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You are here: Home / Psychology / #FunnyFreudFriday: The Ballad of Sigmund Freud

#FunnyFreudFriday: The Ballad of Sigmund Freud

October 26, 2012 by Edie Jarolim 13 Comments

As far as I can tell, the only time this song by the Chad Mitchell Trio  was recorded was for a live album of Harry Belafonte performing at Carnegie Hall in 1994; I can’t find it listed on any of the albums or DVDs on the trio’s website.

What do you think?

Filed Under: Psychology Tagged With: Ballad of Sigmund Freud, Chad Mitchell Trio

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lee Charles Kelley says

    October 26, 2012 at 9:09 am

    There should be a button for annoying and funny.

    Reply
  2. Edie Jarolim says

    October 26, 2012 at 10:42 am

    Hmmm. Maybe I should add that. If you vote from another computer, of course, you can put in a bid for both.

    Reply
  3. Deborah Flick says

    October 27, 2012 at 11:55 am

    I would add clever, but offensive. The line about Freud, and by extension, Jung and Adler—but mostly about Freud, creating psychoanalysis for the money struck me as, well, just a tad anti-semitic. Okay, more than a tad. Maybe I’m more neurotic today than usual or simply in the tank for post-modern ironic humor, but the lyrics struck me as something stupid, ill-informed people would say about psychoanalysis and it’s related off-spring created by Jung and Adler. Now I disagree with my first comment. I don’t think the song is clever (although it could have been) it’s just dumb. Good find, though, Edie.

    Reply
    • Edie Jarolim says

      October 27, 2012 at 1:25 pm

      Interesting analysis, Deborah. I hadn’t thought of it that way — and far be it from me not to think things are anti-semitic. But you’ve got a point. I think my annoyance stemmed from the idea that psychoanalysis and other treatments of mental illness could be dismissed so easily, as though Freud, Adler and Jung weren’t “real” doctors — which they all were.

      Reply
    • Pat O'Leary says

      May 28, 2015 at 2:50 pm

      Anti Semitic? The whole evening was appealing to a heavily Jewish audience – including Jewish/Israeli songs like Hene Ma Tov and Viachazkem.

      Reply
  4. Jacob Bruinsma says

    July 17, 2013 at 11:14 pm

    I don’t see the trio making anti-semitic statements. It’s ironic anti-psychiatry and psychiatrists as a rule make quite a bit of money. They als sung jewish folk-songs, (Dana Dana rendered in English dona, dona,for instance) and also the “I vas not a Nazi -Polka”. So the suggestion that Freud was only in it for the money had nothing to do with his semitic origins. However, the thought is interesting, I wonder what Freud would make of it.

    Reply
    • Edie Jarolim says

      July 18, 2013 at 7:12 am

      Thanks for coming by. I think Freud would have considered antisemitism as a possible interpretation. His works were routinely dismissed as “Jewish science” and his books were burned by the Nazis as early as 1933. Whether or not that was the song’s intention is a different question!

      Reply
  5. Larry Glasser (all three authors minus Bob March and Dave Lazar) says

    February 14, 2014 at 9:23 am

    Why can’t we all get along.

    Reply
  6. Pat O'Leary says

    May 28, 2015 at 2:42 pm

    Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall -1994??
    LOL! It was released in 1962.

    Reply
    • Cary Ginell says

      March 21, 2025 at 4:31 pm

      Wrong. It was recorded May 2, 1960 and released in September.

      Reply
  7. C says

    January 10, 2017 at 2:57 pm

    you all missed the last line it seems. if you listen to the last line, the whole song changes from a riff on psychoanalysis and twists it into simply being the authors anger at how much he has to pay to lie on a sofa and talk. it legitimixes psychoanalysis, as the singer actually GOES to a therapist, presumaly because he knows it helps him, but he is still annoyed that he has to pay so much just to “lie down and talk” (you have to look at it from a laymans point of view like the song does). at the end of the day he wishes sigmund freud had been differently employed just so that he wouldnt now be paying big sums to a psychologist.

    sure, it is still a sort of dumb song, but the last line puts it squarely in territory of jokes, rather than proper criticism. also, it wasn’t written by some idiots either, one of the writers was a professor of physics.

    this is kinda hastily written on my phone so theres some dumb stuff there but i think my main point is solid.

    Reply
  8. Larry Glasser says

    November 10, 2024 at 12:01 pm

    This song was written for and first performed by myself and Bob March (sadly deceased) at the College of Complexes, a Beat bar on Welles st. in chicago about 1952.The idea was due to Dave Lazar, then a law student at Northwestern Universty who also, fortunately,insisted on copywriting it. Bob and I were teenagers at the time( hence the stupidity of some of the Lyrics).

    Reply
    • Edie Jarolim says

      November 11, 2024 at 6:48 am

      Thanks so much for this comment! This song is fun — impressive for teenagers — and I hope you got some royalties for it over the years.

      Reply

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