Jung, Gardner, and Freud Comparison

Jung, Gardner, and Freud Comparison

In today’s society, education is more liberal, allowing people to think for themselves and providing them with a broader education. This differs from many years ago, when education was more conservative. Education was very basic, consisting of only academic classes and no electives. People with a more conservative education would never go against what they were taught. However, liberally educated people of today can go against what they are taught, research it themselves, and make new conclusions about their studies. A liberal education enables people to deal with the forces that control their life. It frees them from the restraints in everyday life. Having such a broad education allows people to deal with such forces. Four psychologists have written essays and constructed theories that can agree that liberal education is of a greater stature than conservatively educated. The essays are “The Theory of Multiple Intelligences,” written by Howard Gardner, “The Personal and Collective Unconscious,” written by Carl Jung, “The Allegory of the Cave,” written by Plato, and “From the Interpretation of Dreams,” written by Sigmund Freud.

In Howard Gardner’s “Theory of Multiple Intelligences” he states that there are seven different kinds of intelligence. He alludes that everyone has the potential to be intelligent in an unconventional way. Gardner writes, “The question of the optimal definition of intelligence looms large in our inquiry. Indeed it is at the level of this definition that the theory of multiple intelligences diverges from the traditional points of view”(370). If one were to have a more conservative education, Gardner’s ideas would have been absurd because nobody would have understood them. People would have only understood intelligence as being smart in school. People with a conservative education would never look deeper into things. On the other hand, a liberal education teaches people to challenge what they have learned, if they do not agree with it. Gardner did just that. Alfred Binet believed that intelligence was measured by IQ tests. Gardner did not agree with this, so he did his own research on it. Because of Gardner’s liberal education, he was able to rise above those who received a more conservative education.

Carl Jung’s essay, “The Personal and the Collective Unconscious” based itself...

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...f the waking state; it is built up by a highly complicated intellectual activity. Freud went beyond the boundaries of education. Freud explains his reasoning about dreams, “[Dreams] are not meaningless, they are not absurd; they do not imply that one portion of our store of ideas is asleep while another portion is beginning to wake” (330). He took a different approach about the way he analyzed people. His liberally educated mind allowed him to get past the typical mental analysis and utilize dream interpretations to fabricate theories.

Today’s education is more liberal than it has been in the past. A liberal education teaches people to think for themselves and it provides people with a broader education. The classes that are part of a liberal education are not just the general education classes, they are also electives. A liberal education teaches people to challenge what they do not believe, but a person with a more conservative education would never challenge what they were told. In challenging what they do not believe, they can further research it. In doing this it frees people from the restraints in their everyday life, and allows them to control the forces in their life.