How Sigmund Freud helped shape the modern mind

Professor Sidney Bloch, from the University of Melbourne’s Department of Psychiatry, and Dr John Cash, from the University’s Ashworth Program in Social Theory, will give the joint two hour presentation.Professor Bloch says Freud, famous the world over as the father of psychotherapy, was without doubt one of the most influential thinkers of the modern world.“Freud was on track to a career as a neurologist but developed an interest in the concept of a deeper layer of the psyche where mental conflicts were repressed,” he says.Professor Bloch explains that his interest culminated in the book The Interpretation of Dreams, a work with rich literary and philosophical dimensions, and which also laid the foundations of psychotherapy.“This is why Freud is today treated as both a clinician whose work is evaluated for its practical consequences in treating certain forms of mental illnesses, and a social theorist who explored how society and culture mark themselves on the pysche