Reading week 2-Caitlin Finnerty

The Theories of Freud by J, Brown 1-What is the role of desire in the unconscious? 2-How does Freuds theory differ or change from after the war or before it? Why is this important? 3-Explain in your own words how anxiety/ fear in later life can be related to ones up bringing and do you think we are sexually influenced by our parents? 4-How does the Oedipus Complex and Electra Complex relate to Freuds theory? 5-How is Freuds Theorys relevant in todays society? Give an example

12- Freuds theorys changed after the war as he began to realise that not all psychological problems may have to do with the psychosexual stages of childhood. He saw that their nightmarish dreams of the battlefield and the emotional and physical scars, could no longer be explained in terms of sexual symbolism. This led to the development of the Life and Death instincts where the life instinct represents self preservation whereas the death instinct represented innate destructiveness and aggression directed primarily against the self. This discovery was important as it led to Freud to develop the theory of the ego, superego and id. 3- I think the theory of the oral and anal stages are the stages I think make sense. However, the fact that if we do not complete each stage correctly, we may not become a healthy adult, is a statement I do not agree with. We are all raised differently and therefore we create different personalities and habits, which does not mean we have not become successful healthy adults. I do believe that the development of these three stages do affect our adult life e.g. development of anxiety and fear, or OCD, but not in the sexual way Freud seems to think they do. There is a primal sexual instinct in us and our parents probably do influence that instinct, but I dont think that means we feel a sexual attraction to our parents. 4- The Oedipus complex, named after Oedipus, a man in tales who unknowingly killed his father then married his mother. The Electra complex is based on a Greek myth where Electra plots the death of her mother who had murdered her father. These relate to the theory of the childhood psychosexual stages of oral, anal and phallic. These complexes are developed during puberty when the child begins to differentiate between girl and boy. Within this stage, the boy begins to become threatened and jealous of the father and a feeling of sexual attraction towards the mother. For the girl, a penis envy is developed as a result of assumed inferiority to the boy. It is in that stage that the girl becomes more attached to her father and where the term daddys little girl was coined. 5- I think the most obvious Freudian theory seen today are the reasons behind OCD. It is a trait given to those who did not successfully pass the anal stage of the childhood psychosexual stages. Through negligence or overbearing parents, the child did not learn to control their bowels and learn self-control, thins can lead to excessive control and order later in life. This can be seen on the TV show Glee where a main character, Emma Pillsbury, is shown to have OCD.