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.

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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.

      After school today I walked into my house right at dinner time.  My mother was cooking chicken francaise and the smell of the lemon and butter smacked me in the face.  I sat down at the table and ate with my family.  The aroma of food, sitting with my family, and eating brought back great memories of my grandmother and the daydreaming began.

      Freud spent a vast majority of his life interpreting dreams and how they are related to our desires.  My daydream today brought upon my desire for all the food my grandmother always cooked and our memories in the kitchen.  No matter what day or what time it was it always seeemed as if my grandmother was cooking.  Whether she was making homemade pizza, or her famous lasagna.  My grandmother would make different dishes and she would wait for my sister to come over so she could teach her.  Needless to say my sister did not learn much but I ate like a king.  I constantly got yelled at for eating the foods while they were cooking and somehow the fresh mozzarella always seemed to disappear.  I saw this video called cooking with nonna and it reminded me of the kitchen at my grandmothers.

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      Thinking back on the times with my grandmother made me very happy.  There are many things an Italian grandmother seems to do such as being extremely family oriented or hitting you with an object such as a shoe.“A field Guide to an Italian Grandmother” was written on sparknotes.com and I found this funny but true.   http://community.sparknotes.com/2011/06/23/a-field-guide-to-the-italian-grandmother  It states many things your Italian grandmother does for fun. The warmth is what reminded me of my grandmother.  The contributor on sparknotes stated “When you’re feeling down, their door is always open, beckoning you in with their soft hands.”  This daydream stemming from the smell of food brought back the great memories I have had.

The section of Freud’s reading that interested me the most was towards the end of chapter two when he started speaking about child play. He stayed for a few weeks and did field work in the house of an 18 months old boy and his parents. In the end he found that the child repeatedly kept playing the same games, and arranging his toys in the same order whenever his mother left the house for the day. Freud came to conclusion that the child found pleasure in playing with his toys, in the same order, whenever his mother was not present.

I found this to be an interesting way to look at pain and pleasure together. Usually when a person is in pain the only way to get over the feeling is by finding something that comforts them. However, I never really think of children experiencing “pain”, although it does happen, in the way adults do. Seeing that this child possibly found comfort in his toys is interesting. Thinking back to my childhood days when I played with my toys, I can definitely say that my toys comforted me. Overall, I had a happy childhood, not too many sad moments, so I can not say that I played with toys to “ease my pain”. However, I can say that during my junior high school days I found comfort in my stuffed animals whenever I had sad days. It is interesting to see how pleasure changes over the years for us, from playing with toys whenever mom leaves home to hitting the bar whenever you’re too overwhelmed with school work.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

When I think of Sigmund Freud, the first thing that I think of, aside from the dreaded “Oedipus Complex,”  is the phenomenon known as the “Freudian Slip.”  Honestly, I don’t know too much about them (as far as the technical aspects of the theory are concerned) save for the fact that the blundering nature of the slips make for hilarious Youtube videos such as these:

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Even without having too much of a working knowledge of Freud’s theories or general psychology, the average person could conclude that the result of a “Freudian Slip” is basically someone saying something that they didn’t actually mean to say at all. In layman’s terms, it could be described as “an error of speech as a result of the unconscious mind.”  What exactly is the unconscious mind? Aside from the fact that it could probably be best described as the part of the mind that you don’t realize exists, it actually is a mystery.  It’s the part of the thought that you can’t control; it’s the part of the brain that sneaks information into your mind, or locks information up like the gold in Fort Knox.

Relating the idea of the unconscious mind to happiness, I think of those quotes distributed on Tuesday.  Quite a few of them dealt with the idea of happiness with relation to thought, retrospection, or deep introspection.  For example we can see the relation between happiness and thought with Joseph Joubert’s quote: “Misery is almost always the result of thinking.”  Likewise with J.M. Reinoso’s “Happiness is a distraction from the human tragedy” or Colette’s “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

Perhaps happiness is only truly an illusion put forth by some deep part of the mind.  Maybe it can only really be known when you reflect on it.  If these things are the case, why is it that we waste time to seek happiness? I guess the easiest, though incredibly confounding, answer is that happiness is enjoyable, even if someone were to liken it to an opiate or an escape from reality.

-By Darryl Bethay