Thursday, September 28, 2006

Intro...Essay3

Sigmund Freud’s breakthrough in the field of psychological study draws many critics and thus, many new ideas are created. Some neo-Freudian psychologists are Carl Gustav Jung and Alfred Adler, both ex-partners of Freud. Jung develops new theories which oppose Freud’s conscious-mind theory. Alfred Adler redirects the idea of the cause of human behavior from Freud’s explanations about drive for perfection being the main cause of the human behavior. Alder’s theory about the drive for perfection helps contribute to the understanding of human behavior. With Freud’s psychoanalytic theories as blue prints, Jung and Adler address some other believable perspectives to be considered.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

What Did I Learn From This?

This first essay had taught me the meaning of HL. At first I thought I did a pretty good job with the essay on Freud, but after learning the IB criteria, my confidence went sky-diving. Also i need to distinguish between English essay and Psychology essay. I learned that organization and accuracy are really the keys to great psychology essays (actually...this applies to all essays). Now I know that it's going to be a long 2 years for me, learning about psychology and meeting its highest standard possible.

~Daniel

Monday, September 04, 2006

Discuss: Historical and Cultural context of Freud’s Theories of Human Behavior

*****In order to understand about Sigmund Freud’s theories of human behavior, discussion of historical and cultural contexts are essential. In the period of his heyday, the Victorian society’s way of life had influenced his ideas and explained the conceptions he made about females. Technology in those days, especially the steam engine’s mechanism, gave Freud the idea of psychodynamic. Darwin’s discovery showed Freud the connection between evolution and psychology. The environments and current events during his lifetime are truly the strong factors that inspire Freud to come up with these remarkable studies and ideas.
*****Freud’s research discovered many theories about the human behaviors. Generally, he points out that our behaviors are motivated by the desire to maximize pleasure. His research suggests that our awareness is divided into different levels of consciousness, which include conscious mind, preconscious mind, and unconscious mind. He also argued that we all face conflict: intrapsychic conflicts are conflicts within oneself, and interpersonal conflicts are conflicts with other people. Under Freud’s principles of psychodynamic: personality is structured by three ideas, Id, Ego, and Superego; individual’s personality develops through psychosexual development stages of oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Human possesses natural instinctual drives, which had great influence on our behavior, that act to ensure survival. Even though Freud was attacked by many criticism, he had brought breakthrough ideas into the world of psychology.
*****Cultural influences certainly play a huge role in affecting Freud’s theories of human behavior. During Freud’s time, the Victorian society had helped shaped how he theorized human behaviors. Within the society, women were considered less superior to men. They had no rights and no opportunities in life. Not many of them were given decent education, if given at all. It was thought of them as the properties of their fathers or their husbands. Women were expected to stay at home to cook, do house shores, cleaning jobs, and look after the family’s children. Living in this environment, Freud’s thinking had been shaped differently to if he was brought up in a woman-dominate society.
*****Freud’s theory of human behaviors was influenced by the work of Charles Darwin, who developed the theory of evolution. Darwin’s research had brought to Freud the connection between evolution and psychology, inner drives and survival instinct, adaptation and Ego, and the fact that human starts with the Id stage of development. He acknowledged the idea of survival instincts, and from that, he understood that human behaviors are driven by biological forces of hunger and love. In his principles of psychoanalysis, Freud included many Darwin-influenced ideas that explained human behaviors, which are mental processes and conflicts, importance of sexual drives, significance of dreams, and hidden symbolism of certain behaviors. By understanding the study of Darwin, Freud included essential elements into his theory of human behavior.
*****Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis was born from the physics of thermodynamics technology, famous during the 19th to 20th century. Thermodynamics basically states that the total amount of energy is always constant, that the energy that moves from one system must reappear in another. Freud was intrigued by the study of one German scientist name Hermann von Helmholtz, "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.” Experiences, especially early childhood experiences, in theory, are conserved in the unconscious, and later on they either remain there or pop up into the conscious mind. Freud explained that this might cause neurosis and psychosis, which are forms of mental illnesses, to the person. These mental states, no doubt, have strong effects on the victims’ behavior. Freud’s psychodynamic theory points out that childhood experiences, especially traumatic ones, are factors that determine the person’s behavior when he/she reaches adulthood. This means that if the person had gone through repressed memories, he/she has a chance of developing mental illness when grown up. Freud included technological idea of thermodynamics into his theories of human behavior.
*****The Victorian cultural aspects, Darwin’s ideas, and the thermodynamic technology of the 19th and 20th century are the most influential factors on Freud’s theories of human behaviors. Victorian society taught Freud that women’s role are insignificant. From Darwin’s theory of evolution, Freud explained that human behaves according to the natural instinct to survive, and that human evolved from earlier stages of animal-like Id. From the idea of contemporary technology of the 19th and 20th century, “Energy is neither created nor destroyed”, Freud related it to his interpretation about repression that determines the adulthood behavior of a person. These are clearly the strong factors that mould Freud’s ideas of human behaviors, or else we would not have come this far in the world of psychology.
~Daniel