The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

So in one of my classes the other day, I was reviewing for a test we were having the next day and most of the students were listening. One of my students, however, was clearly not listening. In fact, she was sitting at her desk writing a note to her friend with a pacifier in her mouth.

I stopped and said to her, "You know, Freud would have a field day with you." She clearly had no idea what I was talking about and so I asked the rest of the class if any of them had heard of Sigmund Freud. None of them had.

I briefly explained that he is considered to be the first psychoanalyst and that he had a theory that we all go through developmental stages. One of the stages is the oral stage and another stage is the anal stage and in order to be a fully developed person you have to move through all of these stages. If you haven't developed properly then you get stuck in one of the stages, and end up with a fixation of sorts.

I was met with blank stares, except for the one's who were laughing like Beavis and Butthead saying, "heh heh, you said anal. Heh heh, she's definitely stuck in the oral stage, mista."

Then one of the students says, "So this Freud, is he the school psychologist?" At this point I realized that this teachable moment was perhaps a little above their heads. I replied, "No, he was from the 1800s. He was considered the first psychologist," and then I dropped the subject to continue the review.

This reminds me of a joke Robin Williams told at the Golden Globes the other day: "You know what Freud says. If it's not one thing, it's your mother." I guess that joke goes over better out loud.