Sigmund Freud’s Tale of the Unconscious Mind

Question: Discuss about the Sigmund Freuds Tale of the Unconscious Mind. Answer: Sigmund Freud, a psychologist came up with his study on psychoanalysis, a psychological branch that deals with the study of unconscious mind and the ways a subconscious mind influences the activities that needs to be consummated in regular life among all the interactions (van der Hart, 2016). Freud suggested that each human being possess an evil that is suppressed in his or her subconscious, an evil that can be easily realised and can be witnessed in every single person. This world is full of beauty on one side and cruelty on the other. As per Bargh, (2014), every day one can witness the malevolent and benevolent actions taking place irrespective of the situation, where malevolent action is depicted at much bigger rate. According to Freud, (2013), there is existence of enough people in this planet who have stronger sense of repression of the evil and are less exaggerated as observed in article 1. For example, murderers are never able to repress what normal human beings are capable of doing, but one cannot deny the fact that spiteful energy exists in each people. Freud described the functioning of unconscious mind through modifying his own theories over a period of almost 50 years, in an attempt to treat his patients suffering from mental problems. Through hypnosis, Freud explained that a therapist investigates the unconscious mind of the patient while it remains exposed in this hypnosis state. This brings out the unconscious mind and the thoughts existing in it ready to be supervised. According to me, Sigmund Freud failed to take into account the environments impact on an individual throughout his theory. Simon Freud became conscious of the suppressed feeling that people have. The evil that people are born with can be witnessed in many past examples, like prosecution of Jews by the Nazi Germany, Pol Pot and Cambodia. These are some of the events that majority of the people know, however, there are many cryptic events that people do not have any knowledge of. The limitation of Cherrys article lies in the fact that it does not take into account the negative aspects of the Freudian theory of the unconscious mind and the adaptive unconscious notion of the modern era, which has been focused by Saul McLeod though. Freuds theory is not backed up by any experimental data and researches have stared focusing on the scientific aspects of his ideas which led them to conclude that many of his theories are unable to be supported. As per my opinion, his theories were mostly based on pathological facts rather than the normal and healthy ones with no proper attention given to environment and culture. According to Saul, Freud underestimated the importance of unconscious and his iceberg analogy illustrated figuratively that there is bigger portion of the mind under water. The iceberg analogy can be used as a metaphor in understanding Freuds topographical theory which states that only 10% of an iceberg is visible (conscious mind), whereas, the remaining 90% is beneath the water (unconscious and preconscious mind). Moreover, the preconscious mind is only selected for approximately 10-15% of the whole part, whereas, the unconscious part is chosen for around 80-85% of the total part. This signifies that the small amount of iceberg on top of the surface symbolizes the conscious mind and the bigger mass below the surface is the unconscious mind. All the awareness is being hold by the unconscious mind along with the feelings and memories falling out of conscious awareness. In my opinion, in Sauls article, there is this primitive urge of Freud in protecting individuals from facing anxiety. In case of the modern technique mentioned in the other article of Cherry, I found out that it states that adaptive unconsciousness is that information which is processed on the outskirts of the conscious mind of humans for reasons related to competence rather than the repression factor. Reference: Bargh, J. A. (2014). Our unconscious mind.Scientific American,310(1), 30-37. Freud, S. (2013). Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Theory.Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice, 111. Hall, C. S. (2016).A primer of Freudian psychology. Pickle Partners Publishing. van der Hart, O. (2016). Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud, and dissociation of the personality.The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis: Understanding and Working With Trauma,74, 44.