Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Weaknesses in Freud's theory
Contribution of sigmund freuds infield of psychology
Contribution of sigmund freuds infield of psychology
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Weaknesses in Freud's theory
Sigmund Freud was a psychologist known as the ‘father of psychoanalysis’ who believed that our sense of moral understanding is a result of the conditioning of a growing being.
He argued the human mind or ‘psyche’ is split into three parts; the id, which contains basic and primitive, desires e.g. hunger, thirst and lust; the ego, which involves perceptions of the external world that makes us aware of the ‘reality principle,’ one’s most outward aspect of our personality, and the super-ego, which contains the conscience that punishes bad behaviours with guilt, and the ego-ideal that praises good actions. Freud reasoned that in order for the psyche to be healthy there must be balance between the ego and the super-ego, hence Freud claimed that beliefs founded on religion were part of an ‘adolescent stage in the development of the human race from which humanity should free itself.’
Freud formulated a theory of religion that he explains in Totem and Taboo, which was influenced by works such as Robertson-Smith’s Religion of the Semites, Darwin’s The Descent of Man, and Frazer’s The Golden Bough. He highlights that guilt plays a fundamental role in the psyche. Guilt must have had an original cause. At one point in history, there must have been a violation of the law which created an ‘inherent’ sense of guilt. Freud continues to trace this back to when human were a group called a ‘primal horde’. In these groups of early humans, there was always a dominant male, for example, like in wolf packs. Moreover, he centres his theory on guilt that originates with the Oedipus complex, where the younger males became jealous of the alpha male having choice over the woman he has as his partner. This horde acts as an ideological state apparatus, forc...
... middle of paper ...
...ent? On the basis of Feuerbach's analysis, it is not simply Christianity, but atheism itself, which can be regarded as a projection of human hopes.
In conclusion, Freud (and subsequently his theories) addresses religion very much in the biased way of seeing it as a crutch to the weak, a coping mechanism. This pessimistic perspective is actually paradoxical, as many people take an interest in religion as an informed choice, because of growing up with it or on a feeling. He does make some valid points in term of the non-conformist era and makes a great model of the mind that took into account various biological, psychological and social factors, however in our modern age, society is too diverse an people have too many Individual differences to make comparisons such as these, so the extent to which Freud contributes to the study of religion is limited if not outdated.
In the Second Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals (titled ““Guilt,” “Bad Conscience,” and the Like”), Nietzsche formulates an interesting conception of the origin and function of guilt feelings and “bad conscience.” Nietzsche’s discussion of this topic is rather sophisticated and includes sub-arguments for the ancient equivalence of the concepts of debt and guilt and the existence of an instinctive joy in cruelty in human beings, as well as a hypothesis concerning the origin of civilization, a critique of Christianity, and a comparison of Christianity to ancient Greek religion. In this essay, I will attempt to distill these arguments to their essential points.
Religion has been a controversial topic among philosophers and in this paper I am focusing
Ananya digs deeper into the psychological root of guilt. She uses this quote of Sigmund Freud as a base for her theory
Similar to Marx, Freud believes humans simply make up the idea of God in explanation to things science could not disprove. Humans take relationships from our Earthly fathers and compare it to our Heavenly father. According to Freud, “Religion is an attempt to master the sensory world in which we are situated by means of the wishful world which we have developed within us as a result of biological and psychological necessities.” (H/R,p.26) Science can neither prove or disprove religion. Freud chooses to believe science and claims religion is only comforting and hopeful thinking to our purpose after
Freud was born into a family that practiced Orthodox Judaism they were above all religious to their core. In his youth, Freud read and learned from the ancient Hebrew Scriptures.
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...
In the first two chapter of the book, Freud explores a possible source of religious feeling. He describes an “oceanic feeling of wholeness, limitlessness, and eternity.” Freud himself is unable to experience such a feeling, but notes that there do indeed...
In the midst of his already successful career, Sigmund Freud decided to finally dedicate a book of his to religion, referring to the subject as a phenomena faced by the scientific community. This new work, Totem and Taboo, blew society off its feet, ultimately expanding the reaches of debates and intellectual studies. From the beginning, Freud argues that there exists a parallel between the archaic man and the contemporary compulsive. Both these types of people, he argues, exhibit neurotic behavior, and so the parallel between the two is sound. Freud argues that we should be able to determine the cause of religion the same way we determine the cause of neurosis. He believes, since all neuroses stem from childhood experiences, that the origins of this compulsive behavior we call religion should also be attributed to some childhood experiences of the human race, too. Freudian thought has been dominant since he became well known. In Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, religion becomes entirely evident as a major part of the novel, but the role it specifically plays is what we should question. Therefore, I argue that Freud’s approach to an inborn sense of religion and the role it plays exists in The Last of the Mohicans, in that the role religion plays in the wilderness manifests itself in the form of an untouchable truth, an innate sense of being, and most importantly, something that cannot and should not be tampered with.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), is the founder of the psychodynamic approach. He proposed that human behaviour is influenced by unconscious thoughts, formed in early development and childhood (Gross 2005) and that all behaviour has a cause or reason, meaning the unconscious part of the mind to be constant conflict with the conscious (McLeod 2015). Freud put forward the theory that human consciousness is made up of three parts, the tripartite personality, consisting of the id, ego and super ego (Gross 2005). Freud
Freud had a preoccupation with death and suffering. He lived with great personal pain and during a time in history of war and death. From the burning of his books to the murder of his sister and dispersal of his family from their homes, Freud experienced the effects of human depravity by the efforts of Nazi ideology. His preoccupation with death and suffering was justifiable be, but he needed a rationale for why this problem of pain existed, and how men should to respond to it. Through personal struggle with pain, Freud examined his own psyche. He had a dichotomous desire for his own death. One the one hand he wished for immortality, but on the other hand he wished for an end to suffering through death. He chose to reject beliefs of heaven, hell, paradise and immortality on the basis that these ideas were only childhood fantasies. Freud found it preferable to esteem the work of thought as an end. Seeking comfort through “child-hood fantasy” was not an option, according to him. He said that he could not “face the idea of life without work. What would one do when ideas fail...,” and that it would be “impossible not to shudder at the thought.” His rejection of a real God caused his understanding of how and why the problem of pain existed to be limited to the realm of human invention. Freud theorized that guilt was at the heart of antisemitism. He wrote, “Moses and Monotheism” for this very purpose. According to his theory, Christianity was invented in order to relieve the unbearable guilt that the world experienced. Judaism, however, rejected this solution for the relief of guilt and consequently the world “repays Judaism with eternal hatred.” Despite his determined conclusions derived from thought, Freud did state t...
Erich Fromm in his psychoanalytical approach to religion is distinct from the earlier works of Sigmund Freud. Fromm defines religion as “any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion.” Fromm argues that irreligious systems including all the different kinds of idealism and “private” religions deserve being defined as a “religion.” Based on Fromm’s theory, it is explained that there is no human being who does not have a “religious need,” almost every part of human life reflects religious need and its fulfillment, in fact he states it to be “inherent” in man.
He believed everyone is born with the id. All humans when they are babies, according to Freud, are pleasure seeking and concerned with having their needs met. This is the original or unconscious personality. The ego is where decision-making occurs, judgments are made and memory is stored. Lastly, the superego contains the individual’s values, beliefs, and morals, which they get from their parents. According to Freud, women get their morals and beliefs from their mothers and men get it from their fathers. He also believes that...
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was based on the belief that human personality is made up of three components: the id, ego and superego. These three components are arranged in 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 logic 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 have permission to drink, all that matters is that the needs have been met.
...s. Throughout the stages of development Freud argues that the powerful human influence came from the parents. Piaget believed that peers are as important or more important than parents are. They both agree that a young child is affected by his parents’ standards, but he is not simply a passive recipient of those standards. Piaget did seem to build on one of Freud’s ideas in that while Freud was only interested in moral feelings like guilt and shame, Piaget expanded his theory to look at the development of moral judgment.
“Psychological - or more strictly speaking, psychoanalytic -investigation shows that the deepest essence of human nature, which are similar in all men and which aim at the satisfaction of certain needs... [are] self-preservation, aggression, need for love, and the impulse to attain pleasure and avoid pain...” At its simplest form, this quote perfectly explains Sigmund Freud’s theory on human nature. Human beings, according to Freud, are in a constant state of conflict within themselves; trying to satisfy their animalistic instincts, while also maintaining a socially appropriate life. Freud termed these animalistic tendencies that we have, the Id. The Id is essentially our unconscious mind, it is the part of us that has been there since the day we were born and is what drives our life’s needs and desires. The Id simply aims to satisfy our sexual or aggressive urges immediately, without taking into account any further implications. On the other hand, Freud used the term, the Superego, to describe man’s conscience and sense of morality. It is the Superego’s job to keep the Id in check by combatting the desire to satisfy urges with the feeling of guilt or anxiety. Finally, the Ego, is the conscious representation of the constant battle between the Superego and the Id. It must work to satisfy human’s instinctual tendencies while taking into account their conscience and doing what is rational and acceptable. Freud argues that these internal process that are constantly at work in our mind are what shape humans to do the things that they do. Thus, he believes, the goal of human nature is to satisfy our basic aggressive and sexual desires while adhering to cultural and social standards.