund Freud's lectures in Vienna but youthful enough to have treated patients until just a few weeks ago, has died. She was 103. Her mind was sharp, her zest for work keen, and her social calendar full until shortly before her death on Monday, said Allen Yasser, her longtime friend and colleague. "It took me a month to get a dinner date with her, and we were virtually family," said Yasser, a psychologist and psychoanalyst.

"If the whole universe had no meaning," C.S. Lewis once wrote, "we should never have found out that it had no meaning. " Pithy observations like that - rooted in logical argument - have made the writer one Christian whom many agnostics and atheists accept and enjoy. "Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis," Sigmund Freud once wrote. "Mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis. " A pithy observation like that is one reason many people are stimulated by Freud's writing, even if they regard his psychology as dated, oversexualized nonsense.

Sigmund Freud considered religion a mass delusion, a sort of group neurosis ideally suited to obsessive types. C.S. Lewis was a literary intellectual who found ways of channeling his devout Christianity into even his nontheological writings, "The Chronicles of Narnia" most famously among them. In "Freud's Last Session," the popular off-Broadway play now at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica starring Judd Hirsch and Tom Cavanagh, playwright Mark St. Germain imagines a meeting between these titans in Freud's London home just as the Second World War is erupting and the father of psychoanalysis is dying a painful death from oral cancer.

Sigmund Freud, a funny guy? Sigmund Freud, sexually confused? Sigmund Freud, the stuff of theater? Exactly so, says actor Harold Gould, who portrays the founder of psychoanalysis in a one-man show coming to the University of Judaism this weekend. "He was a fascinating person," Gould said. "The play reveals something about his frustrations, his ambitions, the process he discovered and the resistance he encountered, particularly on the sexual theories.

Helen Kraft began tracking her father's story a decade ago. She knew vaguely that he had some association with Sigmund Freud and she knew that he was one of America's first psychoanalysts. But the Alexandria, Va., woman's tireless inquiries into the life of Horace Westlake Frink, who died in 1936, have shed light on far more than her family heritage.

There is an old man we go to see when we are feeling bad or just confused. He doesn't say much. He sits behind us when we lie down on the couch. We can hear him breathing, and we smell his cigar. He makes us talk, if only because he refuses to say much. We know what he wants. Not just any old stories will do. He wants to hear about our secrets, our longings. We can start talking about the latest disappointments, the most recent crises. But we know that's not enough.

"In the past," Abe Kaplan observed, "if someone thought he was Napoleon, the chances were he would be locked up. Today he is apt to occupy a seat of power." Kaplan, professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa and a visiting professor at UCLA, was one of the speakers at a conference on "The Century of Freud" held at the Westwood campus last weekend.

More than 150 years after his birth, Sigmund Freud still haunts us. His ideas creep into our language like a symptom, or like an unconscious desire. Sometimes it's all in fun, as when Brian, the thoughtful canine on Fox's "Family Guy," wondered with the therapist if his wetting the floor was an act of aggression. Sometimes it's to deepen our engagement with a narrative, as happened to Tony Soprano, in HBO's "The Sopranos," when he tried, with the help of his therapist, Dr.

Like many married men, pioneering psychiatrist Carl Jung had a mistress. That would be one of the least interesting aspects of this seminal thinker's life if not for the unexpected reaction of his wife, Emma. She found she could live with it. In fact, she gradually forged a close bond with Jung's lover, Toni Wolff, who, as did Emma herself, became an analyst. The three, who were known to travel to conferences together, formed a relationship that lasted for years.

"If the whole universe had no meaning," C.S. Lewis once wrote, "we should never have found out that it had no meaning. " Pithy observations like that - rooted in logical argument - have made the writer one Christian whom many agnostics and atheists accept and enjoy. "Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis," Sigmund Freud once wrote. "Mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis. " A pithy observation like that is one reason many people are stimulated by Freud's writing, even if they regard his psychology as dated, oversexualized nonsense.

Even though British painter Lucian Freud died at the age of 88 in 2011 , he just can't stop setting records. In what's said to be the largest amount ever bequeathed by a British artist, Freud left 96 million pounds (approximately $156 million) in his will. Freud last landed in the record books for his lush nude painting "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" (1995), which fetched $33 million at auction in 2008, the largest sum ever received for a work by a living artist.

An Anatomy of Addiction Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine Howard Markel Pantheon: 352 pp., $28.95 Sigmund Freud sniffed it. William Halsted injected it with a hypodermic needle. Both men, as ambitious and driven young doctors in the 1880s, became addicted to cocaine. History suggests that Freud kicked his habit; Halsted never did. Halsted pioneered a host of surgical methods, the use of anesthesia, and antiseptic procedures in surgery rooms.

Lucian Freud, a British artist who gained fame for his intense and deeply textural nude paintings, has died. He was 88. Freud, the grandson of the pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, died Wednesday at his home in London following an illness, according to a representative for his New York dealer, William Acquavella. The artist's best-known works feature subjects in anguished, anti-erotic poses, their psychology externalized onto their fleshy bodies. He liked to use impasto, a technique involving the thick application of paint, to create his highly textured portraits.

A Dream of Undying Fame How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis Louis Breger Basic Books: 148 pp., $22.95 Psychoanalysis has always been a mixed bag, Louis Breger notes. On the one hand, it has produced valuable insights into topics that were previously obscure or even off-limits. On the other, it has generated grand theories that aim to provide universal explanations of human behavior based on little evidence. Breger thinks that psychoanalysis still has something to offer but that it is plagued by an organizational culture that often sacrifices free discussion for personal loyalty.

More than 150 years after his birth, Sigmund Freud still haunts us. His ideas creep into our language like a symptom, or like an unconscious desire. Sometimes it's all in fun, as when Brian, the thoughtful canine on Fox's "Family Guy," wondered with the therapist if his wetting the floor was an act of aggression. Sometimes it's to deepen our engagement with a narrative, as happened to Tony Soprano, in HBO's "The Sopranos," when he tried, with the help of his therapist, Dr.

An Anatomy of Addiction Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine Howard Markel Pantheon: 352 pp., $28.95 Sigmund Freud sniffed it. William Halsted injected it with a hypodermic needle. Both men, as ambitious and driven young doctors in the 1880s, became addicted to cocaine. History suggests that Freud kicked his habit; Halsted never did. Halsted pioneered a host of surgical methods, the use of anesthesia, and antiseptic procedures in surgery rooms.

FEELING A strange electrical charge between your id, ego and superego this morning? Interpreting last night's dreams with a little more gusto? Is the toaster looking especially fetching right about now, causing you to wonder if your polymorphous perversity extends to kitchen appliances? Fear not. There's an explanation for all this subliminal activity. Today is the 150th birthday of Sigmund Freud, the sex-obsessed, Oedipal-complexed "father of psychoanalysis."

FEELING A strange electrical charge between your id, ego and superego this morning? Interpreting last night's dreams with a little more gusto? Is the toaster looking especially fetching right about now, causing you to wonder if your polymorphous perversity extends to kitchen appliances? Fear not. There's an explanation for all this subliminal activity. Today is the 150th birthday of Sigmund Freud, the sex-obsessed, Oedipal-complexed "father of psychoanalysis."

The two men whose work most radically influenced 20th century thought met only once, in 1927, when Albert Einstein, then 47, paid a call on 70-year-old Sigmund Freud. Remarked Freud: "He understands as much about psychology as I do about physics, so we had a very pleasant talk." Einstein, responding to a friend's suggestion that he undergo psychoanalysis, displayed a similar gift for humorous understatement: "I should like very much to remain in the darkness of not having been analyzed."