Philosophy

Philosophy Study Guide

©2018 of 126 4.7 Freud: The Self is Multi-layered Freud was an Austrian doctor who founded the psychoanalytical school of psychology. Freud’s view of the self was multi-tiered divided among the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. The unconscious contains basic instinctual drives: sexuality, aggressiveness, and self-destruction; traumatic memories, unfulfilled wishes, and childhood fantasies; and thoughts and feelings that would be considered socially taboo. The unconscious level is characterized by the most primitive level of human motivation and human functioning and drives the need for immediate motivation or gratification. Our unconscious self operates at a pre-logical and pre-rational level and although it exists and influences us throughout our lives, it is not directly observable and its existence can only be inferred from such phenomena such as neurotic symptoms, dreams, and slips of the tongue. In contrast, the conscious self is governed by the reality principle rather than the pleasure principle. At this level of functioning, behavior and experience are organized in ways that are rational, practical, and appropriate to the social environment. Although the ultimate goals of the conscious self are the same as the unconscious self, the gratification of needs and the means to achieving these goals are entirely different. Instead of seeking these goals by means that are direct, impulsive, and irrational, the conscious self usually takes into account the realistic demands of the situation, the consequences of various actions, and the overriding need to preserve the equilibrium of the entire psychodynamic system. The conscious self has the task of controlling the constant pressures of the unconscious self, as its primitive impulses continually seek for immediate discharge. Freud believes people whose psychological defense are destructive will react to many situations at two levels: adult conscious and an infantile conscious. Any situation that resembles a traumatic emotional situation of early childhood will call out a repetition of the childhood response (likely to be covert) at the same time that it calls out the adult response (likely to be direct and overt). The mingling of different levels of experience may be accomplished without undue stress in well-adjusted, normal behaviors, and at times, lead to exaggerated reaction with ambivalent feelings and or behaviors. Repression serves as the theoretical keystone of defensive organizations in both normal and neurotic persons and although it is thought to be related to the conscious suppression, repression is assumed to operate at unconscious levels. Repression is used to help contain the potentially disruptive aspects of unconscious functioning and is usually the main defense mechanism for maintaining the ego boundaries necessary for normal conscious functioning. The purpose of psychotherapy, the therapeutic model created by Freud, is to enable the patient to acknowledge the conflicts, emotions, and memories at the root cause of his or her disorder. Freud’s model of the mind divided it into systems of their relationships to consciousness, preconscious, and the unconscious which then developed a structural model of the mind the id, the ego, the superego. The id has virtually the same place as the unconscious in the sense of being the reservoir for the primal instinctual forces responsible for human motivation. The ego and the superego consist of both aspects of that are both conscious and unconscious. Achieve Page 46

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