Sigmund Freud is 150 !

ISABS Kolkata Region attends Sigmund Freud's Birth Anniversary function.

The father of psychoanalysis Dr. Sigmund Freud turned 150 this year. The newly-formed Institute of Therapy and Counselling Research and Training Centre organised a day-long seminar on 'Influence of Freudian Theory on Indian Psychology'. ISABS member Dr. Amit Basu, who is both psychiatrist and a founder-member of the new organisation, invited ISABS members to the seminar, and Sanjib, Indrani, Paul and Joyce attended. Distinguished psychoanalysts and psychiatrists spoke at the seminar in the city where Girindra Shekhar Bose, collaborating with and yet differing from Freud in important ways, founded the Indian Psychoanalytic Association in the 1920s.

Sanjib and Paul spoke briefly towards the end of the seminar. Sanjib referred to the contributions of psychoanalytic theory to the study of groups and organisations, and the enlarging of the concept of the 'unconscious' from the domain of the individual to that of groups and organisations. Paul spoke on the need for preventive and applied social psychology, of the need for working with normal people so that abnormalities do not develop and people remain healthy.

Freud was the "last titan" of the great Western Enlightenment that started with Galileo and Copernicus, the first true psychotherapist who showed the way towards easing of neurotic pain and made the weight of repression lighter for hundreds who came to him. His influence on philosophy, literature, intellectual and even popular culture in the West was immense. This painting by Andy Warhol is an example.