Response Paper # 2 : Option 2

In Chapter 2 of Freud’s text he describes his observation of an 18-month-old child playing a game Freud named “fort da”. In this game the child would throw one of his toys, only to find it again. Freud also observed that when the child’s mother would leave the child would basically become upset and start acting up. Freud associated this game that the child would play with the departure of his mother, basically stating that this game was a substitute for what the child would experience, but instead this time the child could control when the toy would “go away” and “come back”, and this association made perfect sense to me.

Everyone wants to feel as if they are in control of their lives, and this plays a key role in our happiness. The child was obviously not happy when his mother would leave but found pleasure in this game. Freud was initially confused, being that he didn’t understand why the child would put himself through the pain of throwing the toy away to begin with. But at times we need to feel pain in order to gain pleasure and be in a state of “happiness”. In my 18 years of life I have heard countless people say that they didn’t know what they had until they lost it, and i just saw it as them finally learning to appreciate it. This is exactly what happened with this child. He would gain pleasure from getting back his lost toy.

And when it comes to the whole “control” aspect of the game (how the child was in control of when the toy would leave and when it would come back, as stated earlier, everyone wants to be in control of things in their lives. I have found that the situations that take away from my happiness the most are those that i can not control. A prime example for this is death. When i was 9 years old and my grandmother died, i was devastated about her being gone, but in a sense i didn’t think it was fair. When one thinks something isn’t fair, they would obviously go about the situation differently, and therefore they would be in control. I’m basically saying that it makes people happy when they are in control of their lives and they get what they want.