HCJ 3 – Freud

FREUD
His theory is based on unhappiness and how we can escape it – he did this by getting case studies and using their unhappy experience as an example.

Utilitarian’s mistake is that we think we can rationalise ourselves out of unhappiness – but really we can never escape the unhappiness in our lives, only vent our pain and learn to understand it – this is psychoanalysis. We need to deal with our irrationality.

The unconscious is where irrationalisty is – you cannot get to it through your own conscious thinking, but the unconscious will come out in a conscious moment (Freudian slip).

PLATO

Direct attack on plato – freud took the tripartite self – reason, spirit desire. Allegory of the chariot.
Crucial difference – plato believed that reason could rule the others – freud thought that reason was the weakest because people are irrational. So reason cannot be in charge of the ‘chariot’.
We are driven by desires that are beyond our control, beyond out conscious mind

MARX

Tripartite self – natural, alienated, species self
Communist society, the needs of the species self would finally become dominate (teleological). Marx believes in the infinite potential of human nature – of its ability to develop, even envelop. Freud rejects this – its too idealistic, our basic needs are not benign.

Hobbes and Machiavelli 

Our deepest needs are aggression and the condition of man is war (Hobbes) – it is our human nature.

The Leviathan is an example of the superego.
He believes that through psychoanalysis he has discovered truths about the unconscious that were never know before, and this is why he dismisses plato and marx.

PERSONALITY

Our lives are full of pain and suffering out of our own internal division
Mind is divided into three: ID, EGO, SUPEREGO.
ID – animal part, aim to gain pleasure and avoid pain, the reservoir of the unconscious. ‘a cauldron of seething excitations’. Demanding expression, fulfilment, but we can never be aware of its dominance (spoilt child)
EGO – reality, the least powerful part of the personality – the voice of reason. Moderation, common sense. Who we like to think we are.
SUPEREGO – Internalised rules of parents or society. This isn’t innate. The policeman in your head (reich) is totally irrational (ID). Socialisation. An internal ideal – impossible standards of perfection, and punishes with guilt. Morality principle – often uses religion.
Civilisation is a collective superego – imposing limits on the ID – love your neighbour as ourselves is silly, and even more so is ‘love your enemy’.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

Society is full of suffering because it is full of pain – our own decaying body, nature and external world, the greater pain is the interaction with other people as we are all inclined to hurt others.

The answer is psychoanalysis – a way to access the id. But other coping mechanisms are: chemical solution (drink and drugs), isolation (temporary and only for a few people), religion as a type of sublimation (mass delusion).
Sublimation – finding socially acceptable ways of getting out aggression – football, venting our aggression. Real satisfaction. Also obsession is a part of the id and sublimation. Hypnosis, pressure method, free association and dreams (the royal road to the unconscious). Dreams show the ID.

The thought that things stem from our childhood is Freudian. General feeling of this semester – life is a curse. You don’t have a right to happiness – everything is unpleasant.

Kenny

The greater part of the mind is the subconscious, but Freud didn’t experiment enough to prove this. This is why Freud is more subjective than objective (like the scientific method) – he is not a scientist. He doesn’t experiemnt, but bases all his theories on individually differing case studies.
Sexual oppression results in mental illness. Schopenhauer = sex (something)
Jung and Reich – they both have the same idea, but more like a beta version of Freud’s theories. The idea that you are introverted, extroverted, so on. The study of the personality.