A Deconstruction of Freud's own psyche

No one would deny that Freud was a visionary, launching modern psychology and setting the stage for the biopsychosocial approach. His theories are lauded by some, and ridiculed by others. Nevertheless, his name is down in history as perhaps the most eminent psychologist of all time. But has anyone thought of decoding the mind of this genius?

Freud was the eldest of eight, born into a strong Hassidic family. He excelled in all his studies and even graduated from his prominent high school with honors. His family often lived in poverty, a proven factor to have negative effects on cognitive abilities. Also, with such a large family living so poorly, one would think each family member would have to work to support the family. This was not the case by Sigmund though. He exceeded in all of his studies, and was able to focus on them, not needing to work. His parents doted upon him, obviously favoring him over the other children, providing for an exceptional education. This all contributed to one of Freud's earliest psychological misfires, the denial and regression of his family. Freud's mind denied the poverty that his family lived in, focusing on the fact that he attended prominent schools and achieved top marks as evidence of his higher societal status, thus combating the otherwise possible detriments to being poor. Being a favored child, and sheltered from the hardships of having to work, his mind did not really register the rest of his family, repressing them to the back of his mind. This way he felt no guilt at always studying and going to better schools than his younger siblings. However, the guilt pushed through to his married life, having six children.

Later in his professional life, when others challenged his theories, Freud was unable to accept them. This most likely stemmed from his early childhood educational successes; Freud could not admit he was wrong, shaking his honors persona. There were also rumors, that evidence was found to support, that suggested Freud had an affair. I like to think that this was perhaps related to his Oedipus Complex.

As one can see, even a brief window into the life of Freud shows that the psycho-(analysis) genius had his own fair share of problems. Only thing is, he repressed them all so he never knew it!

i was watching a tv show the other night and one of the characters brought up an amazing point. while eating a dish he said that it reminded him of his youth when his mom used to make him that exact same  meal. now as im sure we all remember that the sense of smell has a close connection to the limbic system so smells easily bring back emotional memorie. but the interesting part is that when he smelt his food he did not smell each individual item, he smelled them as a whole unit. on top of that, if he had just smelled one ingredient he would not have had the same experience. even if all the ingredients had been combined, but not in the same way he would not have been reminded of his past. and the same thing happens with taste (besides the jogging the memory part). when food are eaten together as one they do not taste like their separate ingredients. imagine a piece of bread, does it taste anything like flour and water to you? i know it does not to me. that is another interesting question: do stimuli produce the same outcome for everyone? like taste things similarly? when you smell something, does it smell the same as it does to me? do we see the same colors even? there is no way of knowing. just a thought

The Neo-Freudians

It turns out, Mrs. Perl and Gabe Goldstein aren't the only people who had issues with Sigmund Freud: there was a whole school of psychology that formed as an "Oh yeah?!" to Freud. Ironically, the psychologists involved in this area are called Neo-Freudians, which basically sounds like they're saying, "We disagree with Freud because we understand Freud's theories better than he does." Three of the most important psychologists in this area are Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, and Carl Jung. Adler and Horney both agreed with Freud that one's childhood plays an important in the development of his or her psychology, but Adler had a more negative approach. He believed that childhood feelings and experiences drive people to try to overcome obstacles and not feel so inferior to other people (famously known as the inferiority complex). Horney thought that the child's sense of helplessness triggers his or her desire for love and security, and she basically found a better explanation than Freud's "subtley" sexist studies. Unlike Adler and Horney, Carl Jung focused more on the unconscious than social factors. Jung is sort of the Noam Chomsky of Neo-Freudianism--he believes in a collective unconscious, a common reservoir of images derived from our species' universal experiences. If you have trouble following, a collective unconscious is exactly what it sounds like: everybody is born sharing the same ideas of symbolism and myths. For instance, everybody seems to agree that the mother is the symbol for nurturance. To tell you the truth, I think the Neo-Freudians are just as insane as Freud himself. There's really no hard evidence to prove what they're saying, and you could just as easily argue against what they have to say. However, I still find this perspective very interesting, and I'm now even more interested in watching the film "A Dangerous Method," directed by David Cronenberg and starring Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung and Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud.

BREAKING NEWS: Nature vs. Nurture Debate Solved

I have just received word that the nature vs. nurture debate has been solved. State Farm psychologists have found a case between two twins who were separated at birth: Cliff Paul and Chris and Paul who, although living in different environments, both love assisting others. Cliff Paul as an insurance agent and Chris Paul as a basketball player. This would make it seem as if nature is the most important thing, and that nurture is only secondary. If you have not yet seen this amazing discovery here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqBj3P13ABA
In all seriousness, this commercial is in line with psychological studies which say that personality traits (such as loving to assist others) is based nature whereas views and opinions are based on nurture. Whatever the case may be, State Farm has found a huge discovery that could lead to further evidence that nature is indeed more important than nurture.

Trait Perspective

       In my opinion, the trait perspective is the best perspetive to studying personality. They do not try to explain why people act in the way they do, which I do not think is so necessary anyways. Rather, they try to explain what is happening and how people act and react in different situations. They say personality is about character traits and they look at what characteristics cause people to act in a certain way.
       Eysenck said that there are two major scales of personality traits or as he called them "super traits."He said that every single trait that you can think of falls under the scale of introverted to extroverted or stable to unstable. Gordon Allport said that there are common traits that are shared by every culture and individual traits that are unique to every individual. Cardinal traits, central traits, and secondary traits are a few types of individual traits. Cardinal traits are the most basic traits of a person, central traits are the next set of basic traits to a person's character, and secondary traits are those inconsistent and superficial characteristics that people possess. Raymond Cattell took a different stance. He used factor analysis in which he took a bunch of traits and boiled them down to the 16 most basic characteristics. He said that every single trait falls under those basic 16. He added that every single person possesses each of those traits to a certain extent. The fourth view that we learned was the CANOE/OCEAN personality. This view holds that there are five basic traits including openness to experience, conscientiousness, introversion/extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. I like the Raymond Cattell view the best because I think it is the most realistic. I think that everyone has some amount of all 16 of those characteristics. 

My Pops

My pops is a good dude. But this wasn't always so. I'm going to talk about his evolution from an authoritative parent to an authoritarian parent. When Ben and Amy were born, my dad was in the game. He was ready to raise kids and wasn't going to take any nonsense. He was very strict, very dismissive, and very boring. As the years went by, and boy was it many years, he grew tired of this parenting style. He lost the energy to enforce strict rules on a daily basis. He lost the energy to be authoritative. Lucky me! When I was born, he was an old feller. He was done with the whole game and wanted to just chill, ya feel? So when I grew up he turned into the ultimate authoritarian parent. He reasons with us when we have objections to his rules, but he knows when to exert his executive powers. He is one of the coolest men alive and it's truly a blessing having an authoritarian dad.

Being an authoritative son

I have several younger siblings, four to be exact. If I had it my way, I would have had my parents have just me, wait fifteen years, and then have my baby sister, Noa. Noa is cute, adorable, sweet, and very unannoying. The age gap between us is perfect, where I can focus on her and her on me until we get tired of each other and then all is still fine because she's still cute. That, however, is not the case and my parents have a couple more kids to parent.

I do not believe that my parents always do an adequate job of parenting, often even requiring assistance. There have been times when decisions have been so off, there's no doubt in my mind they merely wanted me to offer my advice and were too proud to admit it. Luckily for them, I'm always happy to offer my support and expertise and will give them a piece of my mind without them having to ask.

It is important when dealing with my parents to not be too assertive. When my younger sister shouts "No!!!!!! How dare you! I do everything and you can at least take me to the____" in a very loud and inappropriate voice, I handle the situation carefully. I do not go to my mother/father and say in a cold, unwieldy tone, "go now and punish. Do it immediately. This is what you HAVE to do!" That would be too much negative vibe and would be too assertive. No, instead I employ authoritative measures to get them to see sense. I ask, "can she be talking to you like that? Wouldn't it be good to teach her a lesson? I've heard that research suggests the best way to punish your child in this situation is to (insert latest research here)." It is important that I don't talk to them too condescendingly because otherwise they won't do it. It's also very important that I do speak to them, because otherwise they will think that behavior is just allowed and they won't know what to do in the future, when I'm not there to help them along.

At times, the position can be quite trying. Having to mentor your own parents on parenting can bea burden and there are times that I want escape. But that's what I push through; it's what I fight. Just like a parent can't leave their child until they're ready, I can't leave my parents until they're ready to be caring alone. Until they can give my other sister the independence that she needs to grow and send her to the school that I know would be best for her. It's up to me to care for them.

Humanistic Perspective

This theory for personality makes absolutely no sense. They would like to claim a person's perceived self and ideal self should be the same. Before continuing to learn the details of this perspective I believed there were already multiple flaws. First, as a high school student how on earth can we be in an ideal state? We have barely experienced life, there is no way anyone could make the claim that any one of us have been able to accomplished our ideal self. Secondly a person could always be improving themselves. In fact this is one of the fundamental ideas behind humanistic psychology. How could a person improve them-self if they are already in an ideal state? I think this could connect to an earlier blog post I had written about how Psychology is a new science that has many unanswered questions.

Reflexes

When learning the development of a human we discussed the development of a newborn baby. During these discussions we learned about the reflexes a baby is born with, tonic neck reflex, grasp reflex, step reflex, and crawl reflex. I found their ability to swim the most interesting. One can say this reflex comes from their time spent in the womb. If this is true are you able to act on this reflex so extend it into a long term skill. If you throw a baby in water on a regular basis would they learn how to swim? Acting on a persons reflex and trying to develop it into a skill could possibly change the way we raise our children. We have learned in the past that a baby is born with the ability to understand all languages than couldn't parents use todays technology to ensure they continue to be exposed to multiple languages as they grow up? Having the next generation understand dozens of languages could change the way we think of the globalized world.

Perspective on the Trait Perspective

In life, people are often quick to think that bigger and more wide ranging is better. This does not apply to technology because it is apparent that slimmer and less-weight is often better, like for iPhones. But in terms of knowledge, the farther an answer spans, the more accurate it is, right?

I don't think so.

The trait perspective believes that personality is determined by one's traits. However, there are arguments within the trait perspective over which  traits specifically influence personality. It seemed to me from class that the most accepted Trait Perspective theory is the OCEAN (or CANOE) Theory. In this theory, you measure a person based on 5 scales to determine their personality. The 5 scales are as follows. 1. Openness to Experience (e.g. - liberal, conservative) 2. Conscientiousness (e.g. - stoic, methodical, gullible) 3. Extroversion/Introversion (e.g. - be with others, keep to yourself) 4. Agreeableness (e.g. - stubborn, easy going) and 5. Neuroticism (e.g. - emotional stability or instability).

I think the OCEAN perspective has too many scales. I think simplicity is paramount in determining one's personality. If you want to classify someone, you want to do so on an easy level. Or else it causes too much thinking and it is much harder to identify someone and know the essence of them. I believe a person can be summed up by the Hans Eysenck Theory. This theory only uses 2 scales: introverted vs. extroverted & emotionally stable vs. emotionally unstable. Furthermore, your personality can be a combination of the 2 scales to result in a overall (though not ALL encompassing) personality label. For example, one with majority extroverted while simultaneously being mostly emotionally unstable could be classified as having an excitable personality.

The Hans-Eysenck Theory makes things simple. Simple is good. The Hans-Eysenck Theory is good.