Health Sciences 3820A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Sigmund Freud, Intellectualization

• School: Western University
• Department: Health Sciences
• Course: Health Sciences 3820A/B
• Professor: Christopher Lee

Document Summary

This approach was developed by sigmund freud. Understanding things scientifically involved reducing them into parts that are underlying the main theme. Darwin publishes his book about the diversity of life in terms of a few principles. Physicists are developing the structure of the proton, atom, electron, etc. Freud took personality and broke it into parts to better understand it: the id, ego, and superego. Argues that this is the oldest part of the mind and something that the infant has at the time of birth. It is also evolutionarily the oldest part of the mind - while containing everything that is present at birth. It is irrational, impulsive and primitive while having no knowledge of the external world - with no ethics or morality. Ethics and morality are cultural aspects that the child will learn. He argues that the id operates outside of our awareness and is essentially unconscious. It is governed by the pleasure principle.