Sigmund Freud was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century in revolutionized our understanding of human nature. He spent about 50 years in transforming our way of understanding human nature with his theories.
Life and Work.
Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis, a system of interpretation and therapeutic treatment of psychological disorders. Freud was both a medical doctor and a philosopher. As a doctor, he was interested in how the human mind affected the body especially in the forms of mental health. As a philosopher, Freud was interested in looking at the relationship between mental operation and basic structures of society.
Background Theory.
He believed that human problems can be determined through the methods of science. He rely most of his knowledge of biology science to his physiological research and human being phenomena are determined by the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. .
Theory of Human Nature.
Freud's theory contains two fundamental principles which he calls the pleasure principle and the reality principle. The pleasure principle consist of instincts or drives such as sexual that all human (regardless of age) motivation are derive from and tells us to do whatever feels good. Whereas the reality principle tells us to channel the energy somewhere else that subordinate pleasure to do what needs to be done which is to be productive such as work. He calls this psychological process, sublimation, where you take the desires that can't be obtained or know morally it shouldn't be obtained, and direct it to something use and productive. But the desire for pleasure doesn't disappear, even when it's sublimated to work. The desires that can't be obtained or fulfilled are packed or repressed into a place where Freud calls it the unconscious. Because it contains repressed desires, things that our conscious mind isn't supposed to want and to know about, the unconscious is inaccessible to the conscious state of mind.
