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Are Human beings basically made up of two basic drives i. e. the SEXUAL and the AGRESSIVE. (Freud 1920). Well I am not able to relate to, or digest in totality... so I did some research, and came across many who don’t think so too…
The name Higgs Boson came from a British scientist Peter Higgs and Bose (Satyendra Nath Bose after whose name thesub-atomic particle boson is named). The work done by Bose and Albert Einstein, later added by Higgs, lead to this pioneering day.
Etoile Bleue (Blue Star) painting smashes auction record - BBC News 20th June, 2012
I had to put the painting ‘Blue Star’ image here, since I know, after seeing it, everyone will think... I could have painted this too... But before you go and smirk with your own interesting critic, here is what Miro thought about critics.
Freud's theories have been criticized as pseudo-scientific and sexist, and they have been marginalized within psychology departments, although they remain influential within the humanities. Critics have debated whether it is possible to test Freudian theories. Some researchers claim evidence exists for some of Freud's theories.
Remembering Dante Alighieri on his birthday today by sharing a very beautiful love poetry from La Vita Nuova ("The New Life") and a little bit about his amazing one sided love story.
The first time I read Sigmund Freud, almost two decades back, I was not able to relate to it. The repeat reading of the same ideas and ideologies through Brenner, in such a beautiful and simple way which basically sank deeper in my psyche, got me closer to the thoughts and ideas Sigmund Freud promulgated. And it created within me a view that Human beings are basically made up of two basic drives i. e. the SEXUAL and the AGRESSIVE.(Freud 1920). So yet again, thoughts of Sigmund Freud, some of them given below, I was not able to relate to, or digest in totality...
Freud Sofa for his patients
(Wikipedia Image)
1) In 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' Freud proposed to account for the instinctual aspects of mental lives by ASSUMING the existence of two drives, the SEXUAL and the AGRESSIVE. (Freud 1920)
2) Sigmund Freud pointed out that the person whom the child is attached in its early years has a place in its mental life which is unique as far as influence is concerned. This is true whether the child's attachment to these persons is by bonds of LOVE, of HATE, or both, THE LAST BEING BY FAR THE MOST USUAL.
The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety,
and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.
(Sicilian triskelion)Image from Wikipedia
3) Freud discovered rather early that there were regularly present in the unconscious mental lives of his NEUROTIC patients fantasies of incest with parent of the opposite sex, combined with jealousy and MURDEROUS rage against the parents of the same sex (Pg 105 - The Psychic Apparatus Chap V) and goes on to say (1910-15) that it became apparent that Oedipus complex was not just characteristic of the unconscious mental life of neurotics, but was on the contrary present in the normal person as well.
4) Oedipus complex (this is the period from 2 and Half years to 6 years as per Freud) is a twofold attitude towards both parents: on the one hand a wish to ELIMINATE the jealously hated father and take his place in a SENSUAL relationship with the mother, and on the other hand a wish to ELIMINATE the jealously hated mother and take her place with father.... the most important single fact to bear in the mind about the oedipal complex is the strength and force of the feelings which are involved. Its real LOVE AFFAIR. For many people its the most intense affair of the entire lives, but in any case as intense as any which the individual will ever experience.
John Haidt (A professor of psychology whose research focuses on the psychological bases of morality across different cultures and political ideology, in one of the most interesting discussion on the subject, I could actually find on the YouTube, says
“For 40 years, evolutionary theorist has told that human nature is basically selfish. Many people knew in their hearts that it’s not true, few of them has been as eloquent as His Holiness Dalai Lama, in arguing for different concepts of human nature. In 'Ethics for new millennium', His Holiness writes that the basic human nature is not only non-violent but actually disposed towards love and compassion, kindness, gentleness and affectionate. Recent research in evolution theory finds that co-operation is infact a basic principle in evolution.
In that same discussion Antonio Damasio, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he heads USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, puts across his thoughts about the subject, so beautifully, to begin with by sharing 3 facts to known to our modern scientific community presently...
Fact No: 1) Social behaviour - Social emotions, which is one of the main categories of emotions, are natural carriers of morals & ethics.
Fact No: 2) Its quite likely that when we talk about social emotions in general, we talk about sets of behavior & strategies that were planted in mammalian brain by genomes, even if they can certainly be tuned by learning, specially in humans.
Fact No: 3) Adult neurological patients, when they sustain damage to a confined part in the frontal lobe - a very specific part, they are not able to use social conventions or obey ethical rules, although they retain knowledge about that social conventions and those ethical rules. Worse, when the comparable damage occurs in the early years of life, e.g. children up to the age of 3-4, it so happens that not only that resulting in abnormal moral behaviour, but the children are (also) unable to learn the convention and rules to begin with. So in both the adults and in children, the most blatant sign outside their impaired moral behaviour is actually a lack of social emotion (because of the damage to a particular section of the brain) - That should be a food for thought.
And Professor Domasio, goes on to say ...
"The biological function that best captures what is going on (in) moral behaviour is truly Homeostasis - in plain terms the life regulation. I would like to say there are two kind of Homeostasis, 1) the very basic given by our genomes, that ensures the welfare of the self & next of kin & rarely does it even ever go beyond socio cultural. 2) Homeostasis that developed because human brains were able to generate cultures, once they were emerging a collective of other human beings & then in those collective cultures, it was possible to reflect on moral knowledge and it was possible to structure that moral knowledge in such a way that it would result not only to the benefit of the immediate self and of the next of kin but also to others further away to the larger circle of humans".
An American biologist Edward Osborne Wilson known as "the father of socio-biology" says...
"Although much human diversity in behaviour is culturally influenced, some has been shown to be genetic - rapid acquisition of language, human unpredictability, hypertrophy (extreme growth of pre-existing social structures), altruism and religions."
Wilson, along with Bert Hölldobler, has done a systematic study of ants and ant behaviour, culminating in their encyclopaedic work, The Ants (1990). "Because much self-sacrificing behaviour on the part of individual ants can be explained on the basis of their genetic interests in the survival of the sisters, with whom they share 75% of their genes (though the actual case is some species' queens mate with multiple males and therefore some workers in a colony would only be 25% related)"
He further argues that culture and rituals are products, not parts, of human nature. He says art is not part of human nature, but our appreciation of art is. He argues that concepts such as art appreciation, fear of snakes, or the incesttaboo (Westermarck effect) can be studied using scientific methods. Previously, these phenomena were only part of psychological, sociological, or anthropological studies.
Here is a little back ground on the study, mentioned above, known as ...
Westermarck Effect
Edvard Alexander Westermarck A Finnish philosopher and sociologist, among other subjects, studied exogamy and the incest taboo. The phenomenon of reverse sexual imprinting (when two people live in close domestic proximity during the first few years in the life of either one, both are desensitized to later close sexual attraction), now known as the Westermarck effect, was first formally described by him in his book The History of Human Marriage (1891). Observations interpreted as evidence for the Westermarck effect have since been made in many places and cultures, including in the Israeli kibbutz system, and the Chinese Shim-pua marriage customs, as well as in biological-related families.
In the case of the Israeli kibbutzim (collective farms), children were reared somewhat communally in peer groups, based on age, not biological relation. A study of the marriage patterns of these children later in life revealed that out of the nearly 3,000 marriages that occurred across the kibbutz system, only fourteen were between children from the same peer group. Of those fourteen, none had been reared together during the first six years of life. This result suggests that the Westermarck effect operates during the period from birth to the age of six.
Finally...
Freud argued that as children, members of the same family naturally lust for one another, making it necessary for societies to create incest taboos, but Westermarck argued the reverse, that the taboos themselves arise naturally as products of innate attitudes.
"The idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the silliest thing they have ever heard. Obviously, it did not seem so to Freud, who wrote that as a boy he once had an erotic reaction to watching his mother dressing. But Freud had a wet nurse, and may not have experienced the early intimacy that would have tipped off his perceptual system that Mrs. Freud was his mother. The Westermarck theory has out-Freuded Freud."
I have searched long and hard in my own conscience, the way Freud did in his later years, to find that miniscule hint of that person, hidden within the folds of my ID, Ego and Super Ego, who would be sexually aroused by mother, who would be detesting father, or trying to kill my siblings for that extra chocolate. But have not found even slightest hint.
I firmly believe in the goodness of human being. And I feel that is the reason, the humanity has survived many upheavals, catastrophic changes and adversity on many fronts, despite being, as some say, the most weak animal form to roam the planet earth. In my opinion, Human nature at its core is positive and good.
Remembering Sigmund Freud on his birthday today...
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. Freud went on to develop theories about the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and established the field of verbal psychotherapy by creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst. Though psychoanalysis has declined as a therapeutic practice, it has helped inspire the development of many other forms of psychotherapy, some diverging from Freud's original ideas and approach. Freud postulated the existence of libido (an energy with which mental process and structures are invested), developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and make no attempt to concentrate while doing so), discovered the transference (the process by which patients displace on to their analysts feelings based on their experience of earlier figures in their lives) and established its central role in the analytic process, and proposed that dreams help to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awake the dreamer.
Freud's theories have been criticized as pseudo-scientific and sexist, and they have been marginalized within psychology departments, although they remain influential within the humanities. Critics have debated whether it is possible to test Freudian theories. Some researchers claim evidence exists for some of Freud's theories. Freud has been called one of the three masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche,while his ideas have been compared to those of Plato and Aquinas.
IDEAS
Early Works
The goal of Freudian therapy, or psychoanalysis, was to bring repressed thoughts and feelings into consciousness in order to free the patient from suffering repetitive distorted emotions. Classically, the bringing of unconscious thoughts and feelings to consciousness is brought about by encouraging a patient to talk about dreams and engage in free association, in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and make no attempt to concentrate while doing so. Another important element of psychoanalysis is the transference, the process by which patients displace on to their analysts feelings and ideas which derive from previous figures in their lives.
Cocaine
As a medical researcher, Freud was an early user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant as well as analgesic. He believed that cocaine was a cure for many mental and physical problems, and in his 1884 paper "On Coca" he extolled its virtues.
The Unconsciousness
The concept of the unconscious was central to Freud's account of the mind. Freud believed that while poets and thinkers had long known of the existence of the unconscious, he had ensured that it received scientific recognition in the field of psychology.
The Dreams
Freud believed that the function of dreams is to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awaken the dreamer.
Way to Freud's Chamber in Vienna
Psychosexual development
"I found in myself a constant love for my mother, and jealousy of my father. I now consider this to be a universal event in childhood," Freud said. Freud sought to anchor this pattern of development in the dynamics of the mind. Each stage is a progression into adult sexual maturity, characterized by a strong ego and the ability to delay gratification (cf. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality). He used the Oedipus conflict to point out how much he believed that people desire incest and must repress that desire. The Oedipus conflict was described as a state of psychosexual development and awareness. He also turned to anthropological studies of totemism and argued that totemism reflected a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict.Freud also believed that the Oedipus complex was bisexual, involving an attraction to both parents
Id, ego, and super-ego
In his later work, Freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: Id, ego, and super-ego. The id is the completely unconscious, impulsive, child-like portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and is the source of basic impulses and drives; it seeks immediate pleasure and gratification.
The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche, which takes into account no special circumstances in which the morally right thing may not be right for a given situation. The rational ego attempts to exact a balance between the impractical hedonism of the id and the equally impractical moralism of the super-ego; it is the part of the psyche that is usually reflected most directly in a person's actions.
Life and death drives
Freud believed that people are driven by two conflicting central desires: the life drive (libido or Eros) (survival, propagation, hunger, thirst, and sex) and the death drive.
Religion
Freud regarded the monotheistic God as an illusion based upon the infantile emotional need for a powerful, supernatural pater familias. He maintained that religion – once necessary to restrain man’s violent nature in the early stages of civilization – in modern times, can be set aside in favor of reason and science.
LEGACY
Verdicts on the scientific merits of Freud's theories have differed. Gilbert Ryle calls Freud "psychology's one man of genius" and the influence of his teaching "deservedly profound" even though its allegories have been "damagingly popular", while David Stafford-Clark calls him "a man whose name will always rank with those of Darwin, Copernicus, Newton, Marx and Einstein; someone who really made a difference to the way the rest of us can begin to think about the meaning of human life and society."
In contrast, Lydiard H. Horton calls Freud's dream theory "dangerously inaccurate" and Eysenck claims that Freud "set psychiatry back one hundred years" and that "what is true in his theories is not new and what is new in his theories is not true", while Peter Medawar, a Nobel Prize winning immunologist, made the oft-quoted remark that psychoanalysis is the "most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century", and Webster calls psychoanalysis "perhaps the most complex and successful" pseudoscience in history.
To further read some of my thoughts on Sigmund Freud and related interesting topics, please check these out.
A-Is Human Nature Basically Selfish? – A brief note on Sigmund Freud’s idea of Oedipal Complex: An infant’s twofold attitude towards both Parents: on the one hand a wish to ELIMINATE the jealously hated father and take his place in a SENSUAL relationship with the mother (or vice versa in case of girl child).
B-“When Nietzsche Wept” is an interesting movie based on the real life story of Nietzsche and Lou, where Sigmund Freud has played an interesting part in their lives, click below to read more…
UP, CLOSE & PERSONAL: Happy Birthday to Lou Andreas-Salomé (12 February 1861 – 5 January 1937)
Today is the birthday of a very interesting character from 20th Centuary "Lou Andreas- Salomé" I rediscovered her while watching the movie "When Nietzsche Wept" few days back recommended by one of my friend. I had read about her while doing a little research on Nietzsche and found her to be a very interesting character in real life too. Her relationship with distinguished western luminaries, like Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Rilke, got me thinking about what actually made her out to be, what kind of person she was...
Lou Andreas-Salomé
Personally speaking, I thought she lacked a companion / Lover who would leave his foot prints along with her's on the beach…. Who would be besides her in times of her need and then no need. But then one person, in my opinion, who loved her deeply, she decided to throw… Personally, I think if she would have been with Nietzsche, they would have achieved much more together then they individually they did on their own. Because, I believe, love actually brings out the best version of the person one loves…..
(So please go ahead and love some one to bring out the best this Valentine's day and actualize the potential you can bring about in him or her … :-) Cheers!!!)
A Brief Note…
Lou Andreas-Salomé (born Louise von Salomé or Luíza Gustavovna Salomé, 12 February 1861 – 5 January 1937) was a Russian-born psychoanalyst and author.
When Salomé was 21, at a literary salon in Rome, she became acquainted with Paul Rée, an author and compulsive gambler with whom she proposed living in an academic commune. After two months, the two became partners. On 13 May 1882, Rée's friend Friedrich Nietzsche joined the duo. In Leipzig,Germany in October, 1882, Salomé and Rée separated from Nietzsche after a falling-out between Nietzsche and Salomé, in which Salomé believed that Nietzsche was desperately in love with her.
Left to right, Andreas-Salomé, Rée and
Nietzsche (1882)
Salomé and Rée moved to Berlin and lived together until a few years before her celibate marriage to linguistics scholar Friedrich Carl Andreas. Despite her opposition to marriage and her open relationships with other men, Salomé and Andreas remained married from 1887 until his death in 1930. The distress caused by Salomé's co-habitation with Andreas caused the morose Rée to fade from Salomé's life despite her assurances. Throughout her married life, she engaged in affairs or/and correspondence with the German journalist Georg Lebedour, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, on whom she wrote an analytical memoir, the psychoanalystsSigmund Freud and Viktor Tausk, among others. Accounts of many of these are given in her volume Lebensrückblick.
Her relationship with Rilke was particularly close. Salomé was fifteen years his senior. They met when he was 21, were lovers for several years and correspondents until Rilke's death; it was Salome who began calling him Rainer rather than René.
In her memoirs, which were first published in their original German in 1951, she goes into depth about matters of her faith and her relationships. She says, and I quote..
“Whoever reaches into a rosebush may seize a handful of flowers; but no matter how many one holds, it's only a small portion of the whole. Nevertheless, a handful is enough to experience the nature of the flowers. Only if we refuse to reach into the bush, because we can't possibly seize all the flowers at once, or if we spread out our handful of roses as if it were the whole of the bush itself—only then does it bloom apart from us, unknown to us, and we are left alone.”
Salomé is said to have remarked in her last days, "I have really done nothing but work all my life, work ... why?" And in her last hours, as if talking to herself, she is reported to have said, "If I let my thoughts roam I find no one. The best, after all, is death."
It was believed that Nietzsche was a reclusive solitary man but I feel that among all the famous lovers around her, Andreas-Salomé was the loneliest... And I quote Nietzsche here from his book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
"Today you still suffer from the multitude, you individual; today you still have your courage undimmed, and your hopes. But one day will solitude weary you; one day will your pride yield and your courage fail. You will one day cry: "I am alone”! One day will you see no longer your loftiness, and see too closely your lowliness; your sublimity itself will frighten you, like a phantom. You will one day cry: "Everything is false”!"
Here is movie that was recommended to me by a friend to see and I actually love it as it gives a real life back ground to who she was and how in life things like this happen and leave a deep impression that changes you completely. (I am sorry, this is only one part as I could not find on the You Tube the whole movie link), and you actually need to see all the parts to complete the picture.) (Thank you my friend)
(Movie Curtsy You Tube)
The movie starts with Lou Andreas-Salomé asking Dr. Breuer to treat Nietzsche to cure of his depression because she has refused to marry Nietzsche when he supposedly proposed to her. Though I have read Nietzsche a lot and liked his thought very much, which is the underlying theme of the movie, as well there is Sigmund Freud thrown along the sidelines, what interested me a lot was the character Lou Andreas-Salomé.
