РефератыИностранный языкUnUniversal Neurosis Essay Research Paper Sigmund Freud

Universal Neurosis Essay Research Paper Sigmund Freud

Universal Neurosis Essay, Research Paper


Sigmund Freud defined the goal of psychoanalysis to be to replace unconscious


with conscious awareness, where his ego shall be, and


through this an individual would achieve self-control and reasonable


satisfaction of instincts. His fundamental ideas include psychic determinism,


the power and influence of the unconscious, as opposed to the pre-conscious


mind, the tripartite division into id, ego and super-ego, and of course the


ideas of universal illusion and universal effects of the Oedipal Complex. The


examination of the Oedipal Complex is the most essential to the understanding of


Freud`s theories since he claimed that due to the resistance, repression,


and transference of early sexual energies the world had developed a universal


complex which did not allow for the healthy development of individual`s


but lead instead to the neurosis and mass illusion of religion. For his


perceivably vicious attacks on religion and his logical and yet totally


undermining examination of religion and other vital social issues, Freud has


been slandered and his theories criticised simply because of the away he


addressed these painful issues. Through the systematic development of the


theories of psychoanalysis, all stemming from one another and all tied together


into a universal Oedipal Complex and religious illusion, the ideas of the


tripartite human psyche and wish-fulfilment that Freud developed came under fire


from critics for their controversial messages and analysis. Briefly stated, the


Oedipus Complex is the preservation in the adult individual of the perceptions,


strategies and scars of a conflict the individual underwent during his/her


pre-school years. According to Freud, these perceptions, etc, later colour and


shape the individual’s future experiences. This psychological crisis results


when a young child’s sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex collides


with the competition, rivalry and overwhelming power of the parent of the same


sex. According to Freudian theory, the ghosts of this Oedipal crisis haunt us


our entire lives. Psychopathology, slips of the tongue, dreams, and religious


experience all were understood to be functions whose origins and energy resulted


from this repressed material. In his later work, Freud interpreted the reports


of his clients (reports offered under hypnosis, under verbal encouragement and


suggestion, and finally, in the later work, reports given through


free-associations) as revealing a universal Oedipal drama. Freud found what he


took to be evidence for the universal existence of the Oedipus Complex in the


testimony of patients, in his analysis of the repressed in dreams, in slips,


wit, and the transference phenomenon, as well as in art, philosophy and


religion. As the child develops, he/she identifies with the parent of the same


sex and renounces incestual desire. This renunciation is achieved and


strengthened by the formation of the super-ego, a section of the child’s ego


identified with the childhood image of the parents (the parental Imago)


perceived in consciousness as conscience and as the ego ideal. The ego ideal is


the self`s conception of how he/she wishes to be and is a substitute for


the lost narcissism in childhood when I was my own ideal. When


projected onto or into the world, the Imago (a word used by Freud to describe


unconscious object-representations) is taken by the experience to be a veridical


perception of a divine being. Throughout life, these experiences of this


childhood conflict are alive and present in the unconscious of the individual.


This childish, magically thinking, ever desiring, instinctually driven self is


described topographically by Freud in his tripartite division of the person as


the id (Latin for it). That part of the individual


responsible for maintaining congress and connection with reality and mediating


between the id and reality is the ego. That part of the ego,


largely and usually unconscious, which bears and enforces the ego ideal, is the super-ego. An activity is ego-syntonic just in case it strengthens


the ego in its function of mediating between the demands of reality, basic


instinctual drives (of appetite, aggression, and sexuality), and conscience. As


mediator, the ego needs to make adequate contact with both the external and


internal demands involved. Thus, one of its main tasks is reality


testing – making an accurate determination of the limits imposed on the


organism by the external world including one’s own body. Illusory beliefs are


not ego-syntonic and are thus ultimately destructive if allowed to control


individuals and societies, even if they should happen, e.g., by accident, to be


true. Freud has an unusual definition of illusion. For Freud,


although illusions are usually false, they are not false by definition.


According to the definition Freud offers in his paper, The Future of an


Illusion, what characterises illusions is one’s motivation for believing


them. Freud begins by distinguishing illusions from falsehoods. Though illusions


are derived from human wishes, they, unlike delusions, are not


necessarily false. A middle-class child’s expectation of a royal marriage is one


example Freud gives of an illusion; the belief in the coming of the Messiah is


another. Freud is aware that, whether one classifies this belief as an


illusion or as something analogous to a delusion will depend on one’s personal


attitude. In an attempt to focus on the motivation of the beliefs in


question he defines a belief as an illusion when a wish-fulfilment is a


prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its relations


to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification. In The Future of an Illusion, Freud considers that religious ideas


are illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent


wishes of mankind, Further, Freud interprets belief in God as a


regressive emotional response to the recognition of human helplessness, namely, the terrifying impression of helplessness in childhood aroused the need


for protection for protection through love which was provided by


the father; and the recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life


made it necessary to cling to the existence of a father, but this time a more


powerful one. Freud was an enemy of all religions. He had


no hope for conscience based on a repressed part of the


personality. Instead, he placed his faith in reason and scientific


analysis thinking that beliefs shaped by wishes cannot be good


for anyone. For Freud, Religious experience is a function of the subject’s


perception of his/her projected parental Imago, the characteristics of which


were produced by the inherited trauma of the pre-historic experience of humanity


along with the subject’s resolution of the Oedipal crisis. The experience of the


projected Imago as real is a function of wish fulfilment; it is tied to illusory


beliefs accepted on the basis of their conformity with the subject’s wishes. The


resulting condition, religion, may be diagnosed as a universal


obsessional neurosis. Belief based on illusion undermines the ego’s


reality-testing function which is needed to deal with the environment. Such


belief is thus destructive for the integration of individual persons and


societies. The step from inadequate neurotic response to reality – as a function


of transference and illusion – to a blatant and dangerous inadequacy in


perceiving reality is a short one. The acceptance of illusions paves the way to


living in a world of delusions. Freudian psychoanalysis provides grounds for a


pragmatic criticism of both popular argument from religious experience and will to believe type arguments. That Freud holds such illusory


belief to be destructive is made clear in his work, New Introductory


Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Through the formation of the Oedipal


Complex, an individual sparks the formation of the super-ego in order to combat


the id both of which are regulated by the ego itself. The transference of the


projected Imago that a child receives through this complex results in the


experience of this projected Imago as wish fulfilment latter in life in the


aspects of religious illusion. Due to his chastising of religion as a product of


a child`s projected Imago, and thereby directly linking it of a


child`s sexuality, Freud himself and his ideas were criticised and


renounced. His use of his own and patients dreams in order to come to this


conclusion about a Oedipal Complex, caused these ideas as well as those of the


tripartite id, ego, and super-ego to be ignorantly discredited instead of


examined and studied for their useful revelations about the human psyche.


Through the systematic development of the theories of psychoanalysis, all


stemming from one another and all tied together into a universal Oedipal Complex


and religious illusion, the ideas of the tripartite human psyche and wish-fulfilment


that Freud developed came under fire from critics for their controversial


messages and analysis. These are important aspects of Freud`s legacy.

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