Safari freezes

I've had my MacBook for about 1.5 years and I've recently discovered that Safari freezes for no apparent reason. It's not just when watching videos or visiting a certain site.

It freezes and I click+control on the safari icon. For the first 10 (or 20) times it will only give me the option to "force quit". It will only successfully load a page after I have clicked on the icon to close and it gives me the option to "quit" and not force it to. I have restarted and tried again but that usually doesn't do any good. It does the same thing with itunes but not as often.

I updated Safari and have updates scheduled but this isn't unique to the most recent update. This has happened for over a year but just recently has it been so bad that I literally throw up from anxiousness. I'm a full time student and I do A LOT of research. I put my photos and past research papers on flash drives (and email myself copies) so I'm not keeping junk I don't need on it.

Any ideas on what could be causing this?

1. make sure you're using the correct version of Flash for that version of Safari. Unfortunately, there is no easy fix for the Apple/Adobe conflict.

2. repair permissions, preferably using OnyX Titanium Software for your MacOS version.

3. try an alternative browser. FireFox is usually the recommended one, but there's the latest release of Opera to consider as well.
Example: I tried watching a video news clip with Safari - absolute crud! Used the same link in Camino (FFox's little brother) - much better. And Camino is a lightweight compared with other browsers!]

4. iTunes? That may be rectified after permissions repair.

Last - please post your full Mac specs, either in your Profile or in a Signature. That way we can help you better.