A weird title, I know. However, a good explanation will be given.

 From my minimal knowledge of Freud, I know that he studied dreams. The study of dreams has always fascinated me. Our minds can imagine the craziest things and we are just along for the ride. I find how our dreams can help us solve dilemmas in our lives intriguing. The unconscious mind is force not to be taken as a minor component in our lives.

The scariest phenomena of dreams is deja vu. Deja vu is, as dictionary.com describes,”the illusion of having previously experienced something actually being encountered for the first time”. I guess to some it is an illusion while to others it is a reality. The mind is a powerful being who can say with absolute certainty that deja vu is actually an illusion. Perhaps I am just a bit bias because I experience deja vu fairly often or maybe because of the belief in the supernatural in my culture.

Russians are very superstitious people. Most grandmothers know how to read cards, palms and dreams. They say that the gift passes down to the most stubborn child. My great-great-grandmother was actually a fairly well known “gadalka”(russian equivalent to a psychic) in her region; my grandmother told me a story of one man in military. He was presumed dead by everyone, his wife needed to know if it was true. She asked the gadalka if he was alive; my great-great-grandmother asks to look at a ring of his. As she looks she tells the women that her husband is alive but missing a leg. In a years time, the man returns to his wife missing a leg. Back to my point, my grandmother has the ability to read cards, my father has feelings when bad things or good things will happen, much like a sixth sense, and I experience what my grandmother calls stupid premonitions.

Many believe these stories to be a way to swindle money out of people. I do agree that most are just con-artists but there has to be those who do know how to control their minds to make this happen.

A dream dictionary for those who want to understand their dreams: http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary

So its 4 am. Why in the world am I still up trying to do my English homework? It may seem absurd, just as Freud does, but it’s really not, because I had a little nap earlier on. Well, I know I will regret this in a few hours, but I finally got myself to focus on Freud, and cannot stop until I have completely expressed my views on him. Freud is one man who not only interests me but also drives me crazy. I really would want to meet him one day, if he wasn’t already dead, just to figure out what kind of a person he is, and where his absurd thoughts come from. The first time I came across this man was in my ap psych. class last year. He is a profound thinker, who was obsessed with the human mind and internal drives. While I found interest in some of his ideas, I wanted to question his thinking and give him a wake up call for others. I mean he’s probably a nice guy and all. It’s just that some of his thoughts and ideas just seem absurd. All of us are humans, and so we all of course are always thinking, and finding ways to perceive and define the world around us. We all ask others and ourselves a ton of questions, to gain knowledge and help ourselves define the world a little better. So Freud was the same, except he questioned the world a little differently than we do. He questioned things like dreams, internal desires, the conscious, the unconscious, pleasure, pain, etc.

I found interest in his approach to dreams and his idea of symbolism and internal desires in dreams. I found the idea of the id, ego, and superego very interesting, as it classifies our internal desires and seems to make sense. However, I find his focus on ‘sex’ to be disturbing, especially with his whole pyscho-sexual stages of development and the sex drive being present in infants and children. Obviously he doesn’t mean it in a bad way, but simply as a drive that can be fulfilled for an infant by sucking to get food. However, he thinks that if needs are not met, it will later affect the baby’s personality in a bad way. In totality, I find this idea of his to be absurd.

I found Freud to be a little bit confusing in the reading, with his scrutinizing and analytical approach to the idea of pleasure and pain. He looks closely to see its relation to “the quantity of excitation present in the psychic life” and discusses something called “traumatic neuroses”. He is the kind of person who just seemed to make matters more complex than they really were. His abstract thinking is a cause of this. However, I enjoyed reading the case of child-play in which a child was studied to see how he reacted to pain and pleasure within his play. It was very interesting to discover that an 18- month old child was able to deal with the pain he received when his mother left him by turning the idea into a game of asking his toys appear and disappear. When his mother died when he was 5 years old, the boy was not sad at all. This shows the profound effects one’s childhood can have on their future. The boy turned the pain, when he was young into a game, it seems that even when he got older, he still thought of it as a game. This idea of the importance of childhood has also come up in some of Freud’s work, and may be one of the few things I could agree on with him.

The pleasure principle is the idea that we seek the gratification of our immediate needs which result in our individual pleasures and, the relevant hypothesis, that the pain principle is that in pursuing these pleasures we are merely searching for a means to avoid pain. This is, of course, a very basic understanding of Freud’s theory and frankly I feel at present there is no further need to elaborate on the entirety of Freud’s definition. This basic concept, alone, has led me into a spiral of contemplation and reminiscence of my on-again, off-again, complicated relationship with Marlboro lights, Newport, American Spirits and virtually every other brand of cigarettes under the sun.

The immediate need being the overwhelming urge to reach into my pocket, where I am sure to find my, metaphorically speaking, love. That pleasure, especially on the heels of a three hour long history class on a Saturday morning, is overwhelming. Yet again this is just a very basic example of the many that can be attributed to the pleasure principle however what fueled a great deal of recollection on my part was the latter, the other side of the coin and equally valuable, pain principle. Most importantly calling forth the questions: what the hell was I thinking in picking up my first pack? What’s more, what is it that keeps pulling me towards this self-destructive habit? I have, after all, dropped it entirely as though it was a passing trend that had outlived its relevance attributing it to the rebellious nature of youth, being the only reason that bound me to it at any point in time.

I realized then that it had transcended a mere habit or even an addiction, which I managed to conquer in the past with base willpower, but that the shackles which bind me to it are neither of those. I no longer necessarily get any sort of satisfaction from smoking, nor am I driven by an addiction to it physically. So why do I continue to indulge in this self-destructive process, now both unfulfilling and seemingly irrelevant to me? That is, in essence, the pain principle. Not to delve too deeply into my own misfortunes or emotional turmoil in this post but in remembering them I began to understand that the reason why I continue to smoke, to some extent, is that has become increasingly more difficult to drown out my recent complications, responsibilities and seemingly insurmountable challenges laid before me. Smoking creates a false sense of pleasure that distracts me, if only momentarily, from those feelings. Even though each cigarette no longer possess the calming, heady feeling of freedom it once did, they serve to diverge my focus from any unnecessary distractions or ill thoughts to the simple process; inhale, exhale, cough, repeat.

From the psychology1001 class we discussed Freud’s concept of psychological development of children, and the text talked about the motivation of children’s play. Freud’s concept of psychological development of children is based on research of adults and children not directly observed, required adults to answer the childhood importance of early experience, in order to make theoretical speculation, but sometimes these memories are fragments, or even distorted.  Freud’s theory of psychological development of children’s scientific concept of lack.
Freud believed the development five stages:

The oral stage (0-1 years);

The anal stage (1-3 years);

The Phallic Stage (4 to 5 years);

The Latency Stage (6-puberty);

The genital stage (puberty-)

The theory of education should be its central theory “, ego, superego,” the discussion Superego is the moral of the self, from early childhood experience of reward and punishment within the patterns generated, that is, the values ​​of parents, children are rewarded for certain behaviors and to promote, while others act because of the punishment been prevented.

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Superego consists of two aspects of the conscience and ego ideal. One of the consciences, punishment of children is the internalization of the experience, which is responsible for moral violations make punishment. Children’s self-ideal is rewarded and internalization of the experience, it provides a moral standard.
Freud believed that the purpose of my pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of practical self-aimed; over my purpose is the pursuit of perfection.
so our key of education is to be “super-ego”.

After reading the excerpt from Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” I feel quite upset. It’s not because the reading is difficult though. The reason I feel upset is that the excerpt really deals with those emotional problems which I have but don’t know how to express. Maybe someone would ask me, “Shouldn’t you feel happy?” I would definitely say no since I may not sleep well for the next few days because I have to solve those things out.

So what are those things that make me upset? The two key words that I wrote down were “pleasure” and “reality.” More exactly, they were “Pleasure Principle” and “Reality Principle.” Pleasure principle says people tend to pursue pleasure and avoid “pain,” but reality principle postpones people’s will. Under the reality principle, people suffer pain in order to get pleasure. As I grow up, I feel like the reality principle has occupied my life. When I was a kid, I could feel pleasant so much easier. At that time, playing with friends, eating a dirt cheap ice cream or just sitting in the front of the TV would make me feel happy. However, things had changed dramatically after entering middle school. When I was in China, I had to worry about the High School Entrance Examination and had to go to school every day. I am not saying that I don’t like going to school, but if you go to school every day, it is a pain. People who live in the U.S definitely have no idea what I am talking about. I am saying that I used to go to school every day from Monday to Sunday and study from 7:00 am till 9:30 pm. It was mandatory so no one can skip the class. Remember, I was only a middle school student at that time. When I was at high school, it was almost the same thing but the only difference was that you had to stay longer there. I worked hard, I made lots of friends and I feel really happy to be accepted by the school I desired to go to, however, happiness seems no longer to be that simple. In order to get it, you have to suffer so much pain. Now I am in college, I have to worry about the getting a job already. Life is not easy, so is happiness.

We all grow up and we all suffer.

Here are two TV series that I want to share with you. The first one is “Growing Pains,” which is about how the American kids grow up. It is a little old but I really enjoy it.

The second one is “家有儿女,” which is more like a Chinese version of the “Growing Pains.” They are all very funny and you will certainly enjoy them.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/0S2EpH5sFyk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/3ujlicqssyw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Freud say’s that when a child feels or sees something that makes him uncomfortable, the child would than create a game to release the fear, or anger in a way. I can understand this as a child you copy things that you see, because you think it’s normal. Turning something that seems to happen daily, that upsets you, into a watered down version of it into a game. It probably makes it easier for him to handle it in real life, makes it simpler. But what i don’t understand is doesn’t he get bored. Because it is a repetition your doing the same thing over and over, again but the end result would never change, not even the process of it happening. Isn’t one of the reason why you play a game is because it’s different every time. For example a card game every time you shuffle the cards the cards that you receive are going to be different there for it’s going to be a different version of the game every time.
Yet this child could play this game every time without fail, and still find it fun to play. Because why play it if it isn’t fun, than it’ll just be a chore, and who does chores just because they want to. No they do it because they have to. So it makes me wonder is he doing it because it’s fun or is he doing it because he has to? So it’ll get easier every time he see’s the toy disappear and reappear, so it’ll get easier every time he see’s his mother leave him alone for a while.

PS. if my grammar is really bad it’s only because its really late at night and i just want to finish this.

It is getting late and I am tired. I read this over and over again, and in the end I am mad. Why is Freud and all these philosophers so interested in these random things? Is it really necessary and helpful to study these things? I feel like in life there are just issues that shouldn’t be studied. Studying happiness and the unconscious to come up with all these reasoning and theories is so forced. You have to force yourself to think about it, while some of these things shouldn’t be. Instead they are things that occur naturally so why do we have to try so hard to analyze it? A lot of the time there just might not be any answers to why things are a certain way anyway.

Why do we have to come up with a purpose for why a little boy is playing a toy? The boy is probably just having fun and playing it as a distraction, but no we are not satisfied with this answer. We force ourselves to look at the idea that the boy is doing it in order to do this and do that, for this reason and that reason, because is so natural for us to over think. Sure, subconsciously there might be a connection between the toy and his mom leaving, but is it even that important? If we put ourselves in his shoes we would probably be too young to know ourselves why we’re playing it. In our heads we are only playing with it because we want to. It is as simple as that, at 18 months we don’t care about all these things, we just do things to do it.