RE: Discussion Question

RE: Discussion Question

DQ Question A: Response to Monica (instructor) 150 word minimum, with 1 peer reviewed reference and clarification of your position)

  • Do you agree with Freud’s belief that people have little or no awareness of what motivates them? Why or why not?

DQ Question B:  Response to Monica to Ivan (Levels of mental life)  Explain in your own words what you think are the strengths and weaknesses of Freud’s mental life theory? (150 min word and 1 peer reviewed reference)

Freud perceived mental functioning as operating in three different stages:

  • Unconscious: drives and instincts that are beyond our awareness but that are what motivates most of humans behavior. Unconscious drives could become conscious in  the form of dreams images, slips of the tongue, or neurotic symptoms. Some unconscious processes originates from repression or inherited experiences. Unconscious ideas can motivate people, and they aren’t inactive or dormant, mainly becasue they always strive to become conscious.
  • Preconscious: images that are not necessarily in awareness, but that become conscious with ease or with some degree of difficulty. What ones perceive is only conscious for a transitory period and then passes into preconscious.
  • Conscious: Could be define as the mental elements in awareness in any given time, and is the only level of mental life that its available to us.

Consciousness plays a minor role in Freud’s theories, mainly because conscious ideas are a result of perception of stimuli or from the unconscious and preconscious once they have evaded restrictions.

Feist, J., Feist G., & Roberts, T-A. (2013). Theories of Personality (8th ed.).  New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

DQ Question C: Response to Dennis Post (150 word minimum, 1 peer reviewed reference, and answer What is your understanding of Freud’s mental theory? Please elaborate your position.)
 

Brief definitions of Freud’s three levels of mental life (Fiest et al., 2013):

  1. Unconscious – can only be proved indirectly (dreams serve as a rich source of the unconscious)
  2. Preconscious – unconscious, but can become conscious (sources are perception and the unconscious)
  3. Conscious – mental elements in awareness at any given point in time

After discussing levels of mental life, the chapter covered provinces of the mind – id, ego, and super ego:

  • Id – it serves the pleasure principle.  It is pleasure seeking and irrational, it has no morality and is primitive, chaotic, illogical, and unorganized (Freud, 1923).
  • Ego – governed by reality principle.  The sole region of mind in contact with the external world.  It tries to please the id, super ego, and external world, and becomes anxious.
  • Super ego – moral and ideal aspects of personality.  It has unrealistic expectations for the ego.  It has two subsystems (the conscience and the ego-ideal).

Dynamics of personality are sex and aggression.  Libido is the psychic energy for the sex drive.  Aggression can take the form of  teasing, gossip, sarcasm, humiliation, humor, and enjoying other’s suffering.  The ego tries to keep these drives under control, and when it cannot people suffer anxiety.  Anxiety is a felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied by a sensation that warns against danger (Feist et al., 2013).  There are three types of anxiety: neurotic, moral, and realistic.

Feist, J., Feist G., & Roberts, T-A. (2013). Theories of Personality (8th ed.).  New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. In Standard edition (Vol. 19).

DQ Question D: Response to Melnar (Chapter 5) (150 word minimum, 1 peer reviewed reference, and answer What is your understanding of Freud’s mental theory? Please elaborate your position.)

The psycho dynamic theory was thought to be unscientific,  which is was criticized for. In this chapter it talks about the strengths of the theory but what about the weaknesses? If we are unable to study the unconsciousness then how could it be a viable theory? I do however enjoy that Freud psychosexual theory focuses on the importance of childhood and how we develop overtime. I think that is a strength in its own because it can help us to understand psychology on a developmental level.