August 18, 1981

The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation today announced a program to acquire low-interest, long-term mortgages now held by the nation's thrift industry and convert them into securities that the thrifts could use to raise cash more easily. Philip R. Brinkerhoff, the mortgage corporation's president, said the aim was to convert $2 billion of such mortgages this year and up to $20 billion by the end of 1982, thereby providing an important source of liquidity for beleaguered savings and loan associations and mutual savings banks. Mr. Brinkerhoff said the program had already been put into effect on a test basis and will be operating full scale by next month. The savings banks and savings and loans, collectively known as thrifts, hold some $600 billion of mortgages, the bulk of the $800 billion mortgage debt outstanding. More than 90 percent of the total mortgage debt was written to yield 12 1/2 percent or less, compared with current interest rates of about 17 percent that thrifts must pay to acquire funds.

The Government began officially accepting applications for air traffic controller jobs today. It thus moved ahead with a complicated two-year plan to replace striking union workers by resorting to round-the-clock classes at the controller training academy in Oklahoma City. At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration reported negligible effects from the first half of a two-day sympathy boycott by Portuguese controllers. Most of the delays in arriving international flights were measured in minutes, although a few flights landing in Atlanta and Miami were held up more than two hours. The aviation agency rerouted about one-fifth of the trans-Atlantic traffic.

The stock market dropped sharply yesterday as the concern of investors over interest rates continued to weaken prices. The Dow Jones industrial average closed with a decline of 10.18 points, to 926.75. The Dow, which was in the minus column throughout the session, has declined 22 points in the last four seasons. Analysts said investors were becoming increasingly convinced that interest rates would continue to remain high for some time.

SIGMUND FREUD is undergoing re-analysis. Nearly a century after the Viennese master produced a key to the secrets of the human psyche, scholars are focusing growing attention on some of the enigmas that still obscure the personal and professional life of the founder of psychoanalysis. These include the evolution of his critical theory of infantile sexuality, his long ''bondage'' to a quixotic visionary who became his closest confidant and his relationship to his parents and other family members. ''They are looking for secrets,'' says Anna Freud, his 85-year-old daughter and a prominent child psychologist. ''But there are no secrets.'' Yet stimulated by a wealth of new research and soon-to-be-released Freud letters, scholars are gaining new perspectives on the sometimes secretive genius who has been, in some ways, the most relentlessly scrutinized figure in history, beginning with his own heroic selfanalysis in 1897.

Fuqua Industries' board of directors rejected yesterday an offer made by Forstmann Little & Company to acquire the Atlanta-based conglomerate for $25 a share, or a total of $322.5 million. A previous offer made by 35 members of Fuqua's management to acquire the 12.9 million outstanding shares at $20 a share remained under review. A statement released by the board said the financing for the offer from Forstmann was ''so conditional that it was not acceptable.'' Forstmann specializes in leveraged buyouts, a method of acquiring other companies by using the assets of the targeted concern as collateral for the aquisition loan.