Fun with Freud

Our second lecture of HCJ and apparently we get to have some fun with Freud! The inventor of psychoanalysis and a “scientist” Freud’s theory boils down quite simply: you want to have sex with everyone and you want to murder everyone else.

He's judging all of us, and he's not impressed.

Much of Freud’s work is based around the existence of a subconscious. The place where repressed memories etc. are stored. Freud claimed that the unconscious is made up of three parts. The trivial mistakes of everyday life, perhaps most famously thought of as slips of the tongue or ‘Freudian slips’ these mistakes supposedly reveal hidden thoughts and motives from the subconscious. The second part is dreams, and the conclusions that can be made about our subconscious from studying them. And the third part are the symptoms of neurosis.

Freud’s sexual development theory is a lot of fun. He identified stages which can affect our behaviour in later life. The first stage (from birth to 18 months) is the oral stage. During this time we are fixated on oral pleasure I.e. sucking. Too much or little (see how usefully vague this is?) gratification during this stage results in oral habits such as, smoking, drinking or biting fingernails.
During the anal stage (18 month - 3 years) pleasure is gained though the exploration of feces. Anal fixation can lead to either an anal retentive (often characterised by OCD) or anal expulsive (messy and disorganised) personalities. Let that mental image settle for a second… The third stage is Phallic (3 - 6 years). As you may have guessed from the name, the pleasure centre is moved to the genitals Freud enjoys analysing this stage a little too much. He said that during this stage, boys develop sexual desire for their mothers, he then considers his father a rival for the mother’s affection this was coined as the Oedipus complex. Since Freud, a theory has come out that there is a similar situation for girls called the Electra complex when they develop sexual desires for the father.

The stages after this do not truly affect personality and merely cement sexual desires. Latency stage: (6- puberty) sexual urges are repressed and social interaction is focused mainly on same sex peers. Genital stage: (puberty onwards)  sexual urges awaken and focus on opposite sex peers. The primary focus being that of the genitals.

Freud’s pessimistic approach to human behaviour was something of an attack on enlightened ideas that man is a rational, noble being. If, as he claims, man is instead driven purely by irrational baseness. Then to what extent do we differ from animals? Much of Freud’s work is based around Plato’s model of a tripartite self. According to Plato, thoughts are made up of reason, spirit and desire, and reason would always win out over the other two. Freud considers reason to be the weakest of the three due to our irrationality.

Freud’s own tripartite self is made up of these parts:

Id: this is our animalistic side, the id is a complete utilitarian. It wants as much pleasure as possible and the least amount of pain. It is the place that controls our sexual desires and our aggressions.

Ego: Essentially makes up our reason and as such, according to Freud, is the weakest part of the self. It is the medium between the id and superego, trying valiantly to hold everything together.

Superego: comprised of the internalised rules of parents and society. It is “the policeman in our head” that tells us to adhere strictly to sets of rules that are near impossible to fulfil. Christianity is the best example of these rules, love your neighbour etc. we are constantly wracked with guilt for not adhering to these rules.

Perhaps the most depressing part of Freud’s theories is that we are all in constant pain that we are constantly trying to deal with. This is perhaps a more personal thought, as Freud was a sufferer of chronic pain. Do I direct a little projection? Freud outlined some coping mechanisms if only as temporary fixes. He suggested intoxication, isolation and sublimation, meaning a way of finding ways of releasing pent up feelings and emotions that are socially acceptable Reich suggested catharsis as a means of doing such. And personally I find the idea quite attractive, at the very least it gives me an excuse to play violent video games with the reasoning that I don’t grab a shotgun and run amok in the local shopping centre.

So far so good…

Perhaps the most amusing part of Freud's theories are that despite the fact he calls himself a scientist, absolutely none of his claims can be proven as there is no evidence whatsoever either for, or against.

How convenient.