Yale University OCW-introduce of psychology(Note of lesson three)

In order to improve my English skill, I think it necessary to write down my study note in English and the followings are about the Yale University OCW(耶鲁大学开放课程)-introduce of psychology, lesson three, mainly about Sigmund Freud’s theory.

First, the Doctor told us something about Freud’s life, including his grand theories in psychoanalysis, his contributions in the development of an encompassing theory of mind.
This is a fancy story about Freud.
As he was leaving Europe during the rise of the Nazis, as he was ready to go to England. He had to sign a letter from Gestapo. Gestapo agents intercepted him and demanded him sign a letter saying that at no point had he been threatened or harassed by the Gestapo. So he signed the letter and then he wrote underneath it. ”The Gestapo has not harmed me in any way. In fact, I highly recommend the Gestapo to everybody.
From the story above we could know he had a certain aggression to him.
Besides, lots of his theories cause that he was also disliked, often hated. For instance, his views about phallic symbols, the notorious theory of penis envy, and a set of claims of a

man’s intellectual importance.
To know more about Freud, you can click here.(English or Chinese)

Second, nonetheless, Freud really did goods to the development of modern psychology, especially for the idea of unconscious motivation, involves rejecting the claim that you know what you are doing. (You might not know what—why you do what you do.)
Third, according to Freud, there are three distinct processes going on in your head and these are in violent internal conflict. And the way you act and the way you think are products, not of a singular rational being, but of a set of conflicting creatures.
These three parts are the id, the ego, and the superego. They emerge developmentally. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the ego is the organized, realistic part; and the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role.”

Fourth, according to Freud, there are five different stages through personality development. And each is associated with a particular erogenous zone. He believed, as well, that if you have a problem at a certain stage, if something goes wrong, you’ll be stuck there.
The five stages are oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the genital stage, and the latency stage.
How to use such a theory?
If your roommate is dependent and needy, at least you could then go to your roommate and say, “You are an oral person. The first year of your life did not go well”. But if your roommate had also known the five stages, he or she could say, “Your problem is you’re too anal.”(It meant you are unwilling to part with your own feces.)
From just how people talk is you’re compulsive, you’re clean, you’re stingy. This is the anal personality.
And the phallic stage would cause some problems called the “Oedipus Complex”. But unfortunately, child would found it impossible to kill their fathers as well as being fearful of being castrated. So they enter the genital stage until the healthy adult stage.
And then we entered the latency stage, when the id, the ego, and the superego make difference for ourselves. And it rises some mechanisms, such as the sublimation, the displacement, the projection, the rationalization and the regression.

To learn more about the five stages, you can click here.

Fifth, Freud’s contributions extend beyond the study of individual psychology and individual pathology. He had a lot to say about dreams, including the manifest content and latent content.

Sixth, the Doctor spend the rest of the class on the scientific assessment of Freud, whether or not we should believe this and how well it fits with our modern science.
According to The Memory Wars by Frederick Crews, Freud’s theories are lack of falsifiability, which is that what distinguishes science from non science is that scientific predictions make strong claims about the world and these claims are of a sort that they could be proven wrong. In this way, Freud’s theories seem not scientific as it is so vague and flexible.
But if you ask those Freud supporters, they probably say that the Freudian theory proves itself in the course of psychoanalysis-the success of psychoanalysis.
But the problem is the same sort of dynamic plays itself out even in the scientific debate back and forth.
But from some funny stories, we know those evidences seemed ridiculous. I will show them to make you belly laugh in my next blog.

Seventh, we should point out that there are lots of scientific experiments that support the Freudian theory, especially the language understanding and some social psychologies.
Our likes and dislikes are due to factors that we’re not necessarily conscious of has a lot of empirical support.
For instance, if somebody goes through a terrible initiation to get into a club, they’ll like the club more. The more you pay for something the more you like it, and the more pain you go through to get something, the more you like it.
But in case of this blog being too long, I will show the social psychology in the next blog.

by cloudTed(观尔腾)

This blog focuses on knowledge management, cloud computing, unless special instructions its content comes from own. Your responses will be welcome.