Lex Fridman
@lexfridmanSep 17
Here's my conversation with Andrew Scull, all about psychiatry, its long history from Freud/Jung to today, including asylums, icepick lobotomies, electroshock therapy, antidepressants, antipsychotics, and some horrific treatments that were considered mainstream where doctors injected patients with malaria, induced insulin comas, and pulled out their teeth, all in the name of curing madness. There are a lot of lessons to learn from history here. One of the most important for me is just how incredibly complex the human mind is, and how hard the task is of understanding & treating the nearly infinite ways it can stumble/faulter. Humans are amazing. In part, because our minds are such a damn complicated mess. It's here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 1:20 - Crisis in Psychiatry 30:58 - Categories of Mental Illness 38:17 - Asylums, Eugenics, and the Nazis 50:23 - The Ice Pick Lobotomy 56:36 - Malaria "Cure" for Syphilis 1:14:52 - Insulin Coma Therapy 1:22:44 - Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) 1:42:13 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1:59:45 - Freud and Psychoanalysis 2:29:40 - WWII and Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) 2:50:14 - Antipsychotics 3:13:35 - Antidepressants 3:26:29 - Future of Psychiatry
282
202
48
1,642
250,519
Lex Fridman
@lexfridmanSep 17
Here's the links for my conversation with Andrew Scull: YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=s7d2d8Fh… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0B… Podcast: lexfridman.com/podcast

Sep 17, 2026 · 12:55 AM UTC

13
8
1
87
45,563
RelevantRecentLikes
This sounds like a profound exploration of how humbling it is to care for the human mind. I’m especially drawn to the history, ethics, and hope for psychiatry’s future. Thank you both! 🙌💙
2
104
Andrew Scull 聊精神病学的历史,从弗洛伊德到冰锥额叶切除术,这集信息量很大,值得一听。
10
frank zhao
@xyunitedOct 3
The podcast is a useful reminder that the human condition is mostly a product surface. Once the interface changes, the philosophy gets rewritten in production.
3
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me… than a frontal lobotomy.
87
you should have asked him if this AI race is connected to man's underdeveloped psyche and its primal urges of annihilation
51
Scull documenta cómo una idea "científica" se vuelve consenso sin datos. Eso también pasa en trading: estrategias que todos repiten y nadie audita. Yo publico mis backtests con números. Lo aburrido es
8
Thanks for sharing the links. I'll check them out when I get a chance.
37
Ух бля посмотрим, спасибо Флекс Ридман
39