Sigmund Freud made amazing discoveries about the
unconscious. He proposed that idea that some things were too painful to keep in
the conscious mind and were pushed into the unconscious, as shown in the
iceberg diagram. Those thoughts are kept “under the surface” to protect the
person from having the thoughts that have been repressed to protect the person.
I think that this is a very groundbreaking idea because victims of traumatic
events like sexual abuse do repress these memories in order to cope with the
trauma caused by the event. Freud knew this because women would often
discover in their pasts that they had past sexual abuse or were repressing some
other traumatic event that was supposedly causing their physical ailments. I know
a couple of people that have used repression to help cope with such events and
they were able to pull themselves out of their emotional shock by repressing
it. So that is why I believe that the unconscious model that Freud proposed
exists. I do not think he was right about being able to determine everyone’s
actions by the act of psychoanalysis but I think most actions that are not
normal could be explained by psychoanalysis. I think that it plays a key role
in finding out why people do what they do, such as commit mass murder or some
act of terror. I know that today a lot of people are starting to move away from
the psychoanalysis due to the lack of evidence to support findings by
psychoanalysis, but I believe it plays an important role in philosophy and
psychology today.
I guess a lot of Freud's critics would agree that we are indeed very accomplished at suppressing or "repressing" traumatic memories, but still question whether that proves the existence of the mental entity or phenomenon he called the Unconscious. But whatever we call it, and whether it's an entity, a process, or what, it's clear that a lot of people do seem to benefit from the "Talking Cure."
ReplyDeletethere have been many variations derived from the "talking cure" like the psychodynamic approach to therapy and cognitive-behavorial approach that all stemmed from the discovery of the unconscious
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