7 Random Facts - Episode 3

1- If you were wondering what new things to cook this weekend, you can always try grasshoppers. People in Mexico do it and they are a delicacy,  but apparently grasshoppers are not that safe and organic. It seems that you tend to get lead poisoning when you ate them, so do it in moderation.

Here's an easy recipe on how to cook them, if you dare. 

2 - There’s nothing like a beer on a hot day! If you want to try something new, you can always try the spit beer. Yeah, it involvesspitting. It comes from Latin America and it’s made from corn. The process is a little bit weird: people take corn, chew it and spit it out. I think I will avoid drinking beer in Latin America if I ever get the chance to go there. 

3- Witch hunting was almost like a sport in the Middle Ages and it seems there have been 40,000 to 100,000 witches executed, which makes me think that they really enjoyed this. The last witch execution was in 1782 in Switzerland, however it seems that there were still witchcraft trials in Poland at the end of the 18^th century.

4- We all heard in school about Einstein and the fact that he failed math. Unfortunately for those of us who were hoping that we can still be genius scientists even if we fail math, Einstein didn't fail math. This is a common misconception. It seems that Einstein actually had very goodgrades in math which is pretty logical since he was super smart.

5- If you were searching for the longest word, search no more. Here it is: Nordöstersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranläggningsmaterielunderhållsuppföljningssystemdiskussionsinläggsförberedelsearbeten – it had 130 letters and it’s a Swedish word meaning Northern Baltic Sea Coast Artillery Reconnaissance Flight Simulator Facility Equipment Maintenance Follow-Up System Discussion Post Preparation Work(s). I really hope they don’t have spelling contests in Sweden. Oh here’s another one, this time from the island Anglesey in Wales: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. I know it looks like somebody sat on my keyboard but it’s actually a village. One of the longest village names. 

6- Feodor Vassilyev was just a peasant in Russia. What you didn’t know was the fact that his wife had 69 children. I guess they really wanted to be parents and birth control was probably not an option in Russian village from the 18^th century.

7- Pond’s is probably one of the most famous cosmetic brands but what you probably didn’t know about it is the fact that it has been around since 1846. Scientist Theron T. Pond extracted a tea from witch hazel which healed cuts. This became really popular and when he died it took the name of Pond’s Extract. Pond’s advertisement campaigns became really popular because they had a lot of celebrities. One of these celebrities was Queen Marie of Romania who was so impressed by the products, she accepted to do an ad campaign in the late 1920s.

Here's the ad:

Source

Freud And His Controversial Theories

Freud’s studies about the unconscious had deep impact on the 20th century though. He was born in Austria in 1856 and studied medicine in Vienna. He revolutionized psychiatry by developing psychoanalysis and this “speech therapy” replaced some medicine and electric shocks that were used as treatment. Freud was also an exceptional writer, winning the Goethe Prize in 1930.

Freud’s basic idea was the fact that human behavior is greatly influenced by sexual desire, which he considered present in humans from early childhood. He argued that dreams, like neurosis, were a disguised desire and the key to understanding behavior.

He is also known for dividing the human mind into: id, ego, and superego. The id is the primitive part of our mind, where instincts like sexual desire or hunger exist. Ego is the rational self and superego is the moral element that tries to inhibit the ego with culpability.

Sublimation, Oedip’s complex or “guilt complex” are just a few of the concepts Freud came up with and are still used in psychology today. 

One idea that managed to make feminists really angry was the one regarding childhood molesting. Freud argued that his molested female patients were imagining everything. He also had the Penis Envy theory which was about the envy women felt because they had castration anxiety. He suggested that when they are 3-5 years old, girls distance themselves from their mothers and devote their affections to their fathers because they realize that they have no penis. Unconsciously, girls believe that their mothers are responsible for their missing penis. 

Another controversial idea was the one regarding religion. For Freud, religion was an expression of neuroses and distress and also a way to control the Oedipal complex, feel fulfillment, and an attempt to gain control over the outside world. He believed that all religions were mass deceit but also added that no religious person would ever recognize that. This was probably one of his most controversial statements and it brought him even more fame.

He wrote: “A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it."

His idea about death was also very unusual for that time. He considered that humans have an instinct of death that manifests itself through a need to destroy oneself.

There were no experimental studies proving that Freud’s methods worked better than the ones used by other psychiatrists at the time and soon he became less and less popular. This was a dramatic experience for Freud and he was convinced that his adversaries were mentally ill. He wrote to his friend Carl Jung that he was treating his reluctant colleagues the same way as he treated his patients. 

When he reached his forties, Freud started believing that he would die at the age of 51. He started being depressed and having more and more medical problems, so he began self analysis. The major breakthrough of his self analysis was the fact that he felt a lot of hostility towards his father and that he had sexual feelings towards his mother when he was about two or two and a half years old. He experimented with cocaine and considered it to be a great treatment. He also smoked a lot and believed that it helped him concentrate more, which eventually gave him cancer; he committed suicide with the help of a fellow doctor when his pain was unbearable.

Freud might have been an unusual character but his concepts and ideas are still widely used today and his “speech therapy” is the basis of many psychological approaches.

Further reading and references:
http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html
http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/p/sigmund_freud.htm