Seminar Paper: Freud

Although Freud considered himself a scientist and not philosopher, his contribution to American philosophy was incredible.  He specialised in brain anatomy, and came together with neurologist Joseph Breuer in the treatment of hysterical patients through hypnoses which was the original analysis of mental illness. They stopped using this practice and replaced it with the therapy of psychoanalysis, which they regarded as “nothing more than an exchange of words between patients and doctors”.  He openly admitted that this therapy was not for everyone (and a very select number of people could afford it).

He believed that memories of psychological traumas dated back to infancy and had sexual context. His obsession with infantile sexuality led to a break with Breuer and he became socially isolated. In 1900, he wrote “Interpretation of dreams” which he said were a coded expression of sexual desire. He then went onto expand on this idea with “The psychopathology of everyday life” which was for both neurotic and normal people. In it, he modified his psychoanalytic theories. In 1902, he became the chair of neuropathology in Vienna University. 

Although he was an atheist, he identified with the Jewish Culture and anti-Semitism. He was forced to migrate to England in 1938 when Germany was annexed. He was welcomed with open arms as his work had already been translated in the country.  He suffered from Cancer of the Jaw for 16 years and died from a requested injection of lethal morphine in 1939. 

Freud divided the mind into three parts:

• The conscious – we are aware of this part.
• The pre-conscious – those things that we cannot necessarily remember now, but which we can normally recollect
• The unconscious – This part stores memories from our childhood, or memories of trauma.

He believed that we live the greater part of our life unconsciously. Sexual impulses are pushed into this sector of the mind. Their expression is important not only to keep illness at bay but they also for artistic and cultural creation.

According to him infantile sexuality has 3 stages:

The oral stage- where the infant becomes fixated with pleasure of the mouth

The anal stage- where the child pleasure revolves around eliminating verses retaining faeces

Phallic stage- where the child becomes obsessed with his/her own genitals

The young boy becomes attracted to his mother and is jealous of his father’s possession of her.  He believes that the father will castrate him due to this hostility, and abandons his sexual desire.  This is called the Oedipus complex.

He also stated that the mental apparatus of humans is composed of the following 3:

•  The Id: Unconscious locus of hunger/love  and obscure instincts based on the pleasure principle. 

•  The Ego:  Represents reason/common sense and the part of us that is in touch with the external world.

• The Superego: observes/ judges and punishes. Not present from birth but replaces parental authority.

The ego is the rider who decides the goal, and the Id is the horse which provides the energy. The superego is the vehicle of the ego’s ideal. When all of these are in harmony, there are no neurotic disturbances in a person. If they are disturbed then a person ought to resort to psychoanalysis or to the following temporary solutions: Intoxication, Isolation, Religion and Sublimation.

Freud in relation to Plato:

 In The Republic,  Plato argues that the human  soul is made of three parts: the appetitive soul is much like the Id which is home to our most basic desires; the rational soul like the ego is all about rationality ; and finally the spirited soul, much like the superego is home to moral reasoning.
Similarly for both the philosophers mental illnesses arise when the three parts are not working harmoniously.  However, Plato emphasises the importance of giving control to the rational soul, whereas Freud concentrates on controlling the Id.

Freud in relation to Nietzsche:

Both Freud and Nietzsche explore the importance of the unconscious mind. According to them, sociably unacceptable emotions are repressed by the individual, but  are later leaked in disguised ways.  Similarly, both the philosophers believed that dreaming is cathartic process. 

Freud in relation to Schopenhauer:

Although he denies being influenced by him, many of Freud’s ideas are similar to Schopenhauer’s. These include themes of dreams, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression.

Freud in relation to Marx:

Whereas Marx believed in social evolution, in that man will progress, develop and therefore bring a change into the political system as well as humanity itself, Freud did not believe that man has any potential for development as the Id is far too strong for us to overcome. Human beings are not capable of change.

 

Even though Freud’s theories have been discredited as they cannot be scientifically proved (even though he was a scientist), his impact on philosophy and contemporary society cannot be denied. His work can be seen everywhere, from literature to art.  Although he was not the first to bring infantile sexuality into question (the Victorians were guilty of this beforehand) he did drum in the importance of child psychology. He also moved away from hypnosis and discovered that mental trauma can be “cured” through therapy involving talking, something that people pay a huge amount of money to do now.

Aesthetics and Ethics

Aesthetics is the state of beauty.

Baumgarten is perhaps the father of aesthetics. He believed that art often aims to replicate nature which is the highest form of beauty. He believed that beauty exists primarily to provide pleasure.

Hume stated that beauty is “in the eye of the beholder”, that it is perceived differently by each individual as it depends on the individual’s circumstances (mood/social background/ etc) 

Kant considers beauty as universal, although he divides it into two categories:

1.      Free beauty: beauty without purpose

2.      Derivative beauty: beauty with purpose

Schopenhauer stated that beauty ought to be admired without bias, the thought of selfish gain or the opinions of others.

Nietzsche quoted "Nothing is beautiful, except for man alone: all aesthetics rests upon this naïveté. Nothing is ugly, except the degenerating man." "His feeling of power, his courage, and his pride - all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful." Essentially, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and man is the root of this idea of beauty.

Bentham’s idea of beauty runs parallel with his thoughts on ethics. As a utilitarian he would consider something as beautiful if it induced pleasure.

Ethics is based on morality. It decides whether actions are morally just or not.

Kant: People act from a sense of duty, rather than for selfish reasons.  Things are ethical if they follow the rational law of the universe.  He believes that you ought to treat people how you yourself would like to be treated.  This duty overrides seeking happiness.

Bentham: Bentham was a utilitarian. This principle is based on the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people .

Mill: Also a Utilitarian but believed that we ought to seek higher pleasures instead of lower ones. His famous quotes is “It is better to be human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”.

Schopenhauer: Followed the Buddhist teachings that to overcome desire is the route to happiness.  Actions are governed by human character traits, which cannot be changed as they are based on the will. In order to overcome one’s desire you ought to submerge yourself in creating pleasure that is long term, such as art or literature.

Schopenhauer is another German philosopher; he believes actions are governed by human character, which cannot be changed as they are determined by the will.

Kierkegaard: stated that there are three types of people:

1.      People who seek short-term pleasure based on aesthetic desire

2.      People who are religious (ethical)

3.      People who  search for responsibility (ethical)

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Economics: Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and Marx

This week’s lecture was based on economics, which claims to be a science because the field only deals with “facts”.
The 1^st ever economist was Adam Smith. He wrote “The Wealth of Nations” which explored and answered the question “why is one country richer than the other?”  He came to the conclusion that wealthy countries are characterised by free individuals and free trade.  He especially went into analysing why China was so poor when it had a wealth of gold and oil and said it was due to too much government intervention.His philosophical work mirrored Hume’s ideas and therefore (surprise, surprise) was fairly cynical. In this view he stated that there was in fact no altruistic deed as they are done purely for an ego buzz, etc. People are constantly calculating what gives them the most pleasure whilst minimising pain. “The Law of unintended circumstances” in fact ensures that any conscious act which is carried out to benefit someone else will only end in disaster by harming them and yourself.  You must allow people to be economically free.

David Ricardo held the opposite view. Whereas Smith fixated on the idea that value comes from trade, Ricardo held a more metaphysical ideology. He said that there is a spirit of value. Coal itself has no value; it only arises when human beings apply conscious effort to it. This takes us to the Labour theory of Value.

Explored last year, Malthus crops up again this year. His philosophy is rather miserable and perhaps makes even Schopenhauer look happy in comparison.His “Iron Law of Population” follows that the human species will inevitably starve to death. He describes humans to be like bacteria who will consume everything they encounter, and eventually will eat all their resources.  This theory is backed by the fact that about 70,000 years ago the human species was very close to extinction with only 5-6000 humans left on the face of the planet.  Even now, the UK is exactly 4 days away from mass starvation, because we constantly rely on others for our food source. The public usually goes mental and rushes to the supermarkets to stock up on any product that is rumoured to be in short supply for a while. Imagine then that if there was a shortage of petrol. No goods could be delivered as everything depends on transportation; even the machines in factories making the products would be in trouble as they are also run on petrol. We’re practically eating the stuff.

So Malthus went onto say that marriage and a lack of sexual contact (contraception wasn’t really around in those days) are the only things that will prevent starvation. Marriage seems like an odd one but in those days a man would not get married until he owned his own farm (unless he managed to do it illegally). This way he would be able to definitely provide for himself and his Mrs During these times women were too busy giving birth to work so thank God for feminism and contraception. They had a massive hand in stopping overpopulation.Modernist laugh at Malthus as he doesn’t take into account that every mouth to feed is also an extra pair of hands to work. However, Malthus is coming back into fashion due to climate change. The cost of decent food is extremely high and low level malnutrition is becoming a huge problem.

Marx’ economical ideologies are a mixture of Ricardo and Malthus'. Labour adds value to objects but wages will always decrease due to population increase. The fatal flaw with a market obsessed with profit is that people who grow food won’t be able to buy it.I will attempt to explain this through “the widget theory”, hang in with me, this may get slightly confusing. Imagine that all value comes from a widget. A labourer goes into a widget factory to make widgets. Workers make $10 per widget and the owner takes 50% profit. The worker therefore gets paid $5. The value of a widget however is $10 so the worker is in fact unable to afford one.  As nobody is buying widgets because they can’t afford to there is a widget crunch and the widget is lowered to $5. However, the labourer’s wages are therefore also cut in half to $2.50. He still cannot afford the widget.  This leads to widget crunch 2 and so forth until workers begin a strike and start burning down shops and factories.

Eventually workers were sacked and replaced by machines and the company is more profitable. Although about 1 out of 10 workers would get a job managing and fixing this machinery, the rest were made redundant. Capitalism completely revolutionises everything as everything must be constantly innovated or the company will risk success.  The iron law of wages states that a company must find an increasing number of employees for minimum wages.

In 1848, there was a big political crisis. Millions of people were in uproar at the factory system.

In 1849, Gold was discovered to exist in huge quantities in California and Australia and people began to leave for work. These refugees were the brains behind the likes of Budweiser and Hamburgers.

In 1844, the bank of England came about. There was now officially a machine for printing money.

The currency worked in such a way that if one was to borrow £10, you would give an imaginary IOU. This IOU would be used by the bank to get another £10. Suddenly there is twice as much cash. The whole idea is based on a confidence trick. The bank would only accept your IOU if you were deemed trustworthy.

In 1844, IOUs were based on Gold. The amount of money in England now became based on Gold. The widget crisis was now essentially over because the worker can now borrow the other $5. Ironically, the value of gold is based on Greek mythology and it is in fact intrinsically invaluable.

Adam Smith believed that money has no effect on human behaviour but was just a mechanism of keeping score. The modernist theory is that money has an actual effect on behaviour.

In the 1930s, all the wealth made from the Industrial revolution was threatened, and there was mass unemployment. The 2^nd world war solved this depression and everyone stopped the gold superstition.

The 50s, 60s, and 70s, were based on the Keynesian system. Here, unemployment was dealt with by giving the employee money to employ certain people.  The system is based on the idea that Government intervention in the marketplace is the best method of ensuring economic growth. A massive example of this is the NHS.  This idea is in fact the complete opposite to Adam Smith’s notion that all poverty is the result of too much government intervention. This is perhaps one of the reasons contributing to why Britain is currently in so much debt.