In the first section of Beyond The Pleasure Principle, Freud begins by addressing the concept of the pleasure principle itself, saying “…that the apparatus strives to keep the quantity of excitation within it as low as possible, or at least constant” (Sigmund Freud, 52). Meaning that humanity possess an instinctual drive toward experiencing pleasure and shielding itself from pain. Freud understands the existence of the pleasure principle, and states that it if it weren’t for various other human instincts, there would be dominance for pleasure. He states:
“If there were such a dominance, the vast majority of our mental processes would be accompanied b pleasure or lead to pleasure, but ordinary experience strongly contradicts this conclusion. Thus it must merely be the case that a strong tendency toward the pleasure principle exists in the mind, but that certain other forces or relations oppose the pleasure principle such that the result cannot always accord with the tendency toward pleasure.”
(Sigmund Freud, 53).
One can say that there is a general tendency towards the experience of pleasure that is often in conflict with other drives. An example of such a drive is the reality principle, which is a result from the ego’s impulses towards self-preservation and forces pleasure to be postponed or attained in different way.
In the second section of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Sigmund Freud begins by giving examples of how traumatic neurosis could become present in a person’s life. Freud notes two important characteristics of ordinary traumatic neuroses: “First, the weightiest element in their causation seemed to be the factor of surprise, of fright; and secondly a wound or injury received…” (Sigmund Freud, 55). This neurosis i...
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...hts. The thoughts begin to build up and essentially overwhelm the person, which leads to the unintentional harm to the relationship. The person has conditioned himself or herself to feel this way when a certain action is performed, and since this reaction has been present for years, they will continue to do so.
In conclusion, Beyond the Pleasure Principle covers much ground on Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories. The pleasure principle is the idea that humanity possesses an instinctual drive toward experiencing pleasure and shielding itself from pain. Traumatic neuroses are primarily caused by surprise or fright, and could keep reappearing in the dreams of the trauma patients as it places them back in the traumatic event that they experienced. Patients also recreate the experience that led to their current mental state through the term “repetition compulsion.”
Freud’s two stages for the ego’s development are the internal and external ego. At first humans start off as the id. The id operates on what it wants and is not self-aware, so if it wants the breast, it will scream until it gets it. The first stage of the ego is self-awareness, but it only recognizes its own wants. The next stage of the ego is the separation between what is ours and what is not, and develops in the toddler years. At first the toddler operates on the pleasure principle, and the ego allows the child to obtain anything that gives him pleasure. The reality principle, however, interferes with the pleasure principle because it makes the ego realize that he cannot always get what pleasures him all the time.
Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Pribor in the Austrian Empire (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his education in the medical field, Freud decided to mix the career fields of medicine and philosophy to become a psychologist (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his research as a psychologist, he conceived the Structural Model Theory, which he discussed in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The theory states that the human psyche is divided into three main parts: the id, ego, and super-ego (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. pag). He concluded that the id was the desire for destruction, violence and sex; the ego was responsible for intellect and dealing with reality; and the super-ego was a person’s sense of right and wrong and moral standards (Hamilton, n. pag). Freud argued that a healthy individual will have developed the strongest ego to keep the id and super-ego in check (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. p...
Sigmund Freud’s theories on the construction of the mind are simple, but fundamentally changed the field of psychology. He proposed, among other things, that the human mind is composed of three parts: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. The preconscious consists of information, such as a telephone number, that is “accessible to consciousness without emotional resistance” (Schellenberg 21). In Freud’s estimation, the unconscious is the most important area of the mind. The information stored within it has “very strong resistances” to becoming conscious (Freud 32). Residing in the unconscious is the id, which “contains everything…that is present at birth… – above all, therefore, the instincts which originate from somatic organization” (14). From birth, all action is instinctual, from the id. The id recognizes and entertains no desires but its own and is impatient to have its needs met. This phase lasts until a part of the id changes “under the influence of the real external world” (14). This changed portion b...
Contemporary Psychology, 36, 575-577. Freud, S. (1961). The Species of the World. The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. London: The Hogarths.
Freud developed his theory from interactions with his neurotic patients and his own psychological experiences. He classifies an obsessional neurotic is classified as one who if “aware of impulses in [himself] which appear very strange,” is “led to actions, the performance of which, give him no enjoyment, but which it is quite impossible for [him] to omit” (Freud Abstracts 2). In Frankenstein’s ...
For example, Carlisle (1993) understood, “Dissociation, fantasy, and compartmentalization enhance personality and behavioral differences” (p. 25). Moreover, in “Extreme cases of childhood trauma psychological issues can emerge” (p. 26), soliciting memories hidden in the subconscious later resting in the concepts of self and identity. Whereby, the relationship between dissociation, repression, and self could be due to libido suppression. Porter (2013) explained, Jung deduced, individual choices are subjective and suggestive residing at the “Core of the spiritual self” (p. 249). When there is a lack of libido, depression may arise, and the unconscious will attempt to direct the conscious energy in a rational direction. For example, if a person is hungry, sleepy, or desires sex, the libido energy force tries to fulfill those needs through objects. Each object holds distinct values for one’s subjective judgments and tendencies,...
Freud, S., Strachey, J., Freud, A., Rothgeb, C., & Richards, A. (1953). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (1st ed.). London: Hogarth Press.
During the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, a psychologist named Sigmund Freud welcomed the new age with his socially unacceptable yet undoubtedly intriguing ideologies; one of many was his Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams. Freud believed that dreams are the gateway into a person’s unconscious mind and repressed desires. He was also determined to prove his theory and the structure, mechanism, and symbolism behind it through a study of his patients’ as well as his own dreams. He contended that all dreams had meaning and were the representation of a person’s repressed wish. While the weaknesses of his theory allowed many people to deem it as merely wishful thinking, he was a brilliant man, and his theory on dreams also had many strengths. Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind enabled him to go down in history as the prominent creator of Psychoanalysis.
The psychodynamic approach lends itself to being a controversial yet highly influential theory in the history of psychology. The theory has become one of the most significant psychological approaches and its originator, Sigmund Freud, has become a major influence in modern psychology. The psychodynamic approach largely focuses on motivation and past experiences which develop and individual’s personality. Freud used the iceberg metaphor to outline the three states of consciousness and argued that only twenty percent of the mind represents the conscious. In addition he theorised that there was a pre-conscious mind which represents general memory. Finally, the unconscious mind which is essentially the reservoir of repressed or hidden experiences and desire.
“The period from 1700 to 1840 produced some highly sophisticated psychological theorizing that became central to German intellectual and cultural life, well in advance of similar developments in the English-speaking world” (Bell i). Some of the psychologists that have helped German literature, advanced are Sigmund Freud, Karen Horney, and Carl Rodgers. Originally, Sigmund Freud studied personality and developed a theory of neurosis and later, Karen Horney built upon his theory, changing some ideas, making her own theory of neurosis. Using Horney’s newer concepts of neurosis, and additional psychological notions from other psychologists, one can apply these to the German literary work, “The Sufferings of Young Werther.”
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was based on the opinion that human personality is made up of three components: the id, ego and superego. These three components are arranged along a hierarchy order with the id at the basal end, the ego in the middle and the super ego at the pinnacle. The id at the base, seeks instantaneous pleasure and fulfillment, driven by the pleasure principle. The id wants what it wants, when it wants it; regardless of whether or not it is possible to satisfy that particular want or need. The presence or logics of reality or societal behavior has no effect on the id. For example, if an infant is thirsty and sees a bottle of water he will take the bottle and drink even if it belonged to someone else and he did not
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian psychoanalyst in the twentieth century whose studies and interests were focused on psychosexual behavior, psychosocial behavior, and the unconscious. He blames incestual desires and acts on neurosis and believes neurotics were victimized and molested in their youth. Congruently, this is his explanation for sexual urges in children. He watched psychiatrists fail at inventions of electrical and chemical treatments for mental disorders, only for them to turn to treatments that followed concepts of psychoanalysis. Even though drugs diminish symptoms of suffering he believed psychoanalytic or talking therapy would truly restore a patient’s self-esteem and welfare. As quoted by Ernst G. Beier:
They suggest that Freud’s observational data consisted of a patient’s disorders and the absence of conscious contents which would appear during the psychoanalytic talking-cure. With this fundamental basis Freud formulated a theory which leads to the belief that the repressed unconscious thoughts in essence caused the disorders. (Talvitie & Tiitinen, 2006) Talvitie and Tiitinen modify the historical realm of psychoanalytic terms of repressed contents and the meta-psychology towards the present era using neurophysiological and empirical studies of consciousness, which focus more on the dynamic systems approach and one’s consciousness, memory, attention, and self. (Talvitie & Tiitinen,
Deep in the minds of human beings lies a vast ocean of emotions and experiences. The human mind is often misconstrued and simplified by those who possess one, but delving deeper into the mind and it’s processes you see a whole other world that is veiled beneath the surface. One of the most famous examples of the human mind is the image of an iceberg, what is on the surface is so minimal compared to the immense body that lies underneath. Sigmund Freud was the father of psychoanalysis and believed in the idea of the unconscious and subconscious that help power who we are. Through psychoanalysis Freud began to reclaim the self as an individual and stressed the importance of the external world and it’s direct role with the internal realm of an individual. Although it was originally found to be a sort of therapy for those with mental illnesses, it has an interesting and analytical and philosophical view of the self, and through this spawned new beliefs in philosophy. Through the establishment of the id, superego, and ego, and the past’s affect on the shaping the present state of the self, psychoanalysis reclaims the self for an individual and is successful in doing so.
Before long, however, he faced patients whose disorders made no neurological sense. For example, a patient may have lost all feeling in one of their hands, but there is no sensory nerve that would numb their entire hand and nothing else when damaged. Freud’s search for a cause for such disorders set his mind running in a direction destined to change human self-understanding. He believed that some neurological disorders could have psychological causes. By observing patients with these disorders, Freud was led to his discovery of the unconscious (Myers & Dewall, pg# 573, 2015). Furthermore, he theorized that the lost feeling in the individual’s hand might have been caused by a fear of touching their