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Lace Wilson

Section 6

Second Installment

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the father of psychoanalysis. Although he is known more in psychology, he also had an impact on the philosophy world as well. Many scholars see Freud as a parallel to Plato. Freud elaborated the theory that the mind is a complex energy-system, the structural investigation of which is the proper province of psychology. I have also been taking a Psychology course along with Anthropology so Sigmund Freud is a name I have gotten used to hearing.

Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality must be seen as an integral part of a broader developmental theory of human personality. This had its origins in, and was a generalization of, Breuer’s earlier discovery that traumatic childhood events could have devastating negative effects upon the adult individual, and took the form of the general thesis that early childhood sexual experiences were the crucial factors in the determination of the adult personality. Freud’s ways of his work were quite normal in his day but now we think of him as kind of perverted and overly sexual.

“All of his main hypotheses, every single one of them, from the Oedipal Complex, to penis envy, castration anxiety, and his obsession with sexual repression -- are just wrong.  Some people even see his views as mere pseudo-science. Early feminists thought that his views were shot through with patriarchal and sexist dogma.” - See more at: http://www.philosophytalk.org/community/blog/ken-taylor/2015/04/legacy-freud#sthash.esj2gb2E.dpuf But I do have to input that a theory is not wrong till it is proven wrong. But in this website article I am sure they are mentioning that it is just morally wrong.

Freud also followed Plato in his account of the nature of mental health or psychological well-being, which he saw as the establishment of a harmonious relationship between the three elements which constitute the mind. These three elements are known as fixation, repression, and sublimation. Freud describes himself as "an author who is ignorant of the language of holy writ, who is completely estranged from the religion of his fathers—as well as from every other religion"

“If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.

SIGMUND FREUD, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis