Monday 9 February 2015

Theory Of Human Nature

  Freud's Theory Of Human Nature  
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian psychologist and the founder of psychoanalysis.
Freud was born in Freiberg, which is now known as the Czech Republic, on May 6, 1856
His family moved to Vienna when he was four- where he later attended university. His family was Jewish, however he distanced himself from the traditions.
 In 1933, the Nazis publicly burnt a number of Freud's books.
In 1939  Freud and his family; wife and daughter Anna fled Austria as a result of the Nazi annexation, and they settled in England.
Sigmund Freud  had been diagnosed with mouth cancer  in 1923, and he died of cancer on 23 September 1939.
 Freud developed psychoanalysis, a method through which an analyst unpacks unconscious conflicts based on the free associations, dreams and fantasies of the patient. His theories on child sexuality, libido and the ego, among other topics, were some of the most influential academic concepts of the 20th century, according to him, all the "energy" in our minds comes from our instincts. Freud thought that all instincts come from a few basic ones: Eros (the basic "Life" instinct ) and Thanatos (the basic "Death" instinct), Freud created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human personality.
Eros is the drive of life, love, creativity, and sexuality, self-satisfaction, hunger and self preservation.
Thanatos from the Greek word for "death" is the drive of aggression, sadism, destruction, violence, and death.
 - What are we?
-  Human nature is essentially in conflict—consisting of an unconscious mind (Id = our old biological instincts transformed in the name of civilization), an Ego (conscious rational part, the product of taming the Id); and the Superego (an agency that promotes guilt in order to "tame" the Id).
 - Who are we?
- Each of us is repressed, we repress and censor our instincts, our memories, our fantasies, and our guilt.
 How should we live?
Success or failure in life depends on getting medical help, therapy, on being psychoanalyzed—in order to escape the determinism of our pasts, or at least prevent it from turning into a neurosis. This way we can aid the Ego in its fight against the Id and the Superego.
 - How do the normative implications follow from the theory of human nature?
- The Id accounts for 90% of who we are. It is unconscious and therefore unknown to us, but it shapes our conscious life and sometimes even dominates the Ego. We then become neurotic. There is no choice about who we are. Repression is normal and required in order that the conscious mind can function in daily life in spite of the eternal conflict waging itself in our psyche.
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While theorizing that personality depends greatly on experience and heredity, Freud also introduced the psychosexual stages of development through which every child is supposed to grow.

He suggested that infants first obtain pleasure from the mouth (the oral stage) and then from the other end of the alimentary tract (the anal stage).

Both boys and girls then become interested in the male sexual organ (the phallic stage). The little boy is alleged to feel sexual desires for his mother and to fear castration by his father- the *Oedipus complex. Both the desire for mother and the hostility to father are then normally repressed.
Freud suggested that around the time of the Oedipus complex in boys, little girls develop "penis envy."
He rejected metaphysical dualism, however did acknowledge a distinction between mental states and physiological states of the nervous system-which many philosophers would agree with today.

Based on this assumption Freud boldly attempted to identify a physiological basis for all mental states in his book "Project for a Scientific Psychology" but instead was content with leaving it to the future development of science because such theorizing was "too far ahead of the knowledge of his time."

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Freud's theory includes a strict application of *determinism- the principle that every event has preceding causes- to the realm of the mental.
Freud's hope was to "restore a harmonious balance" between the parts of the mind and, ideally, to suggest ways to improve individual adjustment to the world. He'd suggest becoming more "self aware" through dream analysis and psychoanalytic treatment.   However, Freud never thought that psychoanalysis was the answer to every human problem.
He completely denied Free Will, believing instead that nothing a person thinks, does, or says is really haphazard or accidental; everything   actions, dreams, and neurotic symptoms can in principle be explained by something in the person's mind, he  believed there are lots of mental states and his crucial assertion was that our minds are not co-extensive with what is available to conscious attention but includes items of which we can have no ordinary knowledge.
To explain puzzling human phenomena such as hysterical paralyses, neurotic behavior, obsessional thoughts, and dreams, Freud postulated the existence of emotionally charged ideas in the *unconscious part of the mind, which actively yet mysteriously exerts influences on what a person thinks, feels, and does.
Freud would claim that there are "unknown causes" that determine our choices- we're far from being perfectly "free" and uniquely "rational," instead things are determined by causes of which we are not normally aware.  ( Determinism--  - The doctrine that all events, including human action).
Freud also theorized that unconscious desires or memories can cause people to do things that they cannot explain rationally, to others or even to themselves. Some unconscious states may previously have been conscious, but have been repressed because they became too painful to acknowledge.

SOURCES
S. Freud. Project for a Scientific Psychology. Vienna, 1895.

Stevenson, Ten theories of human nature. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Quotes on Human Nature and humans :))
*  Human nature tends to value and wish what he can not reach.
* Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
* 'It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.
*I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.
* The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'
* I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.
* The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
*The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.
* The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.
* Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
* Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.
Sigmund Freud
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 *  Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Carl Jung
* If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
Albert Einstein
* *  Keep your religions away from our children, out of our governments and our courts, and we might stop ridiculing them.
*  If there is a God he doesn't deserve to be worshipped.
* If you are agnostic, how you are atheist too?-:))
* If 'religion is the opium of the masses' then why people aren't happy,
 under religious?:))) I think that Religion isn't 'the opium of the masses', because opium makes you happy or happier, and religion makes you fear and coward and conformist.
P. s I remember religious most famous slogan "Fear God!' :) K. Shiuka.)

Karl Marx - Theory of human nature
 - What are we?
 - Humans are natural producers; historical conditions determine what and how they produce. Humans are also species beings.
- Who are we?
- Marx’s vision tended to focus on classes and groups; it is unclear what to say about his theory of the self.
 How should we live? 
- History will unfold according to its own laws—we can only hasten the inevitable revolution where all alienation and false consciousness will disappear, and we will return to ourselves as Homo faber. This will be the coming of human liberation.
 - How do the normative implications follow from the theory of human nature? 
Freedom is not the basis of human life, but its end—history unfolds by a necessary process and each "historical moment" moves us closer to freedom. This is the dialectic of history. The historical forces of production alienate humans from themselves (their productive powers). The abolition of history will therefore be the abolition of alienation and creation of freedom.
* Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.
* The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way.
* Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.
Steven Pinker The Blank Slate, 
The Modern Denial of Human Nature.
In book 
Profesor  Steven Pinker said that; genetic is main component of human nature.
  The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, published by Viking. In it, he describes three major theories that have shaped our understanding of human nature, including the idea that the mind is a "blank slate" shaped entirely by external influences. The theory of man as a "noble savage" and the theory that the human mind is independent of the body are also discussed. Professor Pinker argues that these theories are flawed and suggests that there is a genetic basis for human nature that all three theories ignore. He also addresses the backlash, from both the political left and right, to the idea that genes influence human nature and argues that the arguments these critics make are based on non-sequiturs. 



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