Category Archives: JM13D

In his work, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud discusses the drives behind acts of compulsion. His first tendency is to apply his Pleasure Principle as the driving force behind compulsions. The basis of the Pleasure Principle is that humans seek to increase their pleasure and decrease their pain. But Freud rejects the application of compulsion as being driven by pleasure, instead asserting that compulsions are driven from a dark source described as a “root of fear driven by a demonic compulsion” (p. 44).

By asserting that compulsions are not a function of pleasure, Freud enters an entirely new realm of psychological theory. He asserts that instinct is the “tendency innate in living organic matter impelling it towards the reinstatement of an earlier condition.” (p. 44). This means that human beings want to go back to prior states regardless of happiness felt in the present or in the past. It follows that people may be driven to return to unhappy states which leads me to wonder how Freud views our purpose in life. Does he believe that happiness is an active factor in human development?

It seems that compulsions are not sensitive to happiness, but does this mean that the Pleasure Principle is correlated with happiness? Seemingly, if Freud is prepared to say that compulsions are not related to happiness, then pleasure is not necessarily related to happiness because happiness does not seem to be an underlying principle in Freud’s view of development.

I think that Freud’s denial of happiness as a major function in development is one of Daniel Gilberts’ primary motivators in his studies of happiness. Disregarding his philosophy of positive psychology, Gilberts relativist assertions in Stumbling on Happiness can be traced to Freud’s above ideas. It is important to ignore Gilbert’s prescription for happiness because if he believes that happiness is truly relative, then how can he say that one particular method will lead to it? This assertion in itself is not relativist.

Now that we have isolated relativism, let us approach it from Gilbert’s perspective in light of Freud. Freud views happiness as something more arbitrary than determined. He sees the struggle in conscious beings as the primary activity, and happiness is something which may or may not result as a bi-product of this conflict. This means that there is necessarily no prescription or core explanation for happiness. Whatever the situation, one can be happy or unhappy. If one is happy then he/she is so only relatively, meaning that it is not certain or definite because happiness is not by itself as an independent force, which makes it arbitrary. It also means that it can never be properly quantified or measured because of its arbitrary nature.

Gilbert relies heavily on describing happiness as being from an individual perspective: “All claims of happiness are claims form someone’s point of view” (p. 57).  He describes this process through the use of charts to demonstrate semantic differences in the verbalization of happiness.  This is in direct influence form Freud’s model of arbitrary happiness.

Although I previously attempted to discredit Gilbert’s assertions about positive psychology, I think that it is this relativist viewpoint which has led him to his conclusions. If happiness is indeed an arbitrary by-product of an unrelated driving force of human beings, then why not try and influence it consciously? Surely leaving it to the whims of subconscious activity will guarantee it no more then by actively pursuing its achievement. I think that Gilbert, while not fully believing that happiness is necessarily attainable through the methods of positive psychology, sees an opportunity for himself and his audience. It is this opportunity which may make all the difference in the end result of being happy.

-Betzalel Laudon (Sol)

Jacqueline Liang

Option #2

Undoubtedly, everyone in this world as consciously or unconsciously thought about happiness and what it is that’s associated with this complex word. Pleasure is of course one of the words that comes into mind, but how exactly we can feel this pleasure is a whole other story. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, psychologist, Sigmund Freud, made a rather clever observation of a child‘s play, which eventually came to be coined as “fort da” or “disappearance and return“. In this instance, an eighteen month old child seems to take much time flinging toys to and fro, especially a wooden reel with a string attached to it. This certain toy is the central figure of the “fort da” game because when the toy is thrown, it disappears but with a tug on the string, the toy seems to magically appear again much to the pleasure of the child.

The game, though simple, holds an interesting point to Freud’s whole argument on the basis and fundamentals of pleasure. The whole idea of this “fort da” game is for the child to cope with the various departures of his mother because when he is reeling the toy back into his view, it is representational of the hope and joy of his mother’s return. The simple act of the child flinging the toy away is symbolic to his mothers departure because what baby doesn’t feel at least a twinge of pain when his or her mother goes away. But if this game has so much pain before the actual pleasure, why does the child keep repeating the action? Perhaps you think that this has no relation to us because the center of the game is a mere child whereas we are developed adults with more complex thought capabilities but this “fort da” game can be readily applied to all human beings. In life, how can we ever feel satisfaction or know what that is if there is no pain or un-pleasurable feeling as a prelude; it is a necessary contradiction in a sense. Imagine that you are going jogging on a dry, sunny day and you somehow forgot to bring water. The more the jog, the thirstier you will get, but the thirstier you get the better and more refreshing the water will taste when you actually get to it. The whole irony of it all is that by repeating the unpleasant things, you will eventually find pleasure in it.

Surprisingly, the “fort da” game is like its predecessor, The Allegory of the Cave, by Plato. In this instance, the story is much more somber with it being about prisoners who have been chained in a dark cave for their whole lives. They have never seen each other or the outside world and their only companions are the shadows dance across the cave walls. But what if one day, one of the prisoners was freed from the cave? The prisoner is similar to the child in the “fort da” game because they lack the knowledge of the “real world”; the baby is still too young and the prisoner has never been in contact with the world outside of the cave. The two resort to symbolic things and imagination to cope and make sense of their surroundings and feelings. Furthermore, after the prisoner adapts to the real world and begins to see that his life in the cave and the shadows are not the only realities, he goes back to the cave to the other chained men. This instance is like the child throwing the toy away and reeling it back in repeatedly because when you learn something new and more pleasurable, there is always an urge to go back to the origin of the unpleasant thing or event. It is almost like a boost or reinforcement for the happiness or pleasure because lets face it, pain and pleasure goes hand in hand even if their perceptions are different in each human being.

Sigmund Freud spent his time observing and interpreting a young child’s actions in the second chapter of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The young child as Freud observed had a “troublesome habit of flinging into the corner of the room or under the bed all the little things he could lay his hands on”. He would accompany the action with a gratified “Ooooh”. Freud then observed the child playing with a toy that had a string attached to it. Instead of dragging the toy, the child would throw it over the side of his bed and pulled it back up to see it again. The game the child played became known as “Fort Da”. The words Fort and Da translate directly to Gone and There and thus those two words became the name of the game. Freud concluded that the child created the game through experience – the leaving and returning of his mother. The child attempted to be happy in the absence of his mother. Freud uses the example of “Fort Da” in an attempt to explain that actions made when you are an adult are subconsciously influenced by experiences in the person’s childhood. The process of repetition can be traced back to childhood.
Plato’s allegory of the cave and Freud’s “Fort Da” isn’t exactly comparable. They each apply to different concepts. The allegory of the cave describes different stages of knowledge of man – the uneducated to the all-knowing. “Fort Da” was used by Freud as an example of repetition at a young age and a child’s ability to cope with the absence of parents.
I’m unsure about what Freud’s view on happiness is besides his pleasure principle. The idea that pleasure is the driving force behind everything. This essay by Freud adds another reason for our actions and addresses many loopholes with the pleasure principle. I’m more in line to agree with Aristotle’s view of happiness – a life of knowledge and learning.

Freud presents his essay as a critique of the assumption that as humans we are drawn innately to gaining as much happiness and pleasure as we can. Freud disagrees with this assumption. He argues that we all have a mental perception of displeasure or pain. Our minds or perception is more drawn to dealing with the pains we experiences and this helps us to gain pleasure or happiness as a byproduct. Freud was writing after the time of WWI. At the time that event was the most displeasurable things humans had experienced.
Gaining pleasure is not our dominant trait but most of the processes of our mind do end up in pleasure. He explains this concept with his investigation of “Fort Da” or “Child’s Play.” Freud experienced and analyzed the actions of a little boy who was constantly throwing away his toys in a bid to say Fort Da or gone away. The boy was not throwing away his toys and picking it back again because he found pleasure in that experience but instead, he was dealing with the painful things in his life that is his mother who was constantly away and his father who was off to war. Dealing with the pain was what brought the young kid happiness or pleasure. So the boy’s happiness had to deal with his own perception of what happiness was.
In the same way, Plato’s Allegory of the cave is very similar to Fort Da. In the Allegory, Plato compares men in a state of ignorance to prisoners in a cave unable to turn their heads. Directly behind the prisoners, fire burns. Between the fire and the prisoners, puppeteers who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners cannot see the real objects but all they see are shadows. In the minds of the prisoners, the shadows are real objects but when released they see that their perception of reality was different. Plato’s allegory also shows that what is considered as happiness is different for different people in different situations. Pain can be seen as pleasure or happiness by another person.
I totally agree with the views of Freud and Plato. A person’s definition of pleasure or happiness is all perceptive. What is good for the goose is not always good for the gander so to speak. For example, a religious martyr who goes through torture and death because of his/ her beliefs will be viewed by another person as experiencing displeasure and in no way happy. However, even through that pain, the martyr might be happy inside knowing and believing that he is doing God’s will. Still a question remains, which kind of happiness is superior, gaining happiness by dealing with pain or gaining happiness through pleasurable things?

Nature versus nurture has always been a theory questioned by many humans. Many people find it important to know what causes their actions and how exactly they occur in the ways which they do, whether it is due to the environment surrounding us or if it is hereditary. It becomes quite clear to me that society itself and experience with the outside world play huge roles in how humans develop mentally. In Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle he addresses “children’s play” and when observing an eighteen month old baby he discovers that the baby has turned an experience into a game. He states that the baby “was in the first place passive, was overtaken by the experience, but now brings himself in as playing an active part, by repeating the experience as a game in spite of its unpleasing nature” (14). As a child, you are yet to discover new wonders in the world, so through experience you begin to form reactions that enable you to feel different emotions that you are born with. Such an example is one that leads me into believing that nature and nurture come hand in hand. Without nature you would not have nurture since nature is what enables us humans to practice the innate traits we are born with, such as happiness.

In Plato’s The Republic Book Seven “Allegory of the Cave” he tells a story about prisoners who are chained and live their entire lives in a cave having no connection to the outer world other than a bright fire off in the distance. I believe that its significance of this allegory is to demonstrate that one’s surroundings is a vital part in determining their morals and beliefs. Since the prisoners grew acceptance of the dark cave they were in, they did not know that there was actually much more in the world, and having lived such a long time without any doubt, it was hard for them to believe that there really could be something beyond the bright fire. Their senses and innate traits had adapted to the surroundings of the cave and they had become content and satisfied with their lifestyle. In both Freud’s and Plato’s pieces, nature and nurture intertwine and enable the characters to further develop mentally and create certain beliefs and morals that shape one’s own personal idea and definition of happiness.

In Chapter 2 of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he concentrates the majority of this chapter onto his observations of a Child’s Play. In his observations, Freud had noticed that a child would “allow” a beloved/pleasurable toy to disappear his play. Freud mentioned that instead of, for example, combining his favorite toy (the reel w. the string) with the his other toys, instead, the child behaves somewhat masochistically, continually depriving himself of his favorite toy in order to see it return again (hence the name fort da :going away/there). This game is very important to Freud’s theories as from my primitive and basic knowledge of Freud, he seem to base many of his theories on adult actions being subconsciously influenced by traumas and neuroses developed in childhood. In addition, this fort da/child’s play stage is seems to at least deflate a good amount of the presumption that “pleasure” is the driving force of a person’s conscious and subconscious goals (as even a child in his most primitive stage of development would act in a manner that would contradict the pleasure principle).
The only comparison I can see between chapter two and Plato’s allegory is their use of “stages” to describe different stages of human development. Both authors/writes seem to focus their writings on the mental development of a human. Although, in this particular excerpt Freud did not elaborate on the child’s stages development and also made no reference to some of his more controversial theories (which, to my limited knowledge has something to do with a child’s oral, anal, genital fixations etc.) This however, tells me that happiness can also be motivated subconsciously, although since I lack any anecdotal “proofs” as I do not remember most my early childhood.

-Allen Chan

Andrey Syzdykov

Response paper # 2 – Option #2

In chapter 2 of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” written by Sigmund Freud, he talks about a game of “disappearance and return” later to be known as fort da. This game is important to Freud’s ideas because it essentially counters his pleasure principle, which states that people tend to do things to further their own pleasure while avoiding all forms of pain. This said counter to the pleasure principle appears in the first part of the game, which is the disappearance part. The toddler throws the wooden reel out of sight, which signifies the loss of his mother. He then reels it back in to “reunite” with his mother. Freud wonders why the boy chooses to willingly hurt himself by recreating the loss of his mother into a game, and in the end figures that it’s all for the return stage. After all, there is no return without separation.
This can relate to Plato’s “allegory of the cave” in the sense that the baby, when deprived of his “object happiness” (his mother), he then reverts into the imagination stage to seek a form of comfort. This serves as a temporary form of happiness until the mother returns. What makes this relevant to us is that we often revert to the imaginary stage to keep us happy as well. If you are hungry but can’t get food at the moment, you compensate by imagining the tastes of different foods inside your mouth. If you want sex but can’t get it, you may turn to pornography and imagination (onanism). These examples, as base as they are, show us that you can fool yourself into achieving a temporary happiness. Yet is this imaginary trick really enough to make you truly happy? Also, are there some things out there that you just can’t use this trick for?

Wow. First of all, I’ve never seen or heard of this cartoon, and maybe I live under a rock, but okay. Second of all, I was completely shocked. If I was watching this as a kid, I’d have grabbed the remote and changed the channel within 5 seconds. As I was watching it in class, I thought to myself, woah, this is for kids? Even now, the cartoon itself, the graphics, scared me, especially Ren. It was amusing in a slightly disturbing way, especially the Happy Happy Joy Joy song. 🙂 I guess the song would have been good for a kid, because it’s so repetitive and sort of catchy? Anyways, the concept, I think, behind the video was that you can’t create happiness for someone else: Stumpy helped Ren realize how much he appreciated being grumpy and unhappy, a thought that made Ren happy. So twisted. I’d probably be mind boggled realizing this now if I had ever watched this cartoon as a kid.

If you are in the 10:45AM to 12:25PM section of this course, please make sure to use the “category” “JM13D” for all posts you write!