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Response 2: Freud
Freud's statement that the only human purpose is to reproduce does not mean that life is meaningless, but that humans are driven, much like animals, not by higher spiritual motivations as theorized in Judaism and Christianity. Even the idea of God comes from the primal, id-driven need for security in a cruel world, the type of security one desires from one's idealized parents. This not only deflates the importance of God, but also one's parents, as it suggests that one's parents are never entirely good enough to provide...
It also suggests that the need for God is childish as well as primitive, a desire to remain in an infantile state when a person has all of his or her needs fulfilled without real effort. Often, humans feel helpless in the face of their problems, and it is easy to look to a Higher Power to solve those problems. This seems like an incomplete view of the very multifaceted and complex beliefs surrounding the divine around the world, as it focuses only on the controlling function of God, and a patriarchal image of the divine.
And moreover, the virtues that had been "automatically" accorded to Freud over the years -- "clinical acumen, wisdom in human affairs, dedication to his patients and to the truth" -- are now obscured by the skepticism that has come due to the deep questioning and investigation over time (Kramer, 1998, pp. 199-200). That skepticism among scholars has also been brought on by a lack of "accord" between what Freud
267). None of the eighteen patients had been aware of being sexually abused prior to being treated by Freud. She quotes him: "…at the bottom of every case of hysteria there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience" that belong to early childhood but are "reproduced through the work of psychoanalysis" (p. 267). The very fact that Freud publicly raised this issue -- "a shocking topic…to many of
Sigmund Freud and B.F. Skinner are two of the most important theorists within the history of psychology and psychological development as a theory, but perhaps no two thinkers have developed psychological systems of analysis that could possibly clash with one another more vehemently. Indeed, both men would have profoundly disagreed on the most basic levels of even considering what psychology's basic function is. Sigmund Freud focused on a conception of
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents: Why does Freud think life is hard for human beings? people likely to be happier in a civilized or uncivilized state? What are the benefits of order? Why is civilization hostile to sexuality? How does civilization inhibit aggression? Freud's central paradigm is that the tension between the individual and civilization is historically grounded in the violence of warfare and humanity in the early part of
For those who have the literary and aesthetic chops for the task, creative writing is capable of substituting for the imaginative wish fulfillment Freud explains is a part of all childhood development. For the rest of us, creative writing is one way to vicariously experience the daydreams of others in which the ego is finally given its due and able to transcend the limitations of the real world. In the
For a person working through a shadowy part of him- or herself, the goal can be as generic as better self-knowledge and self-management. Working through must be recognized as a process, but also as a process with a certain goal in mind. To successfully work through any part of the self, it must also be recognized that certain unpleasant elements may be uncovered before the goal is reached. The therapist