101 - Paul Bloom: Freud, Mental Illness, Psychoanalysis, and Cognitive Biases

Paul Bloom is Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University and Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He works quite broadly in psychology, and studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art. Paul is the author of seven books, most recently Psych: The Story of the Human Mind, some of the topics of which constitute the subject of this episode. More particularly, Paul and Robinson discuss Freud’s legacy in contemporary psychology, mental illness, human rationality and irrationality, and the roots of motivation. Paul has also recently been producing a fantastic podcast with his friend and colleague David Pizarro—also called Psych—that covers many of the topics in introductory courses to psychology, and it comes highly recommended. Psych (Book): https://a.co/d/eYNR4q7 Psych (Podcast): https://psych.fireside.fm Paul’s Website: https://paulbloom.net Paul’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/paulbloomatyale OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 01:10 Introduction 06:09 Writing Psych 08:30 What is Mental Illness? 23:40 Freud versus Contemporary Psychology 36:31 Psychoanalysis versus Contemporary Therapeutic Modalities 52:13 Is Man THE Rational Animal? 58:24 The Psychological Roots of Our Irrationality 01:17:46 The My-Side Bias and Political Gridlock 01:24:47 The Psychological Roots of Human Motivation 01:52:24 Susan Carey Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.