Freud’s theory of unconscious conflict linked to anxiety symptoms in new brain research

MEDICAL XPRESS

An experiment that Sigmund Freud could never have imagined 100 years ago may help lend scientific support for one of his key theories, and help connect it with current neuroscience.

Today at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, a University of Michigan professor who has spent decades applying scientific methods to the study of psychoanalysis will present new data supporting a causal link between the psychoanalytic concept known as unconscious conflict, and the conscious symptoms experienced by people with anxiety disorders such as phobias.

Howard Shevrin, Ph.D., emeritus professor of psychology in the U-M Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry, will present data from experiments performed in U-M’s Ormond and Hazel Hunt Laboratory.

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