After you have read Frued's chapter "Consciousness and What is Unconscious?" viewed the "Beautiful Minds" slideshow, and memorized one rhetorical figure of reasoning, comment below.
After reading Freud's "Consciousness and What is Unconscious" I was somewhat confused. I realized that the ego was considered something to be connected to the consciousness and "the ego controls the approaches to motility- that is, to the discharge of excitations into the external world; it is the mental agency which supervises all its own constituent processes..." I found this to be very interesting. What I took from that explanation is that the ego influences all our decisions and actions that we consciously do. I believe this is very true, because i've seen my own ego get in the way of certain things I want to do or sway certain decisions I make, possibly without me even knowing that my ego is what caused this. Freud states that the ego " itself which is also unconscious, which also behaves the repressed- that is, which produces powerful effects without itself being conscious..." can affect a person and their decisions without them knowing! This was the part of the article that I thought was the most interesting.
First off, I found Freud’s chapter “Consciousness and What is Unconscious” rather difficult to read. Freud writes in a philosophical manner for much of the chapter, making some of his ideas or arguments hard to follow. His main argument seems to be that there is in fact an unconscious state that exists despite disagreement among philosophers. I found his argument to be the most convincing when he debunks the analogies used to combat his ideas within footnote 4. He explains why faint consciousness can’t be labeled as the unconscious as some psychoanalysts wish to do. He cites how gradients of consciousness are compared to gradients of light and life. Freud provides the analogous statement that if “there are varying degrees of vitality” then “there is no such thing as death” (7). This would mean that all beings are immortal which is obviously false. Therefore, varying degrees of consciousness must end at the unconscious and not the most faintly conscious, just as vitality ends at death and not the most faintly alive. Freud goes on to explain, “all that is repressed is unconscious but not all that is unconscious is repressed” and therefore can be a part of the ego (9). Here I think his argument starts to get a little muddy. He concedes that there may be need for a third unconscious after these two, which equates to a loss of significance for the term. Instead of qualifying this statement or amending it, he simply comments on the multiplicity of meanings for the unconscious and asserts the importance of the idea in psychology. Freud’s argument can be persuasive through the use of logic and analogies, however the abstract nature of the argument can be rather hard to follow.
One quote I found rather relative to me and my mind is from page four. Sigmund Freud states, " an idea that is conscious now is no longer so a moment later." I have noticed at times that I all the sudden get stressed in the middle of watching TV or doing my homework. As I contemplate this sudden emotion, I realize that it is not because of what I am watching or what I am working on for class. I have a feeling that after reading this quote, that an idea was unconscious, became conscious for a split second for my mind to catch it and once it was gone, I could not find it again. I feel like I have to search for my ideas that pop into my head. I feel my mind will jump from one thing to another and I won't even comprehend half the things that led me to a result. Sigmund Freud made sense of my mental "madness." Also, I have been studying German. Although Freud is from Austria, the original title before translation was Das Ich und das Es. In German, a lower case "i" in "ich" means "I," but with an upper case, it means ego, which is the conscious. The "es" can mean "it" in lower case, and the upper case (Es) means "id." In a way it is saying "The I and the It." The ego is what is conscious and the id is unconscious so it is like it is not a part of the person and off on its own journey apart from the self/ego. With my strange interpretation, it makes me feel as if some of the wording could have been taken out of context when translating and interpreted in English, rather in the original language it was written.
@Amanda, You are exactly right that Freud used the rather ordinary German terms, the "Ich" and the "Es," or the "I" and the "It." The English translator James Strachey gave us the terms that the English-speaking world associates with Freud: the "ego" and the "id." And, as you explain, it's helpful to keep in mind that Freud is making a distinction between I and it, or between ego and id, or between me and not-me.
You could say that Freud’s Chapter “Consciousness and What is Unconscious” and the “Beautiful Minds” slideshow from The Scientific American are making the same general argument: the mind is more complex than we know. The “Beautiful Minds” slideshow appeals to the mystery of the mind through its beautiful and artistic images of neurons and brain tissue. The webpage displaying the slideshow does not contain any words to relay this message other than the title but it is understood that we are to look at these images and wonder. Freud discusses the conscious and the unconscious, describing in a very complicated chapter what is considered unconscious and why. At the end of the chapter, Freud writes about the unconscious, warning that “we must be aware of ignoring this characteristic, for the property of being conscious or not is in the last resort our one beacon-light in the darkness of depth-psychology.” Freud’s complicated postulations are a good representation of the difficulties in trying to study the mind.
Overall, I felt that this article was excessively wordy. It was difficult to understand, and I'm not too "convinced" by Freud's argument. I guess this may be because I do not fully understand what his argument is. However, from the little I did understand, I felt the most interesting aspect of this article was this idea that the unconscious mind can control the body although the body is only supposed to be controlled by the conscious.
I guess one reason that made this article so difficult to digest was the way Freud kept repeating and re-repeating words in a phrase or sentence. I felt like I was spinning in a circle with no direction.
Although, this article reminded me of a book I had started to read at the beginning of this school year. It's called "I and Thou" by Martin Buber. From what I've read, there's this idea of the "I" and the "it." The "it" represents the objects which are separate from our body. Then there is the "I" and the "thou." The "thou" is the relationships we have, and it is in a sense a 'part of our body.' (Again, this is what I took from what I've read so I may be completely wrong.) Anyway, bringing this tangent back to Freud, this complex relationship between the ego, the id, and the body reminded me of this relationship between the "I" the "it" and the "thou" in Buber's book.
I found it amusing that within the third paragraph of the very first page, Freud states: "If I could suppose that everyone interested in psychology would read this book, I should also be prepared to find that at this point some of my readers would already stop short and would go no further" (3). It was like he already anticipated that some readers would not agree with him, like the philosophers, or just that some readers would have difficulty understanding him (like certain rhetoric students).
The role of the ego is a powerful force. I feel that the more popular culture definition of ego now is a little different than the ego that Freud mentions. Today, people who are described as having large or inflated egos are negatively labeled as more self-centered and selfish. The root of the word ego still holds true in this sense, as it is still defined as in regards to a "self", however it is used more like an external feature. The way that Freud defines and uses the term ego is non-discriminatory, neutral, and present in everyone. It is a collection of mental processes, which are present in all individuals (8). It is internal, and the very basis of one's conscious thoughts, decisions, and actions. The ego is the seat of control in the mind, controlling what is "repressed" and the displays of "resistance" (5) that prevents one from experiencing certain mental states or thoughts. I felt that this idea of the ego strengthened his argument about the extensions of the ego in states of consciousness, preconsciousness, and unconsciousness by demonstrating the power of the ego over the mind and thoughts. His explanations of unconsciousness and the conflicting views of philosophers about unconsciousness were less effective for me, as he only really succeeded in concluding that unconsciousness loses significance with its many definitions (9).
On Freud's introductory chapter, "Consciousness and Unconscious" Freud quickly lets his audience know how important mental life is. He proceeds then to talk about how philosophers may interfere with his argument because "the idea of anything physical which is not also conscious is so inconceivable that it seems to them absurd and refutable simply by logic." I like how he quickly points out the counterarguments that will arise. Freud then goes on to define being conscious as purely descriptive, but in unconscious he breaks it down into 1) latent: capable of conscious and 2) repressed: stays unconscious, "but not all that is unconscious is repressed" (9). Then latent can be called preconscious that can lead to consciousness. He goes on to talk about the ego which I won't lie confused me a little bit, but when he talk about how discovery is important and also structure of the mind, the slide show came into my mind because our research of our brain how come a long way from drawn pictures to photomicrographs. I think he concludes his chapter a little vague, but I understand when he says "the darkness of depth-psychology" because the brain isn't something we can easily decipher.
Freud's "Consciousness and What Is Unconscious" has by far been one of the hardest articles that we had to read for this class. I am still not quite sure what the argument in this article is; however, I did find a couple of things interesting. I could relate to the statement, "an idea that is conscious now is no longer so a moment later." The example that Amanda brought about feeling stressed for a split second is a good way to explain this statement. Looking at the slides and thinking about this statement, I can't help but to think of the concept of long-term potentiation, which is basically "long-term memory" on signal transmission between two neurons. Ideas, as Freud talks about, are capable of becoming conscious at any time, meaning that they are stored in the long-term memory in a repressed form. I also agree with Elizabeth about the slides showing the complexity of the brain and the nervous system, just as this article is trying to prove. Furthermore, I found the section about the ego interesting. Freud calls it "the coherent organization of mental processes". This definition is worded differently from the way I learned it in my psychology classes, but the general idea is the same. The ego controls consciousness and mediates between the id and the reality.
I felt Freud was overly verbose in the article when he was going on and on about the abstract qualities of the ego/conscious/unconscious/repression. It made my eyes veer off the page even though the subject was interesting. One caveat I had was how he assumed the reader should already know some of the information he is talking about so it was unnecessary for him to repeat a lot in details. The first sentence even says there’s really nothing new to be said, so his article will sound redundant. Maybe this is due to the fact I am not one of the audience he’s writing for, but to me, Freud just assuming that everyone reading the article should know something about the subject matter beforehand is quite short sighted of him.
Freud definitely made for a tough read. His definitions seemed vague and almost as inclusive as exclusive of certain ideas simultaneously. The initial discussion about consciousness and unconsciousness ran together and the jump to using the concept of repression to explain our understanding of the unconscious was a leap I found difficult to follow, but Freud claims "It is unnecessary to repeat in detail here was has been explained so often before" (Freud 5). Its a good thing his footnotes are almost as long as the text in case we need clarification on a concept (7).
Like many others, I found Freud difficult to read. I had to stop and re-read sentences multiple times and found the foot notes cumbersome and disruptive to the flow of the argument. Having taken psychology twice, I was familiar with Freud's ideas of ego and id but still learned some new information in the article. I found the idea of multiple levels of unconscious interesting and wished Freud had gone into more detail on that topic. Overall, I found Freud's argument not that effective because of the lack of evidence.
Freud's chapter was kind of hard to read. It didn't really keep me entertained even though when I read the title I thought it'd consume me and be really interesting. I think he got his basic point across of trying to describe what unconscious is, although his form of writing is a little weird to me (as Jim mentioned he wrote in a 'philosophical manner'). I liked the slideshow we had to watch though; really showed the complexity of the brain with all the different colors and its a different viewpoint from Freud's. Neurons have nothing to do with Freud's definition of consciousness and unconsciousness, they're two entirely different fields of science.
Freud’s main argument is that there are parts of the unconscious that effect daily life and states those (philosophers) who question this logic don’t know or understand the discoveries made through hypnosis and the study of dreams. Freud believes that some of these unconscious ideas are repressed but can be made conscious; this is done through the process of psychoanalysis. He develops his theory further by explaining there are technically two types of unconsciousness: preconscious in which mental processes are latent, but can be recovered and unconscious in which ideas are completely repressed passed the point of recovery. In a functional sense there is only one form of unconsciousness since ideas in the preconscious can be brought into the conscious. Freud than gives a brief introduction into the Ego; this mental process is coherent and acts like a censor to the unconscious parts of the mind. Overall, I agree with the majority that this was a hard read and lacked evidence that otherwise would have helped convince me of Freud’s argument. I also feel that the footnotes were either too long or didn’t help the read either.
Freud's “Consciousness and What is Unconscious” was a very difficult read for me. It was very interesting to learn that the conscious has to do with ones ego and a persons mental process. It was confusing for me to distinguish between the three terms conscious, preconscious, and unconscious and which ones relate to each other in the physical sense. In "the descriptive sense there two kinds of unconscious, but in the dynamic sense only one(6)." I am not sure what Freud's argument is in this article but he is trying to explain the distinction between conscious and unconscious but makes it confusing by adding a lot of extra information. He states the difference between conscious and unconscious as a question of perception. I find the sentence "a consciousness of one who knows nothing seems to me a good deal more absurd then something mental that is unconscious." located in the footnotes a little confusing but it makes a good point of saying a conscious person who has no knowledge is absurd compared to something mental that is unconscious.
After reading Freud's "Consciousness and What is Unconscious" I was somewhat confused. I realized that the ego was considered something to be connected to the consciousness and "the ego controls the approaches to motility- that is, to the discharge of excitations into the external world; it is the mental agency which supervises all its own constituent processes..." I found this to be very interesting. What I took from that explanation is that the ego influences all our decisions and actions that we consciously do. I believe this is very true, because i've seen my own ego get in the way of certain things I want to do or sway certain decisions I make, possibly without me even knowing that my ego is what caused this. Freud states that the ego " itself which is also unconscious, which also behaves the repressed- that is, which produces powerful effects without itself being conscious..." can affect a person and their decisions without them knowing! This was the part of the article that I thought was the most interesting.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I found Freud’s chapter “Consciousness and What is Unconscious” rather difficult to read. Freud writes in a philosophical manner for much of the chapter, making some of his ideas or arguments hard to follow. His main argument seems to be that there is in fact an unconscious state that exists despite disagreement among philosophers. I found his argument to be the most convincing when he debunks the analogies used to combat his ideas within footnote 4. He explains why faint consciousness can’t be labeled as the unconscious as some psychoanalysts wish to do. He cites how gradients of consciousness are compared to gradients of light and life. Freud provides the analogous statement that if “there are varying degrees of vitality” then “there is no such thing as death” (7). This would mean that all beings are immortal which is obviously false. Therefore, varying degrees of consciousness must end at the unconscious and not the most faintly conscious, just as vitality ends at death and not the most faintly alive. Freud goes on to explain, “all that is repressed is unconscious but not all that is unconscious is repressed” and therefore can be a part of the ego (9). Here I think his argument starts to get a little muddy. He concedes that there may be need for a third unconscious after these two, which equates to a loss of significance for the term. Instead of qualifying this statement or amending it, he simply comments on the multiplicity of meanings for the unconscious and asserts the importance of the idea in psychology. Freud’s argument can be persuasive through the use of logic and analogies, however the abstract nature of the argument can be rather hard to follow.
ReplyDeleteOne quote I found rather relative to me and my mind is from page four. Sigmund Freud states, " an idea that is conscious now is no longer so a moment later." I have noticed at times that I all the sudden get stressed in the middle of watching TV or doing my homework. As I contemplate this sudden emotion, I realize that it is not because of what I am watching or what I am working on for class. I have a feeling that after reading this quote, that an idea was unconscious, became conscious for a split second for my mind to catch it and once it was gone, I could not find it again. I feel like I have to search for my ideas that pop into my head. I feel my mind will jump from one thing to another and I won't even comprehend half the things that led me to a result. Sigmund Freud made sense of my mental "madness." Also, I have been studying German. Although Freud is from Austria, the original title before translation was Das Ich und das Es. In German, a lower case "i" in "ich" means "I," but with an upper case, it means ego, which is the conscious. The "es" can mean "it" in lower case, and the upper case (Es) means "id." In a way it is saying "The I and the It." The ego is what is conscious and the id is unconscious so it is like it is not a part of the person and off on its own journey apart from the self/ego. With my strange interpretation, it makes me feel as if some of the wording could have been taken out of context when translating and interpreted in English, rather in the original language it was written.
ReplyDelete@Amanda, You are exactly right that Freud used the rather ordinary German terms, the "Ich" and the "Es," or the "I" and the "It." The English translator James Strachey gave us the terms that the English-speaking world associates with Freud: the "ego" and the "id." And, as you explain, it's helpful to keep in mind that Freud is making a distinction between I and it, or between ego and id, or between me and not-me.
DeleteYou could say that Freud’s Chapter “Consciousness and What is Unconscious” and the “Beautiful Minds” slideshow from The Scientific American are making the same general argument: the mind is more complex than we know. The “Beautiful Minds” slideshow appeals to the mystery of the mind through its beautiful and artistic images of neurons and brain tissue. The webpage displaying the slideshow does not contain any words to relay this message other than the title but it is understood that we are to look at these images and wonder. Freud discusses the conscious and the unconscious, describing in a very complicated chapter what is considered unconscious and why. At the end of the chapter, Freud writes about the unconscious, warning that “we must be aware of ignoring this characteristic, for the property of being conscious or not is in the last resort our one beacon-light in the darkness of depth-psychology.” Freud’s complicated postulations are a good representation of the difficulties in trying to study the mind.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I felt that this article was excessively wordy. It was difficult to understand, and I'm not too "convinced" by Freud's argument. I guess this may be because I do not fully understand what his argument is. However, from the little I did understand, I felt the most interesting aspect of this article was this idea that the unconscious mind can control the body although the body is only supposed to be controlled by the conscious.
ReplyDeleteI guess one reason that made this article so difficult to digest was the way Freud kept repeating and re-repeating words in a phrase or sentence. I felt like I was spinning in a circle with no direction.
Although, this article reminded me of a book I had started to read at the beginning of this school year. It's called "I and Thou" by Martin Buber. From what I've read, there's this idea of the "I" and the "it." The "it" represents the objects which are separate from our body. Then there is the "I" and the "thou." The "thou" is the relationships we have, and it is in a sense a 'part of our body.' (Again, this is what I took from what I've read so I may be completely wrong.) Anyway, bringing this tangent back to Freud, this complex relationship between the ego, the id, and the body reminded me of this relationship between the "I" the "it" and the "thou" in Buber's book.
I found it amusing that within the third paragraph of the very first page, Freud states: "If I could suppose that everyone interested in psychology would read this book, I should also be prepared to find that at this point some of my readers would already stop short and would go no further" (3). It was like he already anticipated that some readers would not agree with him, like the philosophers, or just that some readers would have difficulty understanding him (like certain rhetoric students).
ReplyDeleteThe role of the ego is a powerful force. I feel that the more popular culture definition of ego now is a little different than the ego that Freud mentions. Today, people who are described as having large or inflated egos are negatively labeled as more self-centered and selfish. The root of the word ego still holds true in this sense, as it is still defined as in regards to a "self", however it is used more like an external feature. The way that Freud defines and uses the term ego is non-discriminatory, neutral, and present in everyone. It is a collection of mental processes, which are present in all individuals (8). It is internal, and the very basis of one's conscious thoughts, decisions, and actions. The ego is the seat of control in the mind, controlling what is "repressed" and the displays of "resistance" (5) that prevents one from experiencing certain mental states or thoughts. I felt that this idea of the ego strengthened his argument about the extensions of the ego in states of consciousness, preconsciousness, and unconsciousness by demonstrating the power of the ego over the mind and thoughts. His explanations of unconsciousness and the conflicting views of philosophers about unconsciousness were less effective for me, as he only really succeeded in concluding that unconsciousness loses significance with its many definitions (9).
On Freud's introductory chapter, "Consciousness and Unconscious" Freud quickly lets his audience know how important mental life is. He proceeds then to talk about how philosophers may interfere with his argument because "the idea of anything physical which is not also conscious is so inconceivable that it seems to them absurd and refutable simply by logic." I like how he quickly points out the counterarguments that will arise. Freud then goes on to define being conscious as purely descriptive, but in unconscious he breaks it down into 1) latent: capable of conscious and 2) repressed: stays unconscious, "but not all that is unconscious is repressed" (9). Then latent can be called preconscious that can lead to consciousness. He goes on to talk about the ego which I won't lie confused me a little bit, but when he talk about how discovery is important and also structure of the mind, the slide show came into my mind because our research of our brain how come a long way from drawn pictures to photomicrographs. I think he concludes his chapter a little vague, but I understand when he says "the darkness of depth-psychology" because the brain isn't something we can easily decipher.
ReplyDeleteFreud's "Consciousness and What Is Unconscious" has by far been one of the hardest articles that we had to read for this class. I am still not quite sure what the argument in this article is; however, I did find a couple of things interesting. I could relate to the statement, "an idea that is conscious now is no longer so a moment later." The example that Amanda brought about feeling stressed for a split second is a good way to explain this statement. Looking at the slides and thinking about this statement, I can't help but to think of the concept of long-term potentiation, which is basically "long-term memory" on signal transmission between two neurons. Ideas, as Freud talks about, are capable of becoming conscious at any time, meaning that they are stored in the long-term memory in a repressed form. I also agree with Elizabeth about the slides showing the complexity of the brain and the nervous system, just as this article is trying to prove.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I found the section about the ego interesting. Freud calls it "the coherent organization of mental processes". This definition is worded differently from the way I learned it in my psychology classes, but the general idea is the same. The ego controls consciousness and mediates between the id and the reality.
I felt Freud was overly verbose in the article when he was going on and on about the abstract qualities of the ego/conscious/unconscious/repression. It made my eyes veer off the page even though the subject was interesting. One caveat I had was how he assumed the reader should already know some of the information he is talking about so it was unnecessary for him to repeat a lot in details. The first sentence even says there’s really nothing new to be said, so his article will sound redundant. Maybe this is due to the fact I am not one of the audience he’s writing for, but to me, Freud just assuming that everyone reading the article should know something about the subject matter beforehand is quite short sighted of him.
ReplyDeleteFreud definitely made for a tough read. His definitions seemed vague and almost as inclusive as exclusive of certain ideas simultaneously. The initial discussion about consciousness and unconsciousness ran together and the jump to using the concept of repression to explain our understanding of the unconscious was a leap I found difficult to follow, but Freud claims "It is unnecessary to repeat in detail here was has been explained so often before" (Freud 5). Its a good thing his footnotes are almost as long as the text in case we need clarification on a concept (7).
ReplyDeleteLike many others, I found Freud difficult to read. I had to stop and re-read sentences multiple times and found the foot notes cumbersome and disruptive to the flow of the argument. Having taken psychology twice, I was familiar with Freud's ideas of ego and id but still learned some new information in the article. I found the idea of multiple levels of unconscious interesting and wished Freud had gone into more detail on that topic. Overall, I found Freud's argument not that effective because of the lack of evidence.
ReplyDeleteFreud's chapter was kind of hard to read. It didn't really keep me entertained even though when I read the title I thought it'd consume me and be really interesting. I think he got his basic point across of trying to describe what unconscious is, although his form of writing is a little weird to me (as Jim mentioned he wrote in a 'philosophical manner').
ReplyDeleteI liked the slideshow we had to watch though; really showed the complexity of the brain with all the different colors and its a different viewpoint from Freud's. Neurons have nothing to do with Freud's definition of consciousness and unconsciousness, they're two entirely different fields of science.
Freud’s main argument is that there are parts of the unconscious that effect daily life and states those (philosophers) who question this logic don’t know or understand the discoveries made through hypnosis and the study of dreams. Freud believes that some of these unconscious ideas are repressed but can be made conscious; this is done through the process of psychoanalysis. He develops his theory further by explaining there are technically two types of unconsciousness: preconscious in which mental processes are latent, but can be recovered and unconscious in which ideas are completely repressed passed the point of recovery. In a functional sense there is only one form of unconsciousness since ideas in the preconscious can be brought into the conscious. Freud than gives a brief introduction into the Ego; this mental process is coherent and acts like a censor to the unconscious parts of the mind. Overall, I agree with the majority that this was a hard read and lacked evidence that otherwise would have helped convince me of Freud’s argument. I also feel that the footnotes were either too long or didn’t help the read either.
ReplyDeleteFreud's “Consciousness and What is Unconscious” was a very difficult read for me. It was very interesting to learn that the conscious has to do with ones ego and a persons mental process. It was confusing for me to distinguish between the three terms conscious, preconscious, and unconscious and which ones relate to each other in the physical sense. In "the descriptive sense there two kinds of unconscious, but in the dynamic sense only one(6)." I am not sure what Freud's argument is in this article but he is trying to explain the distinction between conscious and unconscious but makes it confusing by adding a lot of extra information. He states the difference between conscious and unconscious as a question of perception. I find the sentence "a consciousness of one who knows nothing seems to me a good deal more absurd then something mental that is unconscious." located in the footnotes a little confusing but it makes a good point of saying a conscious person who has no knowledge is absurd compared to something mental that is unconscious.
ReplyDelete