FREE ESSAY ON FREUD

FREUD

1. Freud defines three stages of sexuality, the oral, the anal and the oedipal stage. An
infant in its oral stage learns that there is an external world through pleasure and
pain. Human nature is governed by the pleasure principle. When the infant is being breast
fed he/she feels pleasure and when pulled away from the breast the baby feels pain. The
pleasure principle is a way of seeking pleasure in order to avoid pain. We can't be happy
all the time because three things threaten us. First of all our own bodies can't handle
too much pleasure at once, eventually our bodies get older and death is inevitable.
Second, natural phenomenon's get in our way, and third our relationships with others. We
are emotionally dependent on others and when we take their words into consideration we
become unhappy. Since we can't be happy all the time we need to learn how to avoid pain.
There are five ways we can avoid pain. We can become hedonistic and gain pleasure at all
costs all the time. This way of avoiding pain isn't really possible due to the fact that
we wouldn't be able to accomplish anything else in our lives. Second way of avoiding pain
is by voluntary isolation. A person can take him/herself out of society and become a
hermit. They do not deal with people on an emotional or personal level. The third way of
avoiding pain is turning away from the world, the libidinal energy is turned inward and
used up by them when they create art and literature. Forth is by working in groups and
forming memberships. Groups are formed for protection against brute force and have
allowed us to conquer nature. The fifth way is by influencing the organism. The
individual wants to kill off all instincts and does this either by using drugs and
alcohol, or using eastern techniques such as yoga.
Freud said that another basic way to avoid pain is love. Sexual love is the most intense
form of feeling pleasure. All forms of pleasure are related to sexual love. The
sublimation of love can be between brother and sister and also can exist between friends.
Along with love comes the appreciation of beauty and it is related to the sexual feeling
that is part of our libido. Civilization can not do without beauty even though everyone
has his or her own interpretation of what is considered beautiful. 
Freud describes the origin of civilization through four different time periods. First in
Time A, which is the time of the primal male, the male is brutish, ape-like and is
governed by the pleasure principle. The male needs to gain genital pleasure no matter the
consequences so he begins to associate pleasure with one woman. The male wants to keep
this woman close to him and therefore he also has to keep their children. The woman stays
with him for the protection he provides for her and the children. Only the male can
determine who will and will not receive pleasure. The reason why this family is formed is
because the forceful male wants pleasure and he needs the children to do the work that he
is not willing to do. The primal male becomes known as 'The Law' and since he takes this
role he feels he should be receiving all the pleasure. The children must work for him and
he is the source of their pain. In Time B, the brothers come together and form the
'brother band' and use their collective will to kill the father that has caused them so
much pain. After his parricide the brothers will begin to fight one another to gain the
power that their father once had possessed. Time C is the time of chaos, the brothers are
fighting one another to gain power and the women have to take over. The women keep the
order and inform the brothers that the chaos is a result of the death of 'The Law'. In
Time D, the father (the Law) returns as a symbolic totem. The concept of 'taboo' is
introduced and the brothers must renounce their instincts and have to sublimate their
love. The incest taboo forces them to stop trying to dominate the economy of pleasure. 
Due to the renunciation of instincts, genital satisfaction is sublimated. The most
intense form of pleasure, sexual pleasure, now becomes aim-inhibited love. This
renunciation of instincts therefore changes sexual satisfaction to affection and respect
for others around us and is aim-inhibited. This kind of love has its negative results.
First is when a family is so libidinally bound that it can not function without any of
its members. The family does not want to widen its circle and can not give up an
individual. Second is when a woman becomes neurotic due to lack of attention. Since the
work of civilization is considered to be the work of men, their libidinal energy is spent
on the world. The result is that the woman becomes hostile due to not being satisfied. 
2. The displacement of the libidinal energy develops as we try to avoid pain. This makes
people fantasize and they receive pleasure through these fantasies. People obtain
satisfaction without interfering with the real world. Happiness is a function that is the
economics of the individual's libido. Libido is energy and there is a finite amount and
it needs to be spent. One can expend it all at once or divide it up. There is a need for
something based on a lack. We all have our own way of dealing with this lack. This
economics of the libido are broken up into two parts, the general and the individual. The
general is true for everyone, because everyone wants to be happy. The individual puts the
economics of the libido at risk for unhappiness and disappointment. 
People use different ways to deal with the world and distributing libidinal energy. The
erotic person is emotionally dependent on others especially when it comes to
relationships. His/her energy is invested in others and becomes very easily attached. The
narcissistic person turns inward and is self-sufficient. They use their energy to create
things and derive pleasure from themselves. The third is the action man, he conquers
nature by pushing forward. He/she wants to try out his strengths on the world and this is
his source of pleasure. The neurotic person can't spend his libidinal energy, this energy
works as a neurosis and the person might have a nervous tick. The last is the psychotic
who creates a different world as a way to expend his energy. He is a hermit and
completely withdraws from society and this causes him to turn inward and lose all
connection with reality. 
Eros (love) is responsible for increasing the size of the community. From this a society
values and accepts monogamous heterosexual relationships. Civilization narrows down
pleasure by posing restrictions on us. These restrictions cause individuals to repress
things and these repressed objects will come back in some form.. Nature does not restrict
its instincts and is guided by the pleasure principle. Since these restrictions are not
natural, people acquire a hostile attitude towards civilization. Human nature is
polymorphously perverse which means that pleasure can come from any object. When 'the
law' causes problems when it puts restrictions on the pursuit of pleasure. Anything
linked to 'the law' is acceptable and anything else is perverse and criminal. The Ideal
State of Affairs is a community based on pairs of lovers and they are libidinally
satisfied and nothing in the external world matters. Things are not this way because
civilization has certain aims and we can not always pursue the pleasure principle. 
An ideal demand is "love thy neighbor as you love yourself". If you do not follow this
then your neighbor becomes an object of your aggression. This means that we have to
control two instincts, the pleasure and the aggression. The only thing that stops
aggression is the sense of guilt. Eros is controlled by the pleasure principle, which
binds people together and the community grows. Thanatos is the death drive, this causes
destruction and death. Freud also believes that these two are the same. For example when
we are hungry we might eat an apple. Eating the apple is negation but we need to eat to
live. Our entire behavior is a manifestation of the struggle between life and death. This
is also defined as one word 'lifedeath'. Civilization is the reason for our misery but
our aggression is a threat to civilization.
Civilization forces us to internalize all of the aggressive instinct and send it back to
the ego where it originated. This new area is referred to as the super-ego. The super-ego
functions as guilt. This is societies way of controlling man's aggressive tendency. The
super-ego is formed during the phallic stage when a boy realizes that he can not have the
mother because of his father. The boy becomes incapable of doing anything because of the
'no' of the father. The super-ego beats up on the ego; this punishment is a way of
threatening to destroy the ego. 
Sigmund Freud concluded that human nature is governed by the pleasure principle to avoid
pain. Sexual love is the most intense form of pleasure. Eros (love) is responsible for
increasing the size of the community. As we try to avoid pain our libidinal energy is
displaced. Due to this we all need to find our own way of distributing this energy.