Putting Freud on the couch

A powerful thirst for fame, a fixation on sex and a prodigious appetite for cocaine -- no, we’re not describing yet another out-of-control sitcom star here, but Sigmund Freud, who has managed to find his way into prime time tonight at 9 on KCET.

“Young Dr. Freud” is an absorbing if overlong look at the forces that molded the career path of one of the seminal figures of modern psychology. Filmmaker David Grubin’s two-hour effort is split into two overlapping segments, the first, “Struggling With the Demon,” focusing on the good doctor’s early struggles to find his place in the world, and the second, “Opening the Eyes,” delving into some of his breakthrough discoveries.

The special serves up a pastiche of photos, filmed re-creations and interviews with his granddaughter Sophie as well as experts to better understand the troubled genius.

The missteps are possibly even more interesting than the achievements, such as Freud’s experiments with cocaine as a treatment for depression. The doctor became so convinced that he had stumbled onto the elixir for modern living that besides his own regimen of self-medication, he prescribed the drug for his fiancee “to make her strong and to give her cheeks red color.”

When he wasn’t busy with his 20-cigar-a-day habit, Freud’s research eventually led him to unlock the unconscious as a means of treating hysteria, the umbrella term of the day for mental illness. As he further explored the inner recesses of the mind, he locked onto the dream state of his patients, which he believed served as a Rosetta stone for understanding how the unconscious mind affects conscious behavior.

Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” eventually earned him the respect of colleagues he so desperately sought, but the doctor may have been just as pleased to find himself the subject of this TV special.