Category Archives: JM13D
Response Paper #2
Kristie Ching – Response Paper 2 (Option 2)
Psychologists and philosophers use different perspectives and methods to study happiness; even so, Freud and Plato both found a way to use comparable metaphors to explain happiness. Freud, the psychologist, uses “fort da,” which is a child’s game of “disappearance and return,” to represent happiness by showing the relationship between pain and pleasure. In Book VII of the Republic, the respected philosopher Plato uses his story of the “Allegory of the Cave” to show us that we need to step out of the cave and experience new things in order to achieve happiness.
In Chapter 2 of Freud’s Pleasure Principal, he describes and examines a child’s game of disappearance and return. In this game, a little boy throws his toy somewhere where it cannot be seen and then he reeled it back. When he throws the toy away he is experiencing pain, subsequently when he reels the toy back to him, he is experiencing pleasure. Freud explains that the boy uses this concept of the disappearance and reappearance of the toy to explain how the little boy calmly handles the departure and return of his mother, whom he is extremely attached to. He uses this to reassure himself that his mom will return every time she leaves. Basically, Freud uses the “fort da” concept to describe how pain, which in this case is disappearance, will ultimately results in pleasure, which is the reappearance or return.
Plato also uses symbolism and metaphors in his “Allegory of the cave” to show how people need to experience pain before they can experience pleasure, which in turn leads to happiness. In this allegory, prisoners who are only exposed to the illustration of shadows and fire do not know what it is like to experience anything other they what they already see or know. Consequently, when they are introduced to new objects they are able to experience things in the real world and make sense of them, which is pleasurable. Both creators of the “fort da” game and the “allegory of the cave” use symbolism to show how pain leads to pleasure. The little boy knows that in order to feel pleasure in the reappearance of his mother, his mother must first leave; similarly, the prisoner’s of the cave need to leave the cave to experience things outside of the fire, shadows and the cave.
Response Paper #2, Option 2.
In chapter two of Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle he introduces a very interesting topic in which is called “Fort da”. “Fort da” is interesting because it came to be from what he observed from an eighteen month child. Freud describes the child as an obedient, calm and not an intellectual child but the ‘game’ that Freud observes the child playing says otherwise. The game is that the child has a tendency to throw his toys in the corner so that they disappear, but then he pulls the toy back out to make it reappear. Freud says that the child is doing so to relieve the pain he gets when the mother leaves the child.
I agree with this point that Freud makes. Even though the child may not seem to be missing his mother, psychologically he is because of the way he plays the game. The aggressive nature of throwing an object shows that the child is displeased with something in his life (like his mother leaving) and he wants to express that emotion. Even though he throws it in the meaning that he wants the toy to go away (fort), he always pulls the object back and says “da” (there) as if he’s happy to see it again. This brings it back to the point with his mother, when his mother leaves the child accepts the fact that she is leaving but it upsets him so he takes his anger out of something else. He already knows that his mother will return just like his toy and when it does he says “da” which shows a sense of happiness from the child. It is a sense of happiness because the child has found his toy again and to him the object did not completely disappear just like how his mother will come back after leaving for a time and that time he will be happy.
I noticed is that when the child throws away its toy it seems like the child does not forget the image of object is because when he pulls it out again he remembers it and says “da” like “there you are” but the child does not know if the toy is truly there without seeing it again.
This relates the Plato’s allegory of the cave in a way that the prisoners in the cave can just see the shadows but they do not know what they are nor can they tell each other anything about them but the shadow. Just like how the child can see his mother and toy leave him but cannot explain where they went and what they are doing. Both the prisoners and the child cannot achieve true intellect in the eyes of Plato because for the child he only believes in the physical appearance of something to know that it is truly there. As for the prisoners they know an object is there but they do not know what it is, to Plato just knowing that something is physically there does not give one true knowledge of the object.
response paper 2 (haibin Huang)
Sigmund Freud, in chapter 2, carefully analyses “children’s play” known as “fort da”. Freud uses the example when a baby has a toy with a string attached, it would throw the toy to a place he cannot see and pulls it back. This example can also be recreated with a game people today know as “peeka boo”. Take a mother trying to play peeka boo with her child for instance. When the mother covers her face with her hand, the child is curious where the face he usually sees went. And once the mother moves her hand to reveal herself, there is a smile on the baby’s face because there she is, right in front of him.
Aristotle’s allegory of the cave states that a man trapped in the cave would not know the shadow of a chair on the wall is a chair because he has never seen it. But once he sees the chair, he would know it’s a chair and make good use of it. Aristotle used the example of a person and the shadow to explain that someone might not be aware of something until he experiences it.
Freud uses his analysis of a baby with his toy to express a similar point as Aristotle and his allegory of the cave – a person cannot experience happiness without first experiencing the opposite. Once the mother of the baby reveals herself, she notices the baby laughing and cheering. That is because the baby never thought of the mother leaving his side until it actually happens. And at that point, the baby realizes what makes him happy. Similarly, Aristotle states that a man does not know what a chair is until he experiences it. In the same sense, if the man were to be happy in the cave, he is not truly happy because he has not experience the outside world. He cannot say he is truly happy because there might be something out there that would make him even happier.
Malisa Basic Response Paper #2 JM13D
Malisa Basic- Response Paper #2 (Option #3)
Rather than the two given options where I had a choice to write about what Gilbert may have learned through Plato’s philosophy or discuss in detail and explain child’s play, I took a different approach and decided to analyze the two different texts, comparing and contrasting the views of Freud and Plato, and the way they decided to approach their won ideas in text. The ideas Plato portrays in the Allegory of the Cave is set up differently than Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Plato states his ideas in a story format, contrasting to Freud’s piece where he talks directly to the reader being the audience about his views and opinions. Even though it would make more sense understanding a certain concept through a moral or story, I found it more difficult to read than Freud’s work. This may have resulted to the time period each article was written. However, in this case, it seemed as if a more direct and simple approach was easier for me to understand in which ideas the author was trying to express through his work.
In the Allegory of the Cave, prisoners are locked in within a cave where they are only given sight to shadows of objects by carriers of the objects who show the object through fire. They know nothing of the outside world, or exposure of anything else aside from what they are shown. However, once prisoners are taken out of the cave and are exposed to reality and the world outside , they find themselves having a difficult time returning to the cave. Though this may seem like a simple concept, the way Plato has worded this story is quite confusing. However, I find the main idea of this story to be up to one’s own interpretation. The way I interpreted this story was that once individuals are exposed to the truth, they cannot trust what information is given to them. They rather learn about certain objects through their own experience.
In Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he states that ”Most of the ‘pain’ we experience is of a perceptual order, perception either of the urge of unsatisfied instincts or of something in the external world which may be painful in itself.” (pg. 6) Here he states that most pain is a cause of a mental process, a deficiency in pleasure. This can be expressed in Plato’s book because the prisoners don’t feel pain until they leave their cave. Exposure to the unknown brings pain, as does ”something in the external world which may be painful itself” as Freud explained, even though this may seem like positive progress towards improvement for the lives of these prisoners. When people are exposed to reality something that was not shown to them before, it may cause confusion and denial because it is hard to believe this new truth exposed to them, and hard to understand how what they knew before and thought was true, really wasn’t. A feeling of denial as well as deceit can eventually cause pain as the prisoners did. What other factors cause pain? Can pain eventually become an indifferent feeling? Is there a term for this feeling? How would Plato or Freud describe this?
Response Paper #2!
Gilbert and Freud both believed that everyone innately seeks pleasure. They both believed in the reality principle, that for people to actually experience pleasure, they would have to experience pain and suffering first. Freud, coining the phrase “reality principle, thought that for one to obtain even a basic level of satisfaction, they must endure or go through some type of hardship. This makes satisfaction inevitable and motivates a person to continue through the pain. He notes that “…the ‘ reality-principle’, which without giving up the intention of ultimately attaining pleasure yet demands and enforces the postponement of satisfaction, the renun- ciation of manifold possibilities of it, and the temporary endurance of ‘pain’ on the long and circuitous road to pleasure.” (5) Gilbert, coincidently, although probably through studying Freud’s theories, also thought that pleasure, even though it is different for each individual, is something that everyone associates with experiences they go through. He gives an example of a fruit fly and they, like humans, use situations to learn pleasure and pain. He states “To maximize pleasures and minimize our pains, we must be able to associate our experiences with the circumstances that produced them…” and also “they associate their best and worst experiences with the circumstances that accompanied and preceded them, which allows them to seek or avoid those circumstances in the future.” (204). Given my own experiences, I can testify to this theory. If I ate something I don’t like, I will be sure to avoid that food no matter the circumstances, even if someone tries to pressure me into eating it. However, if I taste something once and I enjoy it, I will definitely be craving it and wanting more of it!
Living in a dream world (Deon Marecheau)
“fort da.” as Freud refers to the game that a 18 month old child created, seems to be merely an “allegorical game” used to delineate the childs mother as a symbolic object. The child was representing a relationship with his mother, while finding a way to deal with the grief he experienced when the mother left. Just as Plato’s allegory of the cave where the prisoners in the cave perceive reality based on the shadows that the fire creates, essentially the imperfect “reflections” of the ultimate forms, the game of “fort da.” is used as an allegorical representation of ” imperfect reflections” of the reality the baby was exposed to. The eight month old baby obviously misses his mother, which subsequently represent truth and reality, however, he is dealing with this trauma by playing with a reel that had a piece of string tied around it, tossing the reel away from himself, and pulling it back into view. Essentially, the baby is attaining happiness derived from repeating actions that have been sources of unpleasurable feelings. In Plato’s Allegory of the cave, the majority of the prisoners essentially rejected the truth (the unpleaurable feeling), and decided to live in a world of shadows and false images (the happy feeling), just as the baby decided; a world that was safe from them, safely locked away in there minds. Interestingly, Freud blames the psychological mechanism of “repression” on doing this, because reality is very hard to bear sometimes. I agree with this because from my experience people sometimes tend to live in a false reality (eg. drug addicts, wives who stay with abusive husbands) because the reality of the situation is in fact, almost unbearable, just like Freud’s little 18 month old subject.
“fort da.” is important to Freud’s ideas because this games supports Freud’s “Power instinct” theory where humans have an impulse to “Master a situation and avoid pain. According to Freud, it seems as though happiness is when someone avoids pain; whatever else the feeling may be, the most important thing is to avoid that which causes you some kind of neurotic trauma, essentially pain. After, thinking about this for some time, I realized that there are a very few amount of feelings that attribute to happiness, in essence, many feelings bring pain and very little bring happiness. For example, if you trip on the floor while walking outside, that is a “Gross mechanical force”, something attributing to pain, which means you are no longer happy. According to Freud, if something like an outside force can alter a person’s “state of happiness”, Will we ever be happy? I even started to think that Freud himself might not have been much of a happy guy, if he truly believed that all these things makes someone “un-happy”, for example I can picture something like this going on.
Freud- “Ahh Crap! I hit my leg on my bed head, now I am unhappy, F life.
Response Paper #2
In both readings, Daniel Gilbert and Sigmund Freud talk about memories. They both believe that memories trigger the sense of pleasure principle or happiness. I saw Freud referred to pleasure as overcoming pain. For example, Freud writes, “Now in the traumatic neuroses the dream life has the peculiarity: it continually takes the patient back to the situation of his disaster, from which he awakens in renewed terror (pg. 9).” These nightmares, or exaggerated memories, are repeated again in the patient’s mind so they can perfect the situation to the point where it does not affect the patient anymore, to which they can find pleasure from the painful memory. This relates to the “reality principle” where they postpone pleasure while they endure pain (pg 5).
Gilbert would have agreed to this to some degree. Gilbert believes that happiness lays in comparing and relating current experiences with past experiences, but the past is vague and never perfect in the memory. Both these philosophers acknowledge the importance of the past and the differences between people’s feeling but they built off it differently. Gilbert would disagree with Freud on how happiness is obtained. Gilbert states, “Once we have an experience, we are thereafter unable to see the world as we did before. (pg 57).” This counter’s Freud’s term because Freud implies that to get pleasured, we must overcome out pain while Gilbert upholds the idea that pleasure comes from referring back to past events. Gilbert would argue that with new experiences, comes new pleasures. It is pointless to go back to old memories and ponder about them until you have overcome them through perfection. Gilbert also states, “..but the likelihood is depressingly slim that we can resurrect our experience and then evaluate it as we should have back then (pg. 57)”. Holding on to the past is never accurate.
I would agree with Gilbert because holding bad experience and dwelling in it takes a lot more time to achieve the so called pleasure we strive for in our lives. Gilbert’s clarity on the subject that there are different experiences between people is key. Since we are different people, I believe that there will be different levels of happiness that people are in and they will always experience new things that will help them achieve happiness or pleasure. This is the fastest way people achieve it and if they were to be Freud’s concept of pleasure, patients will take a lot longer to get over the pain/depression state they are in. I also believe in Gilbert’s thought because genuinely, people seem happy most of the time and not really try to perfect a situation.
Response #2 – Eva Tam
From what I remember of my high school senior psychology class about Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalyst, was that he believed childhood experiences built up what a person would become in the future and if he would develop mommy or daddy issues such as the Oedipus or Electra complexes. I also remember that he was a firm believer in the body’s natural ability to regress meaning the mind’s defense system leading to the temporary or long-term return of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable desires in a more adult way. I think that Freud performed many studies and took observations of children because to him they would be able to explain various problems that people develop as an adult and they unlock some of the hidden complexities in the mind. All of this has something to do with what Freud explains in Chapter 2 of his text Beyond the Pleasure Principle about “children’s play,” and more specifically a game of “disappearance and return” or “fort da.”
Freud saw a specific correlation between pleasure and pain when he observed the son of the couple that he was staying with during the war. He watched as the little boy would throw his toys as far away as he could to the corners of the room or under the bed and loudly state “o-o-o-oh” which he meant as “go away” or “fort.” One clear portrayal of this was when he threw his wooden reel with a piece of string wound around it holding it by the string and watched as it disappeared on his cot. Then he would pull the string and the reel would reappear again or “Da” meaning “there.” The little boy seemed to intentionally allow himself to feel a sense of sadness when the toy was away in order to experience the joy it brings when he was successfully able to return it. Freud concludes that this game is a method in relating what the little boy feels to when his mother has to leave him alone for hours on end. Undoubtedly he feels a sense of pain because he has such a strong connection with her but when she finally returns, he is able to celebrate the fact. Because he needs a way to occupy his time during those long hours, he puts his feelings into his actions, performing this game over and over, in order to play out what will be the eventual reality. He is almost readying himself through this manner in order to achieve his optimal happiness of reuniting with his mother.
The little boy’s game of disappearance and return can loosely be related to Plato’s concept of the “allegory of the cave” in that they both show how in order to feel happiness one needs to experience a pain for comparison. This portrays the pleasure principle in which the body allows itself to feel an unpleasant hurt in order for it to strive towards the reward of pleasure associated with a kind of happiness. The little boy’s throwing of his toy to the point of disappearance can be seen as being in a cave where one’s happiness is diminished or perhaps hiding. However, once the toy is brought to reappearance it is like a person being removed from the shackles in the cave and being allowed to step into the light where so much beauty is displayed. It is a constant cyclical process in that no one can continually be happy but must enter a state of darkness or lowness in order to come back to the top where light reigns.
In class, when we were asked to formulate our own “allegory of the cave” comparison, I referred to happiness as being like a roller coaster. It is a slow steady rise to the top where there one can see everything in the park clearly. Once one reaches the peak, it might be a fast downward drop where one fears what is going to happen and might reach the point of being at the very bottom. Yet there is another peak that can be reached though it might be a smaller one and one has a larger momentum to reach it more quickly. Though one rides the roller coaster and experiences ups and downs and at different speeds, at the end of the ride one feels a sense of enjoyment, accomplishment and maybe even be as far to say he was happy to have gone through the experience.
Response Paper #2- Option 1
Daniel Gilbert and Sigmund Freud obviously have one distinct characteristic in common: they both studied psychology. While Gilbert focuses mostly on the idea of happiness in his writings, Freud explores the human psyche on a much deeper level. Although both Gilbert and Freud take two different approaches in their writings, it is easy to identify Freud’s ideas in Gilbert’s writing.
For example, Gilbert touches on the idea of pleasure as an ultimate goal for everyone, and even directly quotes Freud in his writing. But, later on in The View from Here, Gilbert introduces an idea that I feel is similar to Freud’s “Child’s Play” or “Fort/Da.” Gilbert writes, “If we amble down to the corner pub and met an alien from another planet who asked us to define that feeling, we would [either] point to the objects in the world that tend to bring it about…” (34). This simple example reminds me of the Fort/Da idea Freud introduces in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. I know it may seem like a bit of a stretch, especially as the child’s game of Fort/Da is more of a disappearing game to demonstrate how much the child misses his mother while she’s gone, but I feel that this quote reminds me of Gilbert’s example of going down to the pub:
“One day I made an observation that confirmed my view. The child had a wooden reel with a piece of string wound round it. It never occurred to him for example, to drag this after him on the floor and so play horse and cart with it, but he kept throwing it with considerable skill, held by the string, over the side of the little draped cot, so that the reel disappeared into it, then said the significant ‘o-o-o-oh’ and drew the reel by the string out of the cot again, greeting its reappearance with a joyful ‘Da’ (there)” (12).
It is clear to see that the child feels happy when he brings the wooden reel into his view, therefore emitting the joyful ‘Da.’ I feel that this is similar to the aforementioned example from Gilbert because it shows that when we’re reduced to communicating our feelings (in this case, of happiness) in a simplistic manner, we use objects that help bring that feeling about. While the child uses the wooden reel in Freud’s example, we would most likely point to other objects in the world that make us happy if we were to communicate with an alien from another planet (assuming there is no other way to communicate, almost like communicating as a child or with a child). In this specific instance, I feel that Freud’s influence on Gilbert is pretty clear to see.
Overall, even though Gilbert solely focuses on the idea of happiness in his writings and Freud delves into the human psyche in his, Freud’s influence on Gilbert can be noted in many examples Gilbert presents. Whether it is as obvious as the idea of pleasure being a goal for everyone, or more complex with the example of the alien at the pub, the influence is still there.
Response Paper 2, Option 3 Alex Goetzfried
I am going to use the “invisible third option” on this blog post because there is a theory here dealing with ego and repression put forth by Freud that in some ways coincides with my own views of the sub-conscious and also directly relates to a book I just finished reading called “The Shadow Effect”, by Deepak Chopra, Debbie Ford, and Marianne Williamson.
I find Freud’s theory of the relationship between the pleasure-principal, and the reality-principle very intriguing. On page 5 of chapter 1 Freud writes “Under the influence of the instinct of the ego for self-preservation it {pleasure-principle} is replaced by the ‘reality-principle’, which without giving up the intention of ultimately attaining pleasure yet demands and enforces the postponement of satisfaction… and the temporary endurance of ‘pain’ on the long and circuitous road to pleasure.” After this to paraphrase he also goes on to say that the pleasure principle prevails over the reality-principle to the detriment of the whole organism. Now in “The Shadow Effect”, to fill you in the idea is that we all have a shadow side where feelings, actions, and personality traits, which at some point in our lives were made to feel wrong or bad are hidden, and when we do stupid things, or embarrass ourselves it is this shadow side, which is considered part of if not all of the ego, tries to come out and that is when we act foolish. The correlation I find between the two is that the pleasure principle prevailing over the reality principle seems to me to be the same idea. The reality of the situation is we know what the right thing to do is in a given situation, but there is always that little evil ego side that sometimes pushes us to do what may not be the best thing for our ego, soul, reality, or whatever you want to call it in the long run. Have you ever been in an unfulfilling relationship, you know it’s making you miserable, but you think, “this is better than being alone”? Now that sounds like one small part but maybe that bad relationship is what is preventing you from developing fully as a person and although you might think I’m just miserable now but it will get better, this situation could be making you miss out on great opportunities, and new open doors.
To get back to Freud I think when he says the pleasure principle “prevails over the reality principle to the detriment of the whole organism”, what he is saying is going for instant gratification, (i.e. that one night stand, going out drinking and missing work, burning yourself out in order to help others because you don’t want to be selfish etc.) although seeming fun and pleasurable at the time is not helping in the pursuit of long term happiness.
On page 6 Freud writes “particular instincts, or portions of them, prove irreconcilable in their aims or demands with others which can be welded into the comprehensive unity of the ego. They are thereupon split off from this unity by the process of repression, retained on lower stages of psychic development, and for the time being cut off from all possibility of gratification.” From this I gather that certain actions or instincts cannot function together even though they all fall under the umbrella of “ego”. I believe certain parts of our ego are hidden in the “shadow” area due to past experiences of guilt, embarrassment, or any other trauma causing us to believe in their social un-acceptance. This shadow area is very different for everyone, and depends upon personal experiences and reactions to them. Freud also states “most pain we experience is of a perceptual order”. This idea of perception I have recently come across in “The Shadow Effect”, “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius, and a quote from Shakespeare: “Things are neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” Everything in life has a purpose, or even if it doesn’t, “just is”, so by perceiving something as good or bad, we are just putting our own spin on what “is”, good things come from bad and sometimes vice versa, so it is our own perception of a situation that causes this ‘pain’ which Freud is talking about and not the actual situation itself. This is a timeless theory and I would like to know how everyone else feels about this concept.
To further elaborate on the idea of perception we come to stress management. In chapter 2 page 8 Freud talks about “traumatic neurosis”, which I took to mean posttraumatic stress disorder. He describes it as “general weakening and shattering of the mental functions” and claims it to resemble hypochondria. Like most instances with PTSD, he uses the example of soldiers returning from war. However what about students who are cracking under the pressure of final exams, or an over-worked under paid man who loses it in a fit of road rage in traffic. I feel neurologically, these all can have the same end result, now you may consider the students problem to be menial in comparison to that of the soldier, but it is not the situation which is causing the ‘traumatic neurosis’, but it is the individuals ability to perceive the situation as it is and then implement proper stress management techniques. Although this is not a physical illness, stress can certainly lead to one, and also “weakening and shattering of the mental functions” is not something I would say resembles hypochondria! Have you ever been stressed out over a bad situation, and then heard a friend complaining about their own problems and thought “they don’t even know what stress is”. Well they may be thinking the same of you and this is why looking at problems from all different angles is important, and taking active steps to keep stress low is very important for overall health.
I think in these two chapters Freud really hits on a lot of different topics of timeless ideas, and things people have been trying to figure out since the beginning of reason about themselves and others. I hope this response fills the criteria for an option three paper and I would love to hear how everyone feels about perception as pertaining to stress, and also the “shadow” side we all have dying to get out and embarrass us!
