Professor Paul Bloom: Okay. The last class we talked aboutthe brain. Now we're going to talk a little bit about some foundations.So today and Monday we're going to talk about two very big ideas andthese ideas are associated with Sigmund Freud and B. F. Skinner and arepsychoanalysis and behaviorism. And I want to talk about psychoanalysistoday and behaviorism next week.
Now, one of these things--One of the things that makes thesetheories so interesting is their scope. Most of the work we're going totalk about in this class--Most of the ideas are narrow. So, we're goingto talk about somebody's idea about racial prejudice but that's not atheory of language acquisition. We'll talk about theories ofschizophrenia but they're not explanations of sexual attractiveness.Most theories are specialized theories but these two views are grandtheories. They're theories of everything, encompassing just abouteverything that matters, day-to-day life, child development, mentalillness, religion, war, love. Freud and Skinner had explanations of allof these.
Now, this is not a history course. I have zero interest indescribing historical figures in psychology just for the sake oftelling you about the history of the field. What I want to tell youabout though is--I want to talk about these ideas because so much restson them and, even more importantly, a lot of these ideas have criticalinfluence on how we think about the present. And that's there.[pointing at the slide]
Now, for better or worse, we live in a world profoundly affected bySigmund Freud. If I had to ask you to choose a--no, name a famouspsychologist, the answer of most of you would be Freud. He's the mostfamous psychologist ever and he's had a profound influence on thetwentieth and twenty-first century. Some biographical information: Hewas born in the 1850s. He spent most of his life in Vienna, Austria,but he died in London and he escaped to London soon after retreatingthere at the beginning of World War II as the Nazis began to occupywhere he lived.
He's one of the most famous scholars ever but he's not known for anysingle discovery. Instead, he's known for the development of anencompassing theory of mind, one that he developed over the span ofmany decades. He was in his time extremely well known, a celebrityrecognized on the street, and throughout his life. He was a man ofextraordinary energy and productivity, in part because he was a veryserious cocaine addict, but also just in general. He was just ahigh-energy sort of person. He was up for the Nobel Prize in medicineand in literature; didn't get either one of them; didn't get the prizein medicine because Albert Einstein--Everybody loves Albert Einstein.Well, Albert Einstein really wrote a letter because they asked foropinions of other Nobel Prizes. He wrote a letter saying, "Don't givethe prize to Freud. He doesn't deserve a Nobel Prize. He's just apsychologist." Well, yeah. Okay.
While he's almost universally acclaimed as a profoundly importantintellectual figure, he's also the object of considerable dislike. Thisis in part because of his character. He was not a very nice man in manyways. He was deeply ambitious to the cause of promoting psychoanalysis,to the cause of presenting his view and defending it, and he was oftendishonest, extremely brutal to his friends, and terrible to hisenemies. He was an interesting character.
My favorite Freud story was as he was leaving Europe during the riseof the Nazis, as he was ready to go to England from, I think, eitherGermany or Austria, he had to sign a letter from the Gestapo. Gestapoagents intercepted him and demanded he sign a letter saying that at nopoint had he been threatened or harassed by the Gestapo. So he signsthe letter and then he writes underneath it, "The Gestapo has notharmed me in any way. In fact, I highly recommend the Gestapo toeverybody." It's--He had a certain aggression to him. He was also--He'salso disliked, often hated, because of his views. He was seen as asexual renegade out to destroy the conception of people as good andrational and pure beings. And when the Nazis rose to power in the 1930she was identified as a Jew who was devoted to destroying the mostsacred notions of Christianity and to many, to some extent, many peoplesee him this way. And to some extent, this accusation has some truth toit.
Freud made claims about people that many of us, maybe most of us,would rather not know. Well, okay. What did he say? Well, if you asksomebody who doesn't like Freud what he said, they'll describe some ofthe stupider things he said and, in fact, Freud said a lot of things,some of which were not very rational. For instance, he's well known forhis account of phallic symbols, arguing certain architectural monumentsare subconsciously developed as penile representations. And related tothis, he developed the notorious theory of penis envy. And penis envyis an account of a developmental state that every one of you who isfemale has gone through, according to Freud. And the idea is that youdiscovered at some point in your development that you lacked a penis.This is not--This is a catastrophe. And so, each of you inferred atthat point that you had been castrated. You had once had a penis butsomebody had taken it from you. You then turn to your father and loveyour father because your father has a penis, so he's a sort of penissubstitute. You reject your mother, who's equally unworthy due to herpenis lack, and that shapes your psychosexual development.
Now, if that's the sort of thing you know about Freud, you are notgoing to have a very high opinion of him or of his work, but at thecore of Freud's declamation, the more interesting ideas, is a set ofclaims of a man's intellectual importance. And the two main ones arethis. The two main ones involve the existence of an unconscious,unconscious motivation, and the notion of unconscious dynamics orunconscious conflict which lead to mental illnesses, dreams, slips ofthe tongue and so on.
The first idea – the idea of unconscious motivation – involvesrejecting the claim that you know what you're doing. So, suppose youfall in love with somebody and you decide you want to marry them andthen somebody was asked to ask you why and you'd say something like,"Well, I'm ready to get married this stage of my life; I really lovethe person; the person is smart and attractive; I want to have kids"whatever. And maybe this is true. But a Freudian might say that even ifthis is your honest answer – you're not lying to anybody else –still,there are desires and motivations that govern your behavior that youmay not be aware of. So, in fact, you might want to marry John becausehe reminds you of your father or because you want to get back atsomebody for betraying you.
If somebody was to tell you this, you'd say, "That's totalnonsense," but that wouldn't deter a Freudian. The Freudian would saythat these processes are unconscious so of course you just don't knowwhat's happening. So, the radical idea here is you might not knowwhat--why you do what you do and this is something we accept for thingslike visual perception. We accept that you look around the world andyou get sensations and you figure out there is a car, there is a tree,there is a person. And you're just unconscious of how this happens butit's unpleasant and kind of frightening that this could happen, thatthis could apply to things like why you're now studying at Yale, whyyou feel the way you do towards your friends, towards your family.
Now, the marriage case is extreme but Freud gives a lot of simplerexamples where this sort of unconscious motivation might play a role.So, have you ever liked somebody or disliked them and not known why?Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you're doingsomething or you're arguing for something or making a decision forreasons that you can't fully articulate? Have you ever forgottensomebody's name at exactly the wrong time? Have you ever called out thewrong name in the throes of passion? This is all the Freudianunconscious. The idea is that we do these things--these things areexplained in terms of cognitive systems that we're not aware of.
Now, all of this would be fine if your unconscious was a reasonable,rational computer, if your unconscious was really smart and looking outfor your best interest. But, according to Freud, that's not the way itworks. According to Freud, there are three distinct processes going onin your head and these are in violent internal conflict. And the wayyou act and the way you think are products, not of a singular rationalbeing, but of a set of conflicting creatures. And these three parts arethe id, the ego, and the superego and they emerge developmentally.
The id, according to Freud, is present at birth. It's the animalpart of the self. It wants to eat, drink, pee, poop, get warm, and havesexual satisfaction. It is outrageously stupid. It works on what Freudcalled, "The Pleasure Principle." It wants pleasure and it wants itnow. And that's, according to Freud, how a human begins – pure id.Freud had this wonderful phrase, "polymorphous perversity," this puredesire for pleasure.
Now, unfortunately, life doesn't work like that. What you want isn'talways what you get and this leads to a set of reactions to cope withthe fact that pleasure isn't always there when you want it either byplanning how to satisfy your desires or planning how to suppress them.And this system is known as the ego, or the self. And it works on the"Reality Principle." And it works on the principle of trying to figureout how to make your way through the world, how to satisfy yourpleasures or, in some cases, how to give up on them. And the ego – theemergence of the ego for Freud--symbolizes the origin ofconsciousness.
Finally, if this was all there it might be a simpler world, butFreud had a third component, that of the superego. And the superego isthe internalized rules of parents in society. So, what happens in thecourse of development is, you're just trying to make your way throughthe world and satisfy your desires, but sometimes you're punished forthem. Some desires are inappropriate, some actions are wrong, andyou're punished for it. The idea is that you come out; you get in yourhead a superego, a conscience. In these movies, there'd be a littleangel above your head that tells you when things are wrong. Andbasically your self, the ego, is in between the id and thesuperego.
One thing to realize, I told you the id is outrageously stupid. Itjust says, "Oh, hungry, food, sex, oh, let's get warm, oh." Thesuperego is also stupid. The superego, point to point, is not somebrilliant moral philosopher telling you about right and wrong. Thesuperego would say, "You should be ashamed of yourself. That'sdisgusting. Stop doing that. Oh." And in between these two screamingcreatures, one of you; one of them telling you to seek out yourdesires, the other one telling you, "you should be ashamed ofyourself," is you, is the ego.
Now, according to Freud, most of this is unconscious. So, we seebubbling up to the top, we feel, we experience ourselves. And thedriving of the id, the forces of the id and the forces of the superego,are unconscious in that we cannot access them. We don't know what--It'slike the workings of our kidneys or our stomachs. You can't introspectand find them. Rather, they do their work without consciousknowledge.
Now, Freud developed this. This is the Freudian theory in broadoutline. He extended it and developed it into a theory of psychosexualdevelopment. And so, Freud's theory is, as I said before, a theory ofeveryday life, of decisions, of errors, of falling in love, but it'salso a theory of child development. So, Freud believed there were fivestages of personality development, and each is associated with aparticular erogenous zone. And Freud believed, as well, that if youhave a problem at a certain stage, if something goes wrong, you'll bestuck there. So, according to Freud, there are people in this room whoare what they are because they got stuck in the oral stage or the analstage. And that's not good.
So, the oral stage is when you start off. The mouth is associatedwith pleasure. Everything is sucking and chewing and so on. And theproblem for Freud is premature weaning of a child. Depriving him of thebreast, could lead to serious problems in his personality development.It could make him, as the phrase goes, into an oral person. And hisorality could be described literally. Freud uses it as an explanationfor why somebody might eat too much or chew gum or smoke. They'retrying to achieve satisfaction through their mouth of a sort theydidn't get in this very early stage of development. But it can also bemore abstract. If your roommate is dependent and needy, you could thengo to your roommate and say, "You are an oral person. The first year ofyour life did not go well."
A phrase even more popular is the anal stage and that happens afterthe oral stage. And problems can emerge if toilet training is nothandled correctly. If you have problems during those years of life, youcould become an anal personality, according to Freud, and your roommatecould say, "Your problem is you're too anal." And, according to Freud,literally, it meant you are unwilling to part with your own feces. It'swritten down here. I know it's true. And the way it manifests itself,as you know from just how people talk, is you're compulsive, you'reclean, you're stingy. This is the anal personality.
Then it gets a little bit more complicated. The next stage is thephallic stage. Actually, this is not much more complicated. The focusof pleasure shifts to the genitals and fixation can lead to excessivemasculinity in females or in males or if you're female a need forattention or domination. Now, at this point something reallyinteresting happens called the "Oedipus Complex." And this is based onthe story, the mythical story of a king who killed his father andmarried his mother. And, according to Freud, this happens to all of usin this way. Well, all of us. By "all of us," Freud meant "men."
So, here's the idea. You're three or four years old. You're in thephallic stage. So, what are you interested in? Well, you're interestedin your penis and then you seek an external object. Freud's sort ofvague about this, but you seek some sort of satisfaction. But who isout there who'd be sweet and kind and loving and wonderful? Well, Mom.So the child infers, "Mom is nice, I love Mom." So far so--And so thisis not crazy; a little boy falling in love with his mother. Problem:Dad's in the way.
Now, this is going to get progressively weirder but I will have tosay, as the father of two sons, both sons went through a phase wherethey explicitly said they wanted to marry Mommy. And me – if somethingbad happened to me that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. So,there's this. But now it gets a little bit aggressive. So, the idea isthe child determines that he's going to kill his father. Every three-and four-year-old boy thinks this. But then because children, accordingto Freud, don't have a good sense of the boundary between their mindand the world, which is a problem – the problem is they don't – theythink their father can tell that they're plotting to kill him and theyfigure their father is now angry at them. And then they ask themselves,"What's the worst thing Dad could do to me?" And the answer iscastration. So, they come to the conclusion that their father is goingto castrate them because of their illicit love for their Mom. And thenthey say, "Dad wins" and then they don't think about sex for severalyears and that's the latency stage.
The latency stage is they've gone through this huge thing with Momand Dad, "fell in love with Mom, wanted to kill my father, Dad wasgoing to castrate me, fell out of love with Mom, out of the sexbusiness." And then, sex is repressed until you get to the genitalstage. And the genital stage is the stage we are all in – the healthyadult stage. Now that you're adults and you've gone through all thedevelopmental stages, where do you stand? You're not out of the woodsyet because unconscious mechanisms are still--Even if you haven't gotfixated on anything, there's still this dynamic going on all the timewith your id, your ego and your superego. And the idea is yoursuperego--Remember, your superego is stupid. So, your superego isn'tonly telling you not to do bad things, it's telling you not to thinkbad things. So, what's happening is your id is sending up all of thisweird, sick stuff, all of these crazy sexual and violent desires, "Oh,I'll kill him. I'll have sex with that. I'll have extra helpings on mydessert." And your superego is saying, "No, no, no." And this stuff isrepressed. It doesn't even make it to consciousness.
The problem is Freud had a very sort of hydraulic theory of whatgoes on and some of this stuff slips out and it shows up in dreams andit shows up in slips of the tongue. And in exceptional cases, it showsup in certain clinical symptoms. So what happens is, Freud described alot of normal life in terms of different ways we use to keep thathorrible stuff from the id making its way to consciousness. And hecalled these "defense mechanisms." You're defending yourself againstthe horrible parts of yourself and some of these make a little bit ofsense.
One way to describe this in a non-technical, non-Freudian way is,there are certain things about ourselves we'd rather not know. Thereare certain desires we'd rather not know and we have ways to hide them.So, for instance, there's sublimation. Sublimation is you might have alot of energy, maybe sexual energy or aggressive energy, but instead ofturning it to a sexual or aggressive target what you do is you focus itin some other way. So, you can imagine a great artist like Picassoturning the sexual energy into his artwork.
There is displacement. Displacement is you have certain shamefulthoughts or desires and you refocus them more appropriately. A boywho's bullied by his father may hate his father and want to hurt himbut since this would--this is very shameful and difficult. The boymight instead kick the dog and think he hates the dog because that's amore acceptable target.
There is projection. Projection is, I have certain impulses I amuncomfortable with, so rather than own them myself, I project them tosomebody else. A classic example for Freud is homosexual desires. Theidea is that I feel this tremendous lust towards you, for instance,and--any of you, all of you, you three, and I'm ashamed of this lust sowhat I say is, "Hey. Are you guys looking at me in a sexual manner? Areyou lusting after me? How disgusting," because what I do is I take myown desires and I project it to others. And Freud suggested, perhapsnot implausibly, that men who believe other men--who are obsessed withthe sexuality of other men, are themselves projecting away their ownsexual desires.