Essay/Term paper: Frued

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Psychology

1. Freud defines three stages of sexuality, the oral, the anal and the oedipal stage. An infant in its
oral stage learns that there is an external world through pleasure and pain. Human nature is
governed by the pleasure principle. When the infant is being breast fed he/she feels pleasure and
when pulled away from the breast the baby feels pain. The pleasure principle is a way of seeking
pleasure in order to avoid pain. We can"t be happy all the time because three things threaten us.
First of all our own bodies can"t handle too much pleasure at once, eventually our bodies get older
and death is inevitable. Second, natural phenomenon"s get in our way, and third our relationships
with others. We are emotionally dependent on others and when we take their words into
consideration we become unhappy. Since we can"t be happy all the time we need to learn how to
avoid pain. There are five ways we can avoid pain. We can become hedonistic and gain pleasure at
all costs all the time. This way of avoiding pain isn"t really possible due to the fact that we
wouldn"t be able to accomplish anything else in our lives. Second way of avoiding pain is by
voluntary isolation. A person can take him/herself out of society and become a hermit. They do not
deal with people on an emotional or personal level. The third way of avoiding pain is turning away
from the world, the libidinal energy is turned inward and used up by them when they create art and
literature. Forth is by working in groups and forming memberships. Groups are formed for
protection against brute force and have allowed us to conquer nature. The fifth way is by
influencing the organism. The individual wants to kill off all instincts and does this either by using
drugs and alcohol, or using eastern techniques such as yoga. Freud said that another basic way to
avoid pain is love. Sexual love is the most intense form of feeling pleasure. All forms of pleasure
are related to sexual love. The sublimation of love can be between brother and sister and also can
exist between friends. Along with love comes the appreciation of beauty and it is related to the
sexual feeling that is part of our libido. Civilization can not do without beauty even though
everyone has his or her own interpretation of what is considered beautiful. Freud describes the
origin of civilization through four different time periods. First in Time A, which is the time of the
primal male, the male is brutish, ape-like and is governed by the pleasure principle. The male needs
to gain genital pleasure no matter the consequences so he begins to associate pleasure with one
woman. The male wants to keep this woman close to him and therefore he also has to keep their
children. The woman stays with him for the protection he provides for her and the children. Only
the male can determine who will and will not receive pleasure. The reason why this family is
formed is because the forceful male wants pleasure and he needs the children to do the work that
he is not willing to do. The primal male becomes known as "The Law" and since he takes this role
he feels he should be receiving all the pleasure. The children must work for him and he is the
source of their pain. In Time B, the brothers come together and form the "brother band" and use
their collective will to kill the father that has caused them so much pain. After his parricide the
brothers will begin to fight one another to gain the power that their father once had possessed.
Time C is the time of chaos, the brothers are fighting one another to gain power and the women
have to take over. The women keep the order and inform the brothers that the chaos is a result of
the death of "The Law". In Time D, the father (the Law) returns as a symbolic totem. The concept
of "taboo" is introduced and the brothers must renounce their instincts and have to sublimate their
love. The incest taboo forces them to stop trying to dominate the economy of pleasure. Due to the
renunciation of instincts, genital satisfaction is sublimated. The most intense form of pleasure,
sexual pleasure, now becomes aim-inhibited love. This renunciation of instincts therefore changes
sexual satisfaction to affection and respect for others around us and is aim-inhibited. This kind of
love has its negative results. First is when a family is so libidinally bound that it can not function
without any of its members. The family does not want to widen its circle and can not give up an
individual. Second is when a woman becomes neurotic due to lack of attention. Since the work of
civilization is considered to be the work of men, their libidinal energy is spent on the world. The
result is that the woman becomes hostile due to not being satisfied. 2. The displacement of the
libidinal energy develops as we try to avoid pain. This makes people fantasize and they receive
pleasure through these fantasies. People obtain satisfaction without interfering with the real world.
Happiness is a function that is the economics of the individual"s libido. Libido is energy and there
is a finite amount and it needs to be spent. One can expend it all at once or divide it up. There is a
need for something based on a lack. We all have our own way of dealing with this lack. This
economics of the libido are broken up into two parts, the general and the individual. The general is
true for everyone, because everyone wants to be happy. The individual puts the economics of the
libido at risk for unhappiness and disappointment. People use different ways to deal with the world
and distributing libidinal energy. The erotic person is emotionally dependent on others especially
when it comes to relationships. His/her energy is invested in others and becomes very easily
attached. The narcissistic person turns inward and is self-sufficient. They use their energy to create
things and derive pleasure from themselves. The third is the action man, he conquers nature by
pushing forward. He/she wants to try out his strengths on the world and this is his source of
pleasure. The neurotic person can"t spend his libidinal energy, this energy works as a neurosis and
the person might have a nervous tick. The last is the psychotic who creates a different world as a
way to expend his energy. He is a hermit and completely withdraws from society and this causes
him to turn inward and lose all connection with reality. Eros (love) is responsible for increasing the
size of the community. From this a society values and accepts monogamous heterosexual
relationships. Civilization narrows down pleasure by posing restrictions on us. These restrictions
cause individuals to repress things and these repressed objects will come back in some form..
Nature does not restrict its instincts and is guided by the pleasure principle. Since these restrictions
are not natural, people acquire a hostile attitude towards civilization. Human nature is
polymorphously perverse which means that pleasure can come from any object. When "the law"
causes problems when it puts restrictions on the pursuit of pleasure. Anything linked to "the law"
is acceptable and anything else is perverse and criminal. The Ideal State of Affairs is a community
based on pairs of lovers and they are libidinally satisfied and nothing in the external world matters.
Things are not this way because civilization has certain aims and we can not always pursue the
pleasure principle. An ideal demand is "love thy neighbor as you love yourself". If you do not
follow this then your neighbor becomes an object of your aggression. This means that we have to
control two instincts, the pleasure and the aggression. The only thing that stops aggression is the
sense of guilt. Eros is controlled by the pleasure principle, which binds people together and the
community grows. Thanatos is the death drive, this causes destruction and death. Freud also
believes that these two are the same. For example when we are hungry we might eat an apple.
Eating the apple is negation but we need to eat to live. Our entire behavior is a manifestation of the
struggle between life and death. This is also defined as one word "lifedeath". Civilization is the
reason for our misery but our aggression is a threat to civilization. Civilization forces us to
internalize all of the aggressive instinct and send it back to the ego where it originated. This new
area is referred to as the super-ego. The super-ego functions as guilt. This is societies way of
controlling man"s aggressive tendency. The super-ego is formed during the phallic stage when a
boy realizes that he can not have the mother because of his father. The boy becomes incapable of
doing anything because of the "no" of the father. The super-ego beats up on the ego; this
punishment is a way of threatening to destroy the ego. Sigmund Freud concluded that human
nature is governed by the pleasure principle to avoid pain. Sexual love is the most intense form of
pleasure. Eros (love) is responsible for increasing the size of the community. As we try to avoid
pain our libidinal energy is displaced. Due to this we all need to find our own way of distributing
this energy.

Word Count: 1587