What aspects of Freud's views on the unconscious are still current today?
Unlike his unsupported theories on instinctual, repressed energy (eg, sexual and aggressive drive, death instinct), Freud's view that behaviour is governed by autonomous or unconscious processes, such as the unconscious influence of implicit thoughts, feelings and motives, and can also be automatised through repetition, are extremely relevant to modern psychology.
1. Cognitive psych & neuro
Cognitive psychology and neuroscience, in particular, recognise that the role of unconscious processing in learning, memory, and perception.
2. Developmental psychology
His views that childhood experiences play an important role in shaping adult personality and later social relationships has contributed much to the understanding of developmental psychology.
3. Social psychology
Freud's views of unconscious processing also remains current in social psychology, where studies on attitude and persuasion, social perception and judgment rely on automatic and unconscious information processing.
Cognitive science has discovered that most of our thought is...
Unconscious
- but not in the freudian sense of being repressed
- but in the sense that a lot of information processing occurs beneath the level of conscious awareness
Mid 1800 - age of reason
People thought rationality was linked to ...
Consciousness and linguistic
Paul Broca
Found that language was located in a small area in the left hemisphere
- came as a shock to many
Darwin
Said that we descended from primitive animals
- this displaced us from being superior beings in the universe and relocated us in the animal kingdom
After the 1800s, humans were displaced from being highly rational beings to...
Not being very rational
Freud
- we are irrational, childlike, primitive
What was Freud's profession?
He was a neuroscientist and neurologist, not a psychistrist
Who were Freud's neurological influences?
He was influenced by Jean-Martin Charcot, the quintessential neurologist
As well as Hughlings Jackson, who was also interested in the higher functions of the brain
Who did Freud influence?
Alexander Luria, who is now considered the greatest neurologist of the 20th century
- also influenced by hughlings
Luria developed the modern neuropsychology that drives neuropsychology today
What was Meynert's Molluscs?
The idea that all peripheral projections originate and terminate in the cortex
Did Freud agree with the view of Meynert's Molluscs?
Nope!
He believed that the the the CNS is to be considered as a union of grey masses which is linked either directly or indirectly to each other by fibre bundles
- this is more accurate of the modern view of the brain
What was Freud's On Aphasia book about?
He criticised the current models of the time on aphasia
Freud believed that the theory of aphasia contains two assumptions which might be revised.
- first refers to the differentiation between aphasias caused by destruction of centers and aphasias caused by destruction of pathways
- the second assumption is concerned with the topographical relationship between the individual speech centers.
How did the beginning of the freudian slip emerge?
from PARAPRAXIS which means mistakes in action
- these were 'substitution errors'
- freud noted a similarity between substitution errors in people with brain damage (these were called paraphasia) and people and people with psychological disturbances
- parapraxis is now known as freudian slip
What is parapraxis?
freudian slip
What is paraphasia?
a speech defect characterized by incoherence in arrangement of words.
freud likened it to his his parapraxis
What did freud criticise in his book 'On Aphasia'?
Molluscan" schema of the brain
Ie, Lichtheim's model: self contained module - 2 centres of the brain
- 1 for understand language (M) and 1 for producing language (A) (left diagram)
- later he developed a different more complex diagram (right)
^ Freud criticised these
What was Freud's Project for Scientific Psychology?
He wanted to develop a book on psychology for neuroscientists
- a book about the brain that could account for psychological phenomena
- this is when ideas about the unconscious arose because we are not aware of the neural processes in our brain
Basically, he wanted to develop psychology as a natural, quantitative, observable science - as neurological science (a reductionist view of the mind)
When did freud first use the term unconscious? And how did he describe it?
In his book PROJECT FOR A SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY
Unconscious was described as neuronal activity occurring at the level before conscious awareness ('contact barriers of neurons' ie, excitatory and inhibitory synapses)
What were the REGULATORY PRINCIPLES in his Project for Scientific Psychology?
It was a way for freud to relate psychological functions to neuronal systems
1. Primary processes - linked to the unconscious mind
-the initial and most primitive state of mind
-represented in our dreams
-related to discharge of energy, released at contact barriers
-things are represented abstractly
2. Secondary processes
-opposite of primary processes
-involves will, intention - the conscious?
-represented linguistically
Why did freud disavow the project?
He was simply frustrated at neuroscience not being able to account for psychological phenomena
-however we have now addressed that in modern times with neuropsychoanalysis
What is neuropsychoanalysis
It is a reconciliation between psychoanalysis and neurology
(or reconciled freud's conflict between mind and the brain)
What is Carl Jung known for?
1. Collective Unconscious
-collective experiences of humanity
-genetic memory
-archetypal influences on human thought
2. Archetypes
-notion that our unconscious mind has commonality across all of humanity; ever since we inherited the unconscious legacy of all human kind - archetypes are culturally universal; coming from a non-biological end
-characteristics of archetypes: archetypal personalities represented in all cultures that drove our beliefs and feelings
How is Jung different from Freud?
Freud: personal unconscious
-repressed
-influenced behaviour
-primary process
Jung: collective unconscious
-collective experience of humanity
-that passed onto people as a genetic memory
-archetypes influence thought
What is the "dreamy state"?
an intellectual aura, introduced by Hughlings
-it is a brief state of over consciousness
eg, deja vu, vivid recollection or reminiscence