SIGMUND FREUD

1
SIGMUND FREUD

• Not a historian but he developed an approach to
  the study of human behavior that would have a
  powerful impact on the study of history
• Uncovered hidden fundamentals at the core of
  human nature

2
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS

• Motive force of individual behavior was the
  psyche
• Internal mental life of a person
• Divided the mind into two parts
• The conscious
• Situated in the brain
• Produced deliberate and calculated thoughts which
  resulted in intentional acts to achieve
  designated goals and purposes
• The unconscious
• More remote and inaccessible
• Lacked awareness of itself (we dont know it is
  there)
• Fundamental key towards understanding human nature

3
THE UNCONSCIOUS

• Made up of three parts
• Id
• Oldest of the three
• Consisted of inherited instincts and contained a
  cauldron of drives, lusts, desires, and cravings
• All of which sought expression in forms unknown
  to the person possess of them
• The ego
• Mediated between the demands of the id and the
  realities of the external world
• Defines the available range of possible forms of
  satisfaction within the context of seeking after
  pleasure and avoiding pain
• The superego
• Like a conscience
• Perpetuates the experiences of childhood by
  prolonging conceptions of right and wrong learned
  from parents, racial traditions, and national
  traditions

4
HUMAN BEHAVIOR

• Interaction and competition between id, ego, and
  superego accounts for the unconscious mental life
  of people
• Experiences of childhood were central
• Relationship with parents and siblings, long
  forgotten but stored away in the unconscious,
  determined adult behavior in ways usually
  unrecognized by the human actors

5
NEUROSES

• Mild disturbances, obsessions, compulsions, etc
• Required treatment through psychoanalysis
• Technique administered to make patient fully
  conscious of formerly unconscious psychological
  activity
• Through the confrontation of the known and the
  unknown, between remembered events and formerly
  forgotten ones, Freud argued that the patient
  should be cured of his or her neuroses

6
CONTROVERSIAL IDEAS

• In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud
  dismissed all religions as mass delusions
• Pathetic attempts to substitute a wish
  fulfillment of eternal happiness for the sad,
  hard reality of human existence
• In Moses and Monotheism, Freud claimed that Moses
  was an Egyptian outsider who, for reasons of his
  own, led the Jews out of bondage and tried to
  organize them around a set of laws that would
  keep them out of trouble
• In return, Freud claimed the Jews murdered Moses