Freud On Education

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Does education really have any noticeable impact on the evolution of society? We have had some amazing thinkers in our times, but it can be disheartening when looking around at society and considering that civilization as a whole may only be as good as the least educated individual. But this surely can't be, there must be evidence of education making some kind of difference. To further examine this, the words of Robert Frost are considered, "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." So, the uneducated would do just that as a reaction to, say, texts that people read during the process of education, and those that have already been educated would, hopefully, express an understanding …show more content…

There are thousands of people who are only vaguely aware of the ideas of Freud through a most basic understanding of the Oedipus complex. (Freud 3) These people are severely lacking in a full understanding, and are missing out on some of his most enlightening revelations. Freud did have a large number of sexual ideas that he held dear, but the quantity of them should not throw a shadow over the quality of his others. Once you get past his theories of the Oedipus complex, penis envy, castration anxiety, and the like, he had much to offer. He discussed the super-ego, in which many of our desires, urges, and instincts lie in a part of our mind that is usually inaccessible to our realm of conscious thought. (Freud 1) He tried finding ways for these thoughts to be realized, through psychoanalysis or dream interpretation. (Freud 2) He elaborated on the frustration felt by those who suppress their natural instincts for the cause of living peacefully among society, and the transformation of a suppressed instinct that can take place into something that exhibits quite opposite traits, such as anal retentiveness or obsessive compulsive disorder. It is, to the educated, without a doubt, that he pioneered the science of psycho-pathology, paving the way for another century of advances in psychological understanding so far. Those who are well versed in the basis of Freudian thinking are capable of knowing which …show more content…

Of all the evidence that exists - fossils, rock layers, cave paintings, preserved remains - it is surprising that some still refuse to even consider the option that their belief that the world is only four-thousand years old may be a fallacy. (I mainly bring this up because my father is one such person.) Charles Darwin had quite a crowd to appeal to. It is surprising that his discoveries were ever adopted by some of the uneducated, and spread to where they are today. The general feeling a person has on Darwin is that of frustration, derived when reading secondary sources that simply refer to his ideas as “survival of the fittest.” These untapped minds will then jump to some abstract concept similar to that of the Social Darwinists, and go on to be put off by the idea. This is unfortunate, seeing as how Darwin himself never actually used that phrase, preferring “natural selection” in its place. (Darwin) This may be seemingly trivial, but it is in fact what establishes those who have an appreciative understanding of Darwin’s work, whether they choose to agree with it or

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