Essay on Sigmund Freud on Human Nature

Throughout the rest of the book, Freud addresses the conflict between civilization and the individual. He starts with the fundamental paradox of civilization: we created civilization as a tool to protect ourselves from unhappiness; however it is our largest source of unhappiness. He also points out that contemporary technological advances have been a mixed blessing for human happiness. He also asks what the purpose of civilization is if it is not to satisfy the pleasure principal. He later concedes that civilization has to make compromises of happiness to fulfill its primary goal of bringing people into peaceful relationships with each other, by making them subject to a higher, communal authority.

Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theory of personality argues that human behavior is the result of the interactions among three component parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego. The Id (Anger), is concerned with satisfaction of basic and physical needs and urges.

Freud proposed the psychological structure of personality to include three systems called the id, the ego, and the superego. At birth, the id is the original system of personality and is ruled by the pleasure principle. It is driven towards satisfying instinctual needs. The ego can be described as a mediator between ones instincts and their surrounding environment. The ego is ruled by the reality principle, using realistic and logical thinking to formulate action plans for satisfying needs. The superego includes a person’s moral code and strives for perfection, not pleasure. Psychic energy is distributed between these three systems creating dynamics of personality. This psychic energy is what determines behavior (Day, 2008).

Freud’s theory of personality examined the interplay between the primitive, instinctual urges—the ‘id’; the practical and rational ‘ego’; and the morally attuned ‘superego’; ‘object relations’ refer to the "object" of an instinct”, which is “the agent through which the instinctual aim is achieved”—most often a person and, according to Freud, most often the mother (Ainsworth 1969, p. 1). The psychosexual development theory that Freud launched reduces our behaviour to mechanistic responses to an instinctive need for pleasure fueled by the ‘libido’ and barriers or distortions to the gratification of the libido at various delineated stages of development were responsible for later problems in life (Kail & Zolner 2012, p. 5). Erik Erikson later added depth to the approach by including more humanistic elements to Freud’s stages and including more periods of development (p.

Freud primarily subscribed to the idea that there are two energies that drive human behavior. These two energies are sex – the pleasure principle and aggression. The human mind is comprised of the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Within the realms of the mind, the human personality is controlled by the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is driven by the pleasure principle. The superego is the instinctual moral good, which aims to please the ego ideal, or the magnified moral values. The ego interacts with both the id and the superego and aims to please both components (Connors).

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud composes essentially to look at the relationship between the individual and society. Through Freud's examination of the relationship, a more profound comprehension of the intricacy of mental life is figured it out. Freud starts to add to the relationship ahead of schedule in the work by portraying the most primitive acknowledge of self and the most primitive acknowledge of the outside world. He further adds to this relationship through the pondering of sexual yearning and its associations with adoration, which he claims, lead to the arrangement of families and after that later gatherings of humankind that came to include development all in all. Through inquiries raised concerning society, society, history and the self, Freud has the capacity portray a kind of guide of the brain. This guide Freud delineates further empowers him to build up a comprehension of the relationship in the middle of human advancement and the person.

Sigmund Freud was a well known psychologist whose theories have founded the understanding of the human psyche. Freud’s theory of personality is one of his most known theories. It details that there are three segments of consciousness. The id is desire, immorality and is what drives us to do wrong. The superego exists to counteract and overpower the id, as it is morality, commonly known as our conscious. The ego exists to balance out both extremes and devises a solution to sate each segment. Then there are the defense mechanisms, repression, denial, projection, displacement, regression and sublimation. These are employed by the ego to keep the balance between the id and the superego and to protect the psyche, especially in traumatic times. Last, the Oedipus complex which Freud believed, only exists in children from the ages of 3-5, when they become attracted to

Freud attempted to explain how the unconscious functions by dividing it into three structures, the id, ego, and superego. The id holds our primitive instincts that demand immediate gratification, because it operates on the pleasure principle (McLeod, 2010). Similarly, the ego also seeks pleasure. However, instead of seeking immediate gratification, the ego acts realistically in order to avoid potentially negative consequences that may arise. On the other hand, our superego represents our conscious. It encompasses the morals and values we learn by society and our parents as we go through the stages of

Freud mainly focuses on human nature and questions the desire, ideas ,and beliefs that shape a human, he then further analyses them. We see in his literature, Civilization and its Disconnect, that he questions religion and the belief in God. He himself does not believe in God, but wants to know why many people follow and trust something that they cannot see. He also questions the concept of human relationships. Knowing that a two person relationship and interaction is inevitable and that it is a part of life, but he does not know if a third relationship, and further on, is necessary. Regardless, human relationships are a part of society, and one of causes of civilizations, which Freud defines as “the whole some of achievement and the regulations which distinguish our lives” (Freud). With one of the achievements

Psychoanalytic criticism originated in the work of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who pioneered the technique of psychoanalysis. Freud developed a language that described, a model that explained, and a theory that encompassed human psychology. His theories are directly and indirectly concerned with the nature of the unconscious mind. Through his multiple case studies, Freud managed to find convincing evidence that most of our actions are motivated by psychological forces over which we have very limited control (Guerin 127). One of Freud’s most important contributions to the study of the psyche is his theory of repression: the unconscious mind is a repository of repressed desires,

Freud argued that an individual’s instinctual drive was sexually orientated. In the same way that “hunger seeks nutrition,

Freud referred to the Hobbes argument that humans are naturally hostile to one another, humans depend on their own man made devices and hostile nature, leading humanity into a war where a man will be against each other (Hobbes 1906, 96). Human civilization is an effort to set up limitations for man’s aggressive

but his theories on dreams seemed to be the most popular, even to this day.Freud thinks that the agent that

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle Freud theorises something he calls the death instinct, but is now more commonly referred to as the death drive. Freud’s exploration begins with an examination of the “repetition-compulsion” of children and the “conclusion that the child repeats even [their] unpleasant experiences,” casting doubt on the fundamental nature of the pleasure principle (Freud, Beyond 445). This paradox leads Freud to conclude that while a child’s unpleasant repetitions are not a “contradiction of the pleasure principle,” in the case of the adult patient “it is plain that the compulsion to repeat in the transference the occurrences of his infantile life disregards in every way the pleasure-principle” (Freud, Beyond 473; emphasis added). In the adult’s compulsion to act against the pleasure principle “proofs of the organic compulsion to repetition” are found (Freud, Beyond 473; emphasis added). It is this organic compulsion upon which both Freud’s principle of the death drive and my theory of the organic-cell are founded. Freud’s “manifestation of inertia in organic life,” (Freud, Beyond 476) can account for the ‘bugchasing’ of Dean, the ‘reproductive futurism’ of Edelman, and the ‘real’ of Lacan. If one can be compelled by a biological imperative, if human instincts exist (as they must), what role do these instincts and imperatives play in the

In Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents”, we are introduced to a new outlook in the way we view our lives due to his analysis of civilization and how it has affected our happiness. Freud uses his theory of instincts in order to explain what encourages us as well as how our behavior is all linked together and is motivated by our instincts. He explains why humans seek happiness and how it is one of the toughest things to achieve. Towards the end of his book he also gives an insight on how the individual psyche which consist of the id, ego, and super-ego leads us to feel guilt and its impact on civilization. Through his theory of instincts and the individual psyche, Freud is able to demonstrate how civilization has set limits to