...would have heard of the terms: Eros and thanatos Libido and mortido Life instinct and the death instinct If they have not heard of them then they should have! Freud seized on this concept and it became central in his overall theory of human nature. In his book “The ego and the id” he discusses this theory of instincts at length. Freud[1962] in his discussion of the two classes of instincts states that the first class is the sexual instincts or Eros. This is a "...selfpreservative instinct,..."(P30). On the other hand there is the death instinct whose task it is to, "...lead organic life back into the inanimate state;..."(P30). He is thus entering into the field of the philosophy of opposites. Human nature, life and the universe is unerringly a collection of opposites. The answer to the question, “Is it possible to have something that does not have an opposite?” begs unending cognition. Hyams(1998) notes this in her article on dissociation. She says that the world is full of polarities - good/bad, inhaling/exhaling, high/low and so on. In addition the is yin/yang, protons/electrons, left/right, black/white, matter/anti-matter and so on endlessly. Does something exist that does not have an opposite? I am yet to think of one. As soon as one defines ‘x’, then ‘not x’ is immediately defined as well. However that is for the philosophers to conjugate over. THEORY OF OPPOSITES Freud’s theory of these two instincts certainly is a theory of opposites. One problem with such theories is that...
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... Remember, what you write is the report (product) of your thinking and insights discovered. To get to that point, you must engage in four kinds of critical thinking: description, analysis, interpretation and evaluation (process). You will select, edit, and organize portions of all your thinking in each of these areas in order to teach the reader how the message works. So, your in-class paper will reflect these kinds of thinking, but the paper will be an integrated whole rather than a list or string of critical activities. Assume you have a reader who does not know what you are doing, why or how. Thus, you must define terms and elaborate on your ideas, showing the reader how your ideas relate to one another. Listed below are the specific criteria (rubric) by which the essay will be graded: 1) The essay contains an introduction that describes the context of the message and characterizes the message. (10 pts) 2) The critic states a reasonable, arguable claim about how the message works. The claim must go beyond what any average reader could conclude after encountering the message and feature the rhetorical dynamics discovered in the message. (20 pts) 3) The critic identifies a point of view (theory) for conducting the analysis and applies it to the message. The analysis reveals rhetorical devices used and explains their relationships. The critic illustrates the presence of and relationships between those devices by using ample and...
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...Lord of the Flies William Golding Analysis of Major Characters Themes, Motifs & Symbols Ralph Ralph is the athletic, charismatic protagonist of Lord of the Flies. Elected the leader of the boys at the beginning of the novel, Ralph is the primary representative of order, civilization, and productive leadership in the novel. While most of the other boys initially are concerned with playing, having fun, and avoiding work, Ralph sets about building huts and thinking of ways to maximize their chances of being rescued. For this reason, Ralph’s power and influence over the other boys are secure at the beginning of the novel. However, as the group gradually succumbs to savage instincts over the course of the novel, Ralph’s position declines precipitously while Jack’s rises. Eventually, most of the boys except Piggy leave Ralph’s group for Jack’s, and Ralph is left alone to be hunted by Jack’s tribe. Ralph’s commitment to civilization and morality is strong, and his main wish is to be rescued and returned to the society of adults. In a sense, this strength gives Ralph a moral victory at the end of the novel, when he casts the Lord of the Flies to the ground and takes up the stake it is impaled on to defend himself against Jack’s hunters. In the earlier parts of the novel, Ralph is unable to understand why the other boys would give in to base instincts of bloodlust and barbarism. The sight of the hunters chanting and dancing is baffling and distasteful to him. As the novel progresses...
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...a thought of what needs to be done. Instinct pursues you and you do it. Thrilling isn’t it? A taste of the wild creature’s freedom - a weasel’s perhaps. We are all creatures with the desire to move hastily using our first instinct. What makes human superior above all creatures is our ability to elect on conscientious decisions that is, human instinct. Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels’s” does not perceive it that way. Dillard’s essay is an exploration of how to live life. She suggests living life in simplicity without any complications or restrictions. She also stated that we can do whatever we want. “We can live any way we want.” (Dillard 101) She is a writer of nature and looks at it for inspiration. She introduced the scenery by the Hollins pond also called Murray’s Pond, as calm and inhibits a portrayal of open mind allowing deep observation and connection to nature. She comes across a weasel with analysis of its characteristics and behavior, she thought of evaluating her own life. “I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.” (Dillard 100) She then suggests what we can learn from a weasel’s nature of living. “But I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.” (Dillard 100) She states that we should focus only on one goal and one goal alone. The goal is basic survival. We need to stop thinking and go by our gut - our instinct. Dillard also mentioned about her regret...
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...also believed that human behavior is driven by irrational forces, unconscious motivations, and biological and instinctual drives (2005, p. 56). This theory insists that people strive to reach the most pleasure in life and try to avoid situations/behaviors that remind of them of pain. People will use defense mechanisms as a counterattack causing a person to suppress a traumatic event in their lives; however this could cause problems in their future if something happens that makes the experience to resurface. The two instincts that are pivotal to this theory are life and death. Life (sexual) instincts are the survival tactics people use to gain growth, development, and creativity (Corey, 2005, p. 56). On the other hand, the death instinct is a more aggressive drive within a person, which some people can not control. The death instinct is when a person subconsciously wants to kill themselves and/or others. Dealing with both life and death instincts are powerful determinants of why people act as they do (Corey, 2005, p. 57). The psychoanalytic therapy tries to help the client unlock their unconscious thoughts, desires, and...
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...The Unpremeditated Barbarity in Humans Clarence Darrow once said, “every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.” Here, he demonstrates that in all men is an inclinations to kill. The idea that in the root of all human’s mind is bestiality is an idea that is abundantly exercised but also denounced by many....
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...Freud once referred to the human nature in terms of repressed sexual desires for the safety of societies (Freud, 1950; 1973; 2003; 2005; 2006; Storey, 2012). According to Freud, living in community means humans abandoning their sexual instincts in order to coexist with others (Freud, 1973). Freud’s major contribution to psychology is the understanding of the unconscious as a place, in the human psyche, where repress desires exist and can only be fitfully repressed (Freud, 1973; 2003; 2005; 2006). Through the lens of Sigmund Freud, his work on Psychoanalysis (1973), The Dreamwork (2006), Totem and Taboo (1950), Civilization and Its Discontents (2005), and The Uncanny (2003); this paper will describe the foundations of the unconscious and how...
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...childhood experiences. For example, a child exposed to abuse during 1- 5 years of development will have an unstable personality compared to a child who wasn't exposed to abuse. Freud (1923) later developed a more structural model of the mind, the psychic apparatus, comprising the entities id, ego and superego which are rather hypothetical conceptualizations of important mental functions. In saying this, according to Freud, the mind can be seen as being similar to an iceberg with only the very tip being exposed and the bulk of the ice berg being unseen. Freud assumed the id operated at an unconscious level (beneath the sea) according to the pleasure principle. Freud holds that we are born with the id and it contains two kinds of biological instincts (or drives) which Freud called Eros and...
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...version of moral sentimentalism in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith claims that every man, by nature, always takes care of himself more than of any other person and concerns himself more than any other man. This individual freedom is rooted in self-reliance, the ability of an individual to pursue his self-interest. Yet Smith explains that as social creatures we are endowed with a natural sympathy (pity, compassion) towards others. When we see others distressed or happy, we feel for them and, likewise, others seek our sympathy and feel for us. As we grow from childhood to adulthood, through experience we gradually build up a system of behavioral rules (standards) – morality. So it stems from our social nature. Smith believes that for society to survive there must be rules to present its individual members not to harm each other which they have to obey and these rules are called justice. Also if people go further than obey the rules and do good (beneficence) we welcome it, but cannot demand such actions as we demand justice. Smith ends The Theory of Moral Sentiments by stating that a truly virtuous person is willing to sacrifice all his inferior interests to the greater interest of the universe, great society. By doing that such a person, he suggests, would embody the qualities of justice, beneficence and self-command. Hume’s Moral Philosophy According to Hume, our intentional actions are the immediate product of our emotions, feelings, desires and the instincts. Hume insists...
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...Theories Sigmund Freud’s beliefs about personality were based on past experiences in an individual’s childhood. Freud stated that all human beings had three personality levels. These were the ego, the id, and the superego. The level of the id is the one that houses a person’s primitive drives and supports the enactment of decisions that are purely based on pleasure. The id’s objective is to avoid pain at all costs and only seek pleasurable sensations. The ego, on the other hand, identifies the significance of reality and makes decisions based on concepts such as judgment, perception recognition, and memory. The last level, the superego, is dedicated to seeking perfection (Reber, 2006). This level houses the individual’s accepted social morals and ideals in the conscience. Jung had different views about the different mental levels in the conscious mind. Instead of the ego, id, and superego, Jung perceived the human thought process as constituting of an individual level of unconsciousness, an ego, and a collective unconscious. According to Jung, the ego was actually the conscious mind which had connections with the individual unconsciousness level. Jung also stated that while the personal unconsciousness level was tied to an individual’s emotions and had the ability to affect a person’s behaviors, the level of the collective unconscious is...
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...According to Morris and Maisto (1998), the psychoanalytic theory begins with Freud’s discovery of the unconscious-all the ideas, thoughts and feelings of which an individual is not normally aware of. These ideas of Freud form the basis of psychoanalysis, a term that encompasses both his theory of personality and the form of therapy he invented. Morris and Maisto further explain that according to Freud, human behavior is based on unconscious instincts or drives and that some instinct are aggressive and destructive which he called thanatos and others such as hunger, thirst self preservation and sex which he called libido are necessary to the survival of a species. However, it is important to understand that Freud used the term sexual instincts to refer to not only erotic sexuality but also to the desire for virtually any form of pleasure. Thus in this broad sense Freud regarded the sexual instinct as the most critical fact in the development of personality. Holland (1995) explains further that Freud upon emphasizing the unconscious divided the mind into three parts, the conscious, preconscious and the unconscious. The conscious mind is what an individual is aware of at any particular moment, their present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies and feelings. The second, working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious, what is today called "available memory" that is anything that can easily be made conscious. Consequently, this leaves the unconscious...
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...in his book “15 Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel”. We as innately benevolent people will want to help others as one of the many ways to show goodness. Butler also believed that human beings have two rational guides to behaviour: enlightened self-interest and conscience. Conscience helps the selfish human become virtuous and so provides a balance between these two tendencies. Butler, although believes we are essentially good people, doesn’t deny the fact that we have feelings and passions but says that it is our conscience and its god given sense of right and wrong judges between these passions as the “moral approving and disapproving faculty” and we therefore act proportionately according to our conscience. Overall Butler argues that each human has a direct insight into the universal or objective rightness or wrongness of an action, otherwise known as an innate moral guide. St Thomas Aquinas agreed with Butler’s claims that humans have an innate sense of what is right or wrong. This can be derived from his belief in the Synderesis Principle. The Synderesis Principle is the idea that humans have an innate knowledge of the basic principles of...
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...In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the entire group. Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses of Piggy’s eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death. At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting. When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice...
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...Biological and Humanistic Approach Penny Jo Watkins PSY/250 Febuary 25, 2012 David Levosky Biological and Humanistic Approach He or she can commonly recognize the aspects of Freudian psychology is the presence of the Id, Ego, and Superego. In knowing this Freud says, there are levels of consciousness that shape human personality. With the knowledge of the most basic is the Id, which can make us realize what our most basic human instincts are.The Ego is responsible for taking care of our most basic needs and the Superego dictates how we address those needs in a manner consistent with social norms. Freud also believed that sex-drive, or libido, does more to shape our personality and interactions than anything else does. He or she who is being honest with themselves could agree that sexual desires can shape our personality. Most people’s instinct to reproduce is certainly one of the greatest forces that drives anyone, or any living being. One certain instinct that is a greater force in the world, is the need to survive. Abraham Maslow is a famous psychologist who stated that people have different levels of needs that must be fulfilled before the next, higher, level of needs can be achieved (Friedman &Schustack, 2009). This is called Maslow’s Hierarchy. Maslow stated that one’s physiological needs are the most basic. Some of these needs are to survive; the need for food and water. As soon as people have these needs they feel safer, this is Maslow’s second...
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...which have formed the basis of the psychodynamic approach to psychology. His theories are clinically derived - i.e. based on what his patients told him during therapy. The psychodynamic therapist would usually be treating the patient for depression or anxiety related disorders. Psychodynamic Approach Assumptions * Our behavior and feelings are powerfully affected by unconscious motives. * Our behavior and feelings as adults are rooted in our childhood experiences. * All behavior has cause even slips of the tongue. Therefore all behavior is determined. * Personality is made up of three parts: the id, ego and super-ego. * Behavior is motivated by two instinctual drives: Eros (the sex drive & life instinct) and Thanatos (the aggressive drive & death instinct). * Parts of the unconscious mind are in constant conflict with the conscious part of the mind. This conflict creates anxiety, which could be dealt with by the ego’s use of defense mechanisms. * Personality is shaped as the drives are modified by different conflicts at different times in childhood (during psychosexual development). History of the Psychodynamic Approach * Anna O a patient of Dr. Joseph Breuer (Freud's mentor and friend) from 1800 to 1882 suffered from hysteria. * In 1895 Breuer and his assistant, Sigmund Freud, wrote a book, Studies on...
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