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Monday, November 1, 2010

Psychology: Sigmund Freud vs Sidney Freeman

Psychology: The deep, mystical, and fascinating study of the human mind. (There's a definition a mother would be proud of.)

Post World War One, the world found itself struggling to reconcile the horror it found in industrial war with the positive view of human nature left to it from the Enlightenment. Some of the world's population turned to the arts, enter Modernism. Other's of the world's population turned back to the sciences, enter Sigmund Freud.

Dr. Sidney Freeman

Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud from mansionwb













In the 20th Century Sigmund Freud was at the fore of thinking on the human mind. Following in the footsteps of Dr. Sidney Freeman, who helped the M*A*S*H 4077th deal with the atrocities of war they faced far from home. One of Freud's interesting ideas deals with the development of civilization and brings with it many of the ideas first acknowledged in the Enlightenment.

In his Second Treatise of Government John Locke developed the following steps to the development of government and civilization.
1) In a state of Nature there is no government.
2) Men create a social contract.
3) The social contract establishes government.
Therefore government is of men, and men must give up some freedoms to gain the security of government.

Sigmund Freud spouted a similar idea in his,"Civilization and its Discontents". 
"Is Civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man's sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization. In fact,primitive man was better off in knowing no restrictions of instinct.  To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happiness for any length of time were very slender.Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security... But in the process of civilization things are different. Here by far the most important thing is the aim of creating a unity out of the individual human beings. It is true that the aim of happiness is still there, but it is pushed into the background."

Therefore in order for government to function properly a part of human nature must be suppressed. The only question left to us is how much are we willing to give to the government to secure our safety and freedom?

Some are willing to give quite a bit, others not so much. Take individual privacy for example. Some have said it doesn't matter what the government pokes its nose into, a good patriot has nothing to hide from their government. Others, have nothing to hide, but would like a little security in their person, would like to feel as though the government isn't breathing down their back, carefully scrutinizing every move for a cause to strip them of all liberty. The hard part is that this is not a question that can simply be left up to the individual, it is left to the majority to speak up on and make a difference about.

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