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Literature and psychology essay
Prologue The Story of Psychology outline
Prologue The Story of Psychology outline
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Many authors write works and essays on certain topics which we enjoy but may never realize that within that text there may be a different underlying concept. The concept of psychoanalysis is used by two authors in real text, Chuck Klosterman in his essay Being Zack Morris and Karen Sternheimer in her essay Do Video Games Kill?. The authors have two differents topics, Klosterman discusses why many different and diverse people can relate to one thing and Sternheimer writes about why people falsely believe that videogames cause violence, but the concept of their essays are the same. The authors use psychoanalysis to explain the motivation behind the way that people think and how they it can be influenced by many factors. On the second page of his essay Chuck Klosterman writes that in the past when he used to make mixtapes for the females he was dealing with that he once sent two women the exact same mixtape where he “expressed identical romantic overtures to two different people with one singular movement. And they both received their discs on the same …show more content…
The authors demonstrate how the thoughts of people can be guided towards ways of thinking from peers, leaders, the news, and media. In Do Video Games Kill? Sternheimer gives evidence that shows how easily people will believe information and develop an opinion about it without doing their own research or hearing information from a primary source. Sternheimer says that “only seven articles identified sociologist experts” and that “ the majority of studies produced evidence that is inconsistent or even contradicts”( 207). Sternheimer’s essay discussed how video games may be influencing teens in using violence but “Their research was was based on college undergraduates, not troubled teens”(Sternheimer 207), making the data inaccurate for high school
The article “Do Video Games Kill” written by Karen Sternheimer addresses the widespread question; are video games the cause for “young killers”? (220) Sternheimer believes concern for the influence of video games may have on youth is spiraling out of control. She puts most of the blame for this out of control concern on the media. She also writes some about the politicians and the Juvenile Justice System. Sternheimer suggests that there are other factors to blame for violent behavior: poverty, the neighborhood, unemployment, family violence, divorced parents and mental illness (218). While it may be that juvenile crimes have declined, and personal backgrounds effect actions, it cannot be proven that video game violence has no to little effect on
The professors who composed Psychological Science explain that, “For [Sigmund] Freud, the powerful forces that drive behavior were often in conflict. A key aspect of his thinking was that we are typically unaware of those forces or their conflicts” (Gazzinga et al. 570). To Freud, conflicts in the mind consisted of the never ending battle between the ego, id, and superego. The “id” is the mechanism that drives humans to seek pleasure and avoid pain. The superego is a person’s conscience and morality principle. The “ego” is the mediator between the superego and id. In fact, Freud developed a theory based on analyzing these unconscious struggles which he called the psychoanalytic, sometimes psychodynamic, theory. He recorded peoples’ words and actions to describe their unconscious desires, wishes, fears, and hidden memories. The psychoanalytic theory was later translated into literature as a kind of criticism. This criticism can be applied to any type of literature including dramas. The drama “Naked Lunch” by Michael Hollinger is a good representative of the dramas in which the reader can perceive the unconscious conflicts between the characters through the use of dialogue and non-verbal cues. The reader senses the desires, fears, thoughts, and underlying mechanisms at work behind the conversation and in turn is able to come to a greater understanding of how a person’s word and non-verbal actions describe the person’s subconscious mind.
Essay 2 Psychoanalysis is the method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts (“Psychoanalysis”). This transfers to analyzing writing in order to obtain a meaning behind the text. There are two types of people who read stories and articles. The first type attempts to understand the plot or topic while the second type reads to understand the meaning behind the text. Baldick is the second type who analyzes everything.
Hall, gives a wonderful explanation of psychoanalysis and includes Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. He interprets the ideal of how both Freud and Lacan view psychoanalysis and their similarities as well differences. The story: As you get into it, you find very interesting facts about the way human behavior can be the start of psychoanalysis issues. David S. Jeffrey, Ph.D. Psychology Concepts and Applications. Boston: Charles Hartford, 2003.
The allegation that videogames cause violent behavior in children has been present as long as videogames themselves. Some researchers said that the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, was one intense gamer. “Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech Shooter was seen by his roomates as odd because he never joined them in video games.”(Beresin) This debate will continue to go on in this country as long as there are horrific crimes that occur. There is much written in the research regarding this issue, and many differing views. The research that is presented in the next few paragraphs supports the theory that it is not the graphic video games that produce aggressive behavior, but other factors in a child’s life that create violent actions.
Video games have gotten a lot of negative attention in the media as a scapegoat for what is wrong with children. Are video games really as bad as they are made out to be? Alice Park, writer of “Little By Little, Violent Video Games Make Us More Aggressive” published on time.com, believes that video games are making people more aggressive. But within her article there are many flaws with her arguments; it makes a poor attempt to blame video games for events like the columbine shooting, racism, and hostile behavior. Park makes poor unsupported claims about the quantity and quality of games being played by children and the effects these games are having on them.
“The Columbine shooters played violent video games; that has to be a factor in their decision to brutally murder their classmates!” Society is quick to point fingers and approach unknown situations with a causal mentality that often results in a false accusation of an innocent bystander. With the advent of the video game era, psychologists have debated their effect on the minds of their youthful audience. Throughout the multitude of studies and the perpetual debate, society still lacks an absolute answer. With this knowledge, when it comes to video games and their impact on the minds of children, researchers must consult a wide variety of subjects with an open mind about the potential outcomes. I conducted my research by examining my personal experience, analyzing studies refuting both sides of the argument, trying to view the American fascination with violence through an outside perspective, and reviewing the thought processes that lead the members of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in order to gain a full perspective of the issue. What correlation exists, if any, between violent video games and the violent tendencies that children exhibit after exposure to said media? Throughout my research, I have discovered that a trend does exist, but it manifests after the child has encountered puberty because of the heightened levels of testosterone that accompany this phase of development, and the trend relies heavily on other factors in a violent disposition. The age factor generally fails to exist in the violent tendencies argument; this is intriguing in that the majority of violent videogames are targeted toward an older audience. In order to truly understand the violent tendencies of mankind, we must first analyze these ...
Violence has been around for quite a long time. Fights and wars are the interest of today’s society of entertainment. People are more likely to see a movie, where protagonists kill bad guys, over a romantic movie, where a typical girl finds her “knight in shining armor.” This also applies to how teens feel when playing games. Teens have a sweet tooth for violent games, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Kill zone, Infamous, and other violent rated games. These games are like vocabulary words in a teens’ language. A recent discussion has been brought up from the Industry of Coombes Class (ICC). A worker has noticed a few news reports stating that games have influenced shooting sprees or murders in the community. Not only that but also parents are being persuaded to ban their children from playing games. The question is “Are games really influencing teens’ bad behaviors?” Well, violent games have been said to be the cause of teens’ violent acts, but this is not true. Many times this has been proven wrong by scientists and psychologists.
According to Henry Jenkins, an American Media Scholar and professor at MIT, “young people in general are more likely to be gamers —90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play.” That is an overwhelming amount of young people. In recent years, there have been incidents such as the Columbine school shooting which have shown young people committing terrible acts of violence. In the case of the Columbine shooting, the teenagers who committed the shooting were both found to be avid players of a violent computer video game known as Doom (Ferguson, 26). This has raised lawmakers and concerned parents to begin opposing violence in video games. These people believe that video games (and violent video games in particular) can cause young people to become extremely desensitized to violence, and in turn cause them to commit acts of violence that they would not have committed otherwise. However, these people fail to realize that our youths have been exposed to violence far longer than modern media has been around. For example, Wired.com writer Michael Venables points out that many of our classic fairy tales deal with violent conditions. He reminds people that “Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves.” and “Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven.” People who oppose video games pose a major threat to the development of youth in our modern society, because video games can have many positive effects on young people.
The novels, Mystic River by Dennis Lehane and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, include many different elements of the psychoanalytical theory. According to Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalytic theory explains the reasoning behind personality disorders through one’s conscious and unconscious mind (Psychoanalytic Criticism). This theory also states the idea that things that happen to people during childhood can contribute to the way one later functions as an adult (Psychoanalytic Criticism). Both novels include characters that can contribute towards the psychoanalytical theory through the roles that the characters play in each novel. Both of the parents of the murdered child in each story contrast on how they act in the situation. The fathers both try to revenge their daughter’s death and bring justice but show a lack thereof. The mothers greatly contrast by the actions they take towards the situation, while one runs away, the other stays strong. There is also one unique character from the novel Mystic River, Dave Boyle, which plays as a scapegoat to many due to a childhood event. He has many of the leads on his tracks which ultimately lead to his death even though he wasn’t the murderer. Freud’s psychoanalytical theory displays a deeper understanding and development of the logic behind the characters from Mystic River and The Lovely Bones.
Psychoanalytic Theory itself has, what seems to be, two contradictory halves: Freudian psychoanalysis and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The first half focuses solely on the author and the unconscious mind; the second considers the unconscious, but prefers to concentrate on outside influences by deconstructing the text itself. According to Freud, interpretation is achieved by examining conflicts and symbols, such as Freudian slips and dream images. These outlets are help to determine whether an individual’s external behavior coincides (or conflicts) with their internal emotion. Freud placed emphasis on sexuality and the Oedipus complex, which is the idea of repressed sexual feelings toward a parent of opposite sex. He also defined three levels of the subconscious mind: the ego, the super-ego, and the id. Barry explains that the stages align with “the consciousness, the conscience, and the unconscious” respectively (93). On the other hand, Lacan, a follower of Freud, concentrated on the relationship between an author and his or her work. He claimed the two were inexorably connected, that objectivity is nonexistent. In an essence: an author’s personality is used to interpret the text and, in contrast, the text is used to gain insight about the author. Regardless of the emphasis, psychoanalytic criticism engages an
Psychoanalysis is a system of psychological theory and therapy that aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association this plays a vital, imperative role in the novel Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes as the main character, Charlie Gordon, uses that process to connect and describe his thoughts and feeling regarding other characters in the novel. In Progress Report 10, in the bakery, the reader sees how Charlie uses Psychoanalysis to organize his thoughts when he is put in a challenging position. Mr. Gordon is feeling surprised as he thought his friends would be there for him, regardless of the time, as he
By considering such arguments, psychoanalysis can be said to have no ultra fundamental meaning when assessing an author’s work. For former advocate of this analysis, Frederic...
Psychoanalytic criticism is where an analyst “tries to trace the movements of readers' and writers' desires in texts” (Shmoop Editorial Team). This type of criticism comes from the work of Sigmund Freud, who stated that “the unconscious is always going to crop up in everything you do.” (Shoomp Editorial Team). In the case of literary analysis though, you analyze the characters, author, and perhaps in some degree, the reader (also known as yourself). In the Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale both display rather unique unconscious behavior.
A survey of 1,102 adolescents found that 97 percent had played video games in the past day. Although most parents checked the censor’s rating before consenting their child to obtaining it, 50 percent of boys and 14 percent of girls favored games with an "M" (mature) or "AO" (adult-only) rating, which suggests a high degree of violence. Social scientists believed that children are more probable to mimic the actions of a character with whom they identify. In violent video games, players participate as a character, and even choose which weapons they’ll use while fighting other characters. Similarly, repetition increases learning. Video games involve a great deal of repetition. If the games are violent, then the effect is a behavioral preparation for violent activity. Violence in society is not solely caused by violent media. But research shows that continuous exposure to violent media causes people to believe that violence can be an acceptable, positive way to solve problems.