In the New York Psycho-Analytic Society, when someone uses the pronoun 'he', it's almost always a reference to Freud. The favorite son of his mother often feels like a conqueror in life. Shockley's mother wrote in her diary that she wants to pass on a feeling of force and responsibility to her eight-year-old son, Billy. It's unusual for a mother to have such desires for her young child.
Why is Silicon Valley where it is? How did a narrow valley in California become the epicenter of the computer age? People usually say it’s because of Stanford, or the weather. But the answer may be something much more … Freudian. In this episode, Malcolm puts William Shockley—inventor of the transistor, winner of the Nobel Prize, father of Silicon Valley—on the couch.
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