Freud and the Unconscious Essay Example for Free

Freud and the Un assured EssayFew theories hold more fascinate than that of human psychology. Throughout history, many have sought to decode the structure of the headway. Amongst those who were determined to investigate the temperament of psychic material, one of the most prominent remains Sigmund Freud (also known as the archaeologist of the mind). Freud had genuinely pronounced views on the innate components of human psychology, within which one idea remained central the un aw atomic number 18 mind mind he uses this concept to make sense of phenomenons such as that of parapraxes. In his essay, The Unconscious, Freud introduces a rum perception of human thought, action, interaction and experience. He details a state of dualism that exists in our psychical life history in stating, consciousness includes altogether a sm altogether content, so that the greater part of what we c on the whole conscious knowledge must in any case be for very considerable periods of time in a state of latency, that is to say, of existence psychically unconscious (2). He argues that although we be blind to our unconscious mind, it determines a greater part of our behavioural being and participates just as much as psychical body process as our conscious mind.Freud also adds, In both instance where repression has succeeded in inhibiting the development of affects, we term those affects unconscious (7). He states that the unconscious is where repressed desires are stored, ideas that are suppressed from surfacing into the realm of our awareness e. g. we jazz our emotions we feel because they have moved from amongst the elements of the unconscious mind to the conscious mind. The fancy of what you see is not all there is, of the uncertainty of appearance or self-knowledge is a message that identifies very well with Freuds scheme of the unconscious.Freuds arguments entail that a significant reality (and most importantly he would most likely say) exists in that which i s intangible. He claimed that the unconscious could not be realized by the individual themselves through introspection, however is potentially made possible during psychoanalysis. In The Unconscious, Freud states, it transforms into a qualitatively different quota of affect, above all into anxiety or it is suppressed (7), alluding that the unconscious mind, or rather a conflict between conscious and the unconscious intentions is the root of neurotic or histrionic behaviour.Thus, not only did he perceive psychoanalysis as a useful tool for uprooting unconscious ideas, but the very understanding of the concept compete a central role to the successful treatment of his patients (that is to say, that Freud believed that he could lead his patient to recovery by making aware the unconscious idea that is conflicting with the individuals consciousness).Freud believed that naturalized phenomenons such as innocent mistakes (parapraxes) or the state of dreaming were in fact meaningful and we re indications of the active unconscious, an idea which echoes to the notion of conscious and unconscious communications which we discussed in the second week of class that in both forms there were logical relations. This is the essence of Freuds belief that there is psychical process in every movement or act (whether in a state of wakefulness or asleep/acts that are intended of unintended), which is to say that order exists in every action including the seemingly disconnected.With role to this notion, he famously claimed that parapraxes (slip of the tongue, mishearing, forgetting, memory loss) were significant phenomenons worthy of interpretation, because they were tell that the unconscious mind exists. In forward Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud explains his view in which the unconscious plays a significant role in the phenomenon of parapraxes. though parapraxes are often disregarded as small failures of functioning, imperfections in mental activity (28), he explains, They ar e not chance events but serious mental acts they have a sense (44).Before wretched on interpret what Freud meant by this, it seems useful to first introduce an idea which Louis Althusser presents in Lacan and Freud (which was also moved(p) upon in class), in which he states the effects, prolonged in the surviving adult, of the extraordinary adventure that, from surrender to the liquidation of the Oedipus complex, transforms a small animal engendered by a man and a woman into a little human child (22).The transformation that Althusser describes resonates with a sense of humanization whereby a feral being is tamed by society and progresses into a human existence it alludes to the ultimate sacrifice that is made by the primitive soul in order to survive amongst civilizedization the desire for instinctual satisfaction. Keeping Althussers delineation in mind, perhaps it could be said, then, that the unconscious manifests impulses whose intentions are deemed too disturbing or unfitti ng with civil behaviour.This conforms to Freuds argument that a spontaneous or unexplainable error is an indication of a agree between two conflicting aims of the disturbed and the disturbing consciousness (44). By means of distortion or substitution, the irrational impulse disguises its intentions under an appearance of rationality. He communicates, essentially, that parapraxes should be interpreted less as defective acts, but instead, should be considered as faulty achievements of our unconscious desires.He indicates this when he states, the disturbing purpose only distorts the original one without itself achieving complete expression (35). Freud theorizes that an inaccessible part of our mind the unconscious does exist and evidence of its reality is apparent, such as in the very happening of everyday pathologies, or parapraxes. He maintains the importation of the unconscious mind as a meaningful, valid psychical force that pursues its own intentions (its presence requisite in its ability to elicit bodily responses).In the discovery of this, Freud stresses the idea that individuals should place more measure in what we so often dismiss as mistakes, accidental or random behaviour, because there whitethorn be significant meaning to the obscured intentions they convey. On a different note, the underlying notion that there is no such thing as involuntary acts or ideas, reinforces more than ever a disparate sociological thought that we, as individuals, are truly and solely responsible for our own actions.