Philosophy-3 Flashcards
Problematic of the Unconscious
What controls the psychic life? Is it our unconscious? Or is psychology completely controlled by the conscious?
The Unconscious
Hypothetical region of the mind that contains memories, wishes, fears, thoughts.. prevented from expression in conscious awareness but manifest in dreams, dissociated acts and neurotic symptoms.
Early psychology VS Sigmund Freud
Before Freud’s coherent theory of the unconscious in the late nineteenth century, many philosophers believed in the doctrine of unconscious motivational tendencies that existed outside the realm of consciousness, in spite of its rejection in early psychology.
(ex: Wilhelm Wundt studied conscious experience through introspection)
“Freudian Unconscious”- father of the Psychoanalytic approach
Believed that the unconscious is the major motivating force in life because it stores repressed memories, painful emotions, instinctual drives, infantile wishes, and desires hidden from the conscious awareness.
Freud’s psychoanalysis
To bring repressed/governed unconscious thoughts/feelings into consciousness to allow the ego to confront and resolve them.
Techniques used: free association, dreams, slips of the tongue, memory lapses, transferences..
Free association
Patient relaxes, letting their mind wander freestanding talk about whatever comes to it. The analyst then tries to place the significance of these verbalizations.
A patient might show unwillingness to talk about certain things but it is essential to bring them into his consciousness.
Dreams
Freud relied heavily on dream interpretations because he believed them to be disguised expressions and symbolic representations of our innermost fears and desires.
Latent VS Manifest
The 2 contents of a dream: the latent/hidden content is what the dream really means–> a psychoanalyst tries to unmask that from the conscious manifest.
Parapraxes
Errors interpreted such as slips of tongue or pen, memory lapses, mishearing, misreading.. loaded with relations to the anxious unconscious.
Freud’s theory of personality
He suggested that different people deal with their fundamental drives in different ways. Freud likened the mind to an iceberg where the conscious is just the tip and the unconscious is the bigger bottom part.
The iceberg of personality
●ID: primitive/irrational- constitutes instinctual sexual desires (libido), demans immediate satisfaction, and is dominated by the “pleasure principle”.
●EGO: conscious/rational- chooses actions that gratify the ID impulses without having undesirable social consequences (mediator), dominated by the “reality principle”.
●SUPEREGO: conscience for the ego- develops via exposure to society. Often in conflict with the id. (ex: angel and devil on shoulders)
Good mental health requires all 3 elements to be in harmony.
(Failure to do that may lead to neurosis)
Personality development
From the beginning, infants are driven in their actions by the desire for bodily sexual pleasure.
Any excess gratification or frustration leads to complexes later in life and a difficulty to transition to the next stage.
Psychosexual stages of personality development:
●oral stage: pleasure derived through the action of suckling.
●anal stage: 1–>3 years, plaseure associated with the act of defacation.
●phallic stage: 3–>6 years, “Oedipus Complex”; sexual attraction to opposite sex parent and hatred for same sex parent. (ex: a boy that age could imotate his father and project feelings towards his mother, wants to “possess her”).
●latency period: 7–>11 years, less concern with their bodily desires and turn to cope with their environment.
●genital stage: around puberty, pleasure drive refocused around the genital area.
Defense mechanisms
Strategies used by the mind to prevent conflict and reduce anxiety and for the ego to reconcile reality with the demands of the id and superego.
(Ex: repression, regression, fixation, sublimation…)
Criticism of Freud’s theory of the Unconscious
May be criticized for centralizing sexual drives in all human actions (pathogenic unconscious), and for minimizing the role of the Conscious and enslaving it to the dominating unconscious–> this denies the conscious’s ability to choose, plan, organize, distinguish between good and bad, and ultimately questions our humanity.
