This is interesting Freud and his work TERENCE SMITH: All right. Dr. Stickgold, how do you see him and his work? ROBERT STICKGOLD, Harvard University Medical School: Well, I think he was a brilliant man who came up with some insights into the human mind that still are very valuable today, but when it comes to his attempts and those after him to explain scientifically how the mind works and how dreaming, for example, comes about, its purposes, its mechanism, I really think it's time to give Papa Freud a rest, that the theories that he had are not from a scientific perspective of much use to us anymore today. TERENCE SMITH: Is he being over-interpreted? ROBERT STICKGOLD: Well, I think a lot of people want to hold onto it. I think a lot of people feel that if we move towards a biological explanation of such phenomena as dreaming that we're going to lose the mystery and the wonder and the beauty of the human mind, and frankly, I don't think anything could be further from the truth. I think that as we move to a scientific understanding, that that beauty and that wonder just gets - gets more intense and more beautiful. And so I think the over-interpretation is sort of holding on to something that's okay to let go of now. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec99/freud_11-4.html
