This week, our English class dove into the history of psychology specifically focusing on one individual who's work and study helped make the study of the mind what it is today. That mans name was Sigmund Freud and he was an Austrian born neurologist who had a particular fascination with the brain and its many functions and intricacies. One particular facet of the brain that fascinated Freud was the subconscious. Freud's research helped to break the mind into three parts, the Id, Ego and Superego, and analyze what each part of the mind is responsible for in how people think and act. One example of this would be that the Id is more responsible for primal instincts, like arousal or anger, while the ego is more responsible for intellectual and cognitive thinking and decision making. Freud studied the mind further, particularly focusing on defense mechanisms which are ways the human mind deals with stress or traumatic events. Some mechanisms can be as subtle as suppressing any thoughts of the event or conflict and can be as drastic as tearing the subconscious apart and creating split personalities.
Another thing we learned about that I found particularly interesting was dreams and how one can interpret their dreams to understand how they feel on certain aspects of their life. Dreams act as sort of "wish fulfillment" as they portray what or how the person wants to deal with a traumatic event or conflict. These dreams are filled with symbolic meaning and metaphors to help avoid facing problems head on and this is the part of dreams that can be interpreted. I particularly liked when Ms. Baskin interpreted both of Anthony's dreams of focusing around phallic symbols and animosity towards his father.
I am also fascinated by the connection between dreams and reality. However, I found it very interesting that the human mind can repress thoughts and experiences so that our conscious selves cannot access them (except in dreams). It is almost like there is an entire separate entity in us that restricts us from accessing our very own experiences to protect our conscious selves, and I found this too be very thought-provoking.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that even in your dreams, you cannot be exposed directly to trauma so your brain uses symbols and such to try to get you to figure out what the source of the trauma is. This struck me as interesting because you would think that your mind would want you to figure it out fast so that it would stop causing you trouble.
ReplyDeleteSomething that I found interesting was that, as you said, dreams often have symbolic events that help us deal with things in the subconscious. We don't actually remember our dreams, so we have no idea exactly what symbolism we see, what it means, or that we even saw it, and yet it has an effect on us.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely agree with you about how cool our psychology lesson was. Learning that our subconscious tries to communicate with us through symbolism in dreams blew my mind. Especially since as you wrote, the mind is usually in very strange places. Which reminds me I really want to own a tank. Having an M18 Hellcat for casual grocery runs would be excellent. Only in my dreams I guess.
ReplyDeleteLearning about symbolism in dreams was very interesting. I've had some weird dreams in my time that have made nearly no sense at all and I have always wondered what those dreams have meant. A skill I would love to have would be the ability to interpret dreams/know what the symbols in dreams represent because then everything would make a lot of sense to me and maybe I would know what my subconscious is trying to say.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that the discussion of dreams was one of the most interesting. I can't speak for everyone, but I for one had never seen or considered any of the views on dreams that we discussed, particularly the abundance of phallic symbols. The interpretation of dreams was without question one of the most interesting as well as amusing parts of our study of psychoanalysis.
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