There’s something about Sigmund…

Not too long ago, I had the opportunity to have a small discussion with a close friend of mine about Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis ( how we got there I can’t really remember, our conversations always have random turns… but I think it had something to do with us calling someone ‘anal’). Considering psychology is a specialty of neither of us we naturally got nowhere and got everyone around us confused… so we just watched a movie. I am not in any position to say much on the topic (with like 2 psychology course and some scratches from sociology), but then again neither did Freud.

The bulk of our conversation revolved around the super-ego, ego and id , about the unconscious. How I understand it all, your super-ego and id are you ‘irrational’ thoughts, things that didn’t arise from knowledge or reason. Your id are your primal needs and instincts and pleasure, so your need to feed, your libido etc; your super-ego is your sense of moral and conscience, concepts that you’ve gathered from upbringing to differentiate right from wrong. Both of these things are things that just are; you don’t ask a person why they like food, and at the same time most people don’t question why murder and pedophilia is wrong.

Your ego is your logic and your rationality. The purpose of which is to make sense of the other 2 subconscious bodies while being able to sustain normal interactions without humping every girl you meet, but at the same time you can’t suppress both of them at the same time. Therefore the job of the ego is to keep you in control of yourself to survive in your community, and at the same time satisfy both your super-ego and id. Though not an example I like using (since I consider myself a hopeless romantic), love and sex is a great way to illustrate this theory.

Humans are living creatures, therefore reproduction is a fundamental instinct, it is what makes us alive (don’t about you other people, but scientists have already found the meaning of life). And being a lucky bunch, we also enjoy it a lot and one of the few animals that will do it for fun. The id is always the one that’s the most straight forward and simple to satisfy, in this case…. have sex. But thanks to our great social community and love of making anything good be evil and wrong, the need for sex is apparently a disgusting and dirty act (that or it’s a sin/ pleasure is a test, fight it/ you’re a slut etc). So in order to resolve this dilemma, we have invented this notion called ‘love’. Once we have love, everything makes sense and anything is an act of pure bravery and romance, the greatest thing a man (feminists piss of, I’m not being sexist) could do. Still, just in case everybody’s not satisfied, people in love don’t have sex: they “make love”, implying that they are making more ‘good’ even though there is little difference to the actual activity that’s branded as sinful if there was no “love” involved.

Freud to me is just a perverted old man that can’t get his mind off envying his dad’s penis and how much he loves his mom (for God sakes this man spent several years cutting out eel testicles!), and the only reason psychoanalysis is still around is because it’s a theory that backs up itself (i.e.that’s what you’re subconsciously thinking, but you just deny it) and therefore no one can prove it wrong. You know yourself best, you just need to look deeper to find out what really drives you and why you act the way you do. If it happens to be because you don’t want to be castrated by your dad… well… I’d suggest you move out and get some social services…