Reaction to Dissection of Psychic Personality - Assignment Example

Reaction to Dissection of Psychic Personality The article was published in 1933, six years before Freud died. In the beginning, we note that Freud is aware that some individuals are not pleased with the approach accorded by the theories since most propose that the sexual instinct provide the justification for psychic life. Sarcastically he applauds his detractors for their brilliant objections. He believes that those objecting him are missing the point. The article spearheads an attack on conventional religious morality with a claim that morality is not God given, and neither is it inherent.

He approaches it scientifically up to a point of claiming that children learn morality by observing parents. To some extent Freud may be right, morality is not natural, and it is not inborn, a child adapts to the code of moral conduct he is to when young thus Freud may be correct in stating that morality is forced upon a kid through the parents punitive methods.According to Freud, the super-ego is the maintenance of the ideal ego. Superego is not a good thing. Freud illustrates how the super-ego can result to an individual suffering from neurosis by acting as a moral force.

He explains by posing melancholia as an example of mental illnesses whereby the super-ego force has taken foot. In the case of individuals suffering from extreme melancholia, the super-ego results in the individual suffering from extreme guilt and humiliation through its hard punitive form. In such instances, the super-ego ‘represents the claims of morality’ in the extreme nature.Freud also goes on to distinguish between the super-ego, id (the site of instincts) and the ego (the site of conscience) (Melossi, 2008).

He suggests that the id is a dark and inaccessible sphere of our psychic existence, a resultant of instinctual wants and strengths that lack any execution will. The id is of any sense of morality; it purposes to pursue instinctual wants often dominated by the pleasure principle. Freud states that in the id, contradictory impulses connect easily. He then reverts to the consideration of the ego, which he suggests as the protective layer of the id. The ego inhibits the path of the pleasure principle.

Though the ego forms part of the id, the separation noted is not properly drawn. Freud describes the id as the energy behind the machine while the ego is the steering wheel, it decides the direction, and thus the ego serves the different desires of the id and the super-ego, which is an impossible task. At the end of his psychoanalysis, Freud quotes, “Woe s war, soll ich warden,” (where id was, there ego shall be).Castration anxiety is part of the psychoanalysis. It represents the repression of instinctual and id impulses towards their quest for gratification.

Freud claims that girls are castrated beings thus possess a weaker super-ego structure (Leeming, Ladden & Marian, 2008). Castration anxiety is useful as an explanation to boys and girls as to how they come to understand their sexual difference. It anticipates that little boys and girls view their parent’s naked bodies and comprehend the female genitalia as a deprivation and the boys fear being subjected to the same deprivation. Lacan revised Freud opinion by suggesting that by castration we should view as a loss of power deriving from the incapability to gain the phallic discourse.

ReferencesLeeming, D. A. (2008). Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Berlin: Springer USMelossi, D. (2008). Controlling crime, controlling society: Thinking about crime in Europe and America. Cambridge: Polity