Comptemporary issues in business pshcholgy 1 - Essay Example

Prior to psychoanalysis’s inception, phrenology was the popular psychology of the Victorian era (Wohl, 1996). The study of the skull formation and its resultant implications of the individual’s intelligence and place on the evolutionary scale was simple, easy, and accessible, and more often than not it was used to justify racism and other political agendas (Wohl, 1996). But at the turn of the century, psychoanalysis gained popularity under Freud, who, after observing the infamous case of Anna O.

, a woman who suffered from hysteria due to past experiences, pioneered the theory that all human beings are driven by unconscious urges (Boeree, 1997). The mind suddenly became much more complex than the shape of the skull and psychoanalysis called to the forefront how well a person can truly know and understand himself. Psychoanalysis and its break-off, psycho-dynamic psychology, analyse the mind as a series of unconscious layers. As a person experiences different struggles and traumas, his experiences impact his unconscious mind, which prompts him to unknowingly develop a maladapted function, or Defence Mechanism (Wikipedia, 2006).

Psycho-dynamic psychology ultimately seeks to reveal the causes of an individual’s maladapted function. An example of psycho-dynamic psychology at work is in the character of Nora Helmer, of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1998). Nora Helmer is a housewife that embodies all of the outward ideals of Victorian propriety while harbouring a secret that could ruin her marriage and her family. Her relationship with her husband is complex and flawed. He refers to her as his “little lark” and his “squirrel”– small, flighty, and vulnerable animals.

Torvald Helmer seems to cherish and adore his wife, but in reality sees her as a charge or a child that must be taught and guided, and Nora not only complies with this image, but