The Nature vs Nurture Debate

See below the slideshow shown in class

Nature vs nurture Debate from C

Here are some interesting links:

The Minnesota Twins Study - Full Text

The London "Happy Families" study - Full text

Article on Reunited Twins - Jack Yufe and Oskar Stohr

http://alfre.dk/identical-identical-twins/

Article on Reunited Twins James Lewis and James Springer

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20073583,00.html

Video on the two "Jims"



Some remarkable twin stories for fun
http://www.oddee.com/item_96625.aspx

The Existentialist Perspective, Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Bad Faith” argument

In the last couple of weeks we have looked at different perspectives or ideas of what human nature is.

We have seen that the Rationalists believe that man is essentially a creature of logic and reasoning.  Everything he is, does and how he functions is a result of his reason.  He is able to survive, for the Rationalist purely because of his ability to work things out.  For a Rationalist, if you think about it – reality itself is logical and things follow a rational, logical ordering.  Every person is able to see and experience this rational, logical ordering and every person himself negotiates the rational ,logical world with the same kind of inner rational, logical processing.  For a rationalist – in order to live an happy and fulfilled life man must follow and act on his reason.  If man didn’t have reason he would not be able to live well.  For, as Plato believes, within man exists two very strong parts – an appetitive part and a spirit part.  Had we not have had reason as the controller of these two parts – we would not be able to survive – if the appetitive part was not checked by reason – it would lead to unlimited greed, indulgence and that could ultimately lead to death.  For example Goldfish sometimes eat themselves to death.  Goldfish do not have reason, so you can only feed them how much they are supposed to eat, if you put more fish food in your fish tank than they are supposed to eat, they will just continue eating until they eat so much that they die.  They do not have the ability to think, to reason that they have had enough fish food for that particular setting so they just continue eating until they die from over eating.  If the spirited part of man is unchecked – it might lead to extreme foolhardiness and recklessness and that might ultimately lead to death.  If a person is too brave, he might do reckless things that cause his death.  Everybody is brave and courageous to a degree but a fool without reason will act in a way that disregards rational sense.  For example it might be a brave thing to run into a burning building to save a stranger if you have the right skills and knowledge of how to get you and the stranger out safely  But it is a foolish and reckless thing to do to just run into a burning building just to be be brave.  It is reason that helps you decide that running into a burning building is not amenable to your personal survival.

We have seen that the Christian or Religious Philosophers believe that man is essentially a creature of God.  For a Christian Philosopher, man has an inner, burning desire to be in a relationship with his maker.  And in a similar way that a child wishes always to please its parent, man always has a desire to please his maker.  So whatever man does is in effect, a way to facilitate a harmonious relationship with his maker.  For a Christian Philosopher, in order to live a happy life, man must be in a good relationship with his maker.

We have seen Freud’s perspective on Human Nature – that man is a product of the influence of his unconscious mind.  Man’s quirky neurotic behaviour can be explained by the effect of his unconscious mind.
Now we move onto a different perspective of human nature – the EXISTENTIALIST perspective.
As we see above for the three different ideas there seems to be some kind of restriction on how man is.  For the Rationalist it is reason that keeps us from being truly free, for the Christian it is the need to be in a harmonious relationship with God that keeps us from being truly free. For Freud it is the workings of the conscious, preconscious and unconscious mind that keeps us from being truly free.
For an existentialist man is ultimately free in all respects, there are no true limits to a persons ultimate freedom.
An existentialist believes that man is always, and without any limits free to make decisions and choices and directs their lives towards their own goals.  Man cannot escape this freedom even in circumstances where the external influences (what the Existentialists call “facticity”) seemingly limit the person.  For example – even under Apartheid, the people being oppressed were ultimately free to choose whether to accept their circumstances and surrender to their disempowered status, or to resist their circumstances in a non-violent way, or to resist their circumstances by counter-attack.  The outcome of such resistance might not have been favourable to the individual – but it didn’t change the fact that ultimately the individual was free to make the choice of whether to resist or not to resist and accept the responsibility or live with the consequential outcome of his choices.
In other words, Existentialists argue that despite the facticity of external circumstances – man is always free to make his own choices about how he is going to approach his circumstance.  Facticity can only limit a person in terms of the external circumstances but it cannot force a person to act one way or the other.  Man always has that freedom of choice.
However, it also implies that man always chooses in a kind of pain.  In Philosophical terms – we say that he chooses in anguish.  We know that we must make a choice for ourselves and that choice will have consequences and we have to accept the consequences of our choice.  When faced with the idea that we are that free and that we are responsible for every thought, every action, every choice we make – it becomes a very scary situation. It is such an enormous responsibility – that we - are at all times ultimately responsible for everything we do, everything that we are and how we react and behave is too much to handle.  We have the freedom of choice in any situation regardless of the facticity of the circumstance.
One very famous Existential Philosopher called Jean-paul Sartre reacted to this kind of existential dilemma. Sartre argues that since this type of freedom is so much to handle, man uses a tactic called “Bad Faith “(Sartre wrote in French and the concept is sometimes referred to by it’s original French translation -“Mauvais foi” ) to get out of the responsibility that we are faced with in our ultimate freedom.  Our ultimate freedom is painful, because everything we do is our own doing.  We cannot hold anybody else responsible for our choices except ourselves.  To respond to this overwhelming responsibility , Sartre says that man uses his freedom to pretend that there is no such freedom – this is what he calls “Bad Faith”.
Sartre uses the term “Bad Faith” to refer to any kind of “lie” we tell ourselves to pretend that ,that overwhelming freedom DOESN’T exist.  For Sartre even things like believing in God, believing in Science or any other type of thing that we put our faith in is really an attempt to rationalise the choices we make for our existence.  When we realise that our existence is nothing more than what we ourselves choose it to be,  we are so scared of that fact that we have to deal with the consequences of our choices – that we tend to try to impose meaning on our existence so that we can shift responsibility.
So when Sartre used the phrase “bad faith,” it was to refer to any sort of self-deception which denied the existence of ultimate human freedom. “Bad Faith”  is a little trick we use to avoid the anguish (pain) that comes with the realisation that we alone are truly responsible for everything in our own existence.  For Sartre, bad faith occurs when someone tries to rationalize our existence or actions through religion, science, or some other belief system so that it assigns meaning or coherence, external from ourselves, on human existence.

“Thus, bad faith comes from within us and is itself a choice — a way that a person uses their freedom in order to avoid dealing with the consequences of that freedom because of the radial responsibility that those consequences entail. “ http://http://atheism.about.com/od/existentialistthemes/a/badfaith.htm

For instance – when we realise that things are completely out of our control, that we have the choice to either admit that we are in a bad situation and therefore have to make a decision that we either stay in the bad situation and deal with the pain it brings or make the decision to get out of the bad situation – me might tend to lie our to ourselves that we “leave it in Gods hands” to avoid the choice to either stay or leave.  We have the freedom to make the choice ourselves, but the consequences might not be favourable in either of the choices – so to avoid the fact that we will be responsible for the choices and the resulting consequences – we might lie to ourselves, and believe our own lie – that the situations is under God’s control, in his hands and whatever happens – is “God’s choice” and not our own choice and therefore we do not have to deal with the pain of being personally responsible for that choice that we have made.

Or if a man chooses to act promiscuously, and sleep around and use as many women as he can to satisfy his own selfish desires without any commitment or regard for them, their feelings or their human worth.  He might be frightened of the fact that it is ultimately himself that behaves with such selfish regard.  It is only him who has made that choice, that he might be a bad person and that he is responsible for the pain that he causes to those women that he uses indiscriminately for his own pleasure.  So to avoid that horrible realisation, and to make himself feel better he might lie to himself (act in Bad faith) that as a man he is biologically programmed to want and think about sex much more than women,that it is a physical trait and that therefore he cannot be held responsible for his ill-treatment of these women – because it is not his personal fault, it is the fault of nature!
Sartre gave us two examples of acting in “Bad Faith”  - the first one is about a waiter who over exaggerates his role as a waiter to lie to himself that this is who he is, as opposed to who he is not.  The way that the Waiter talks, the tone of voice that he uses, the way he carries the tray, the way he tries to please is all about him play-acting a role.  Is he truly a waiter deep in his soul as his own authentic self ?  No –it is just the choice that he made!  Waiting on tables is a choice that he has made and so to make himself comfortable about the choice that he has made he over does his role as a waiter to lie to himself that this is who he is.  He tells himself that all these things that he does that define him as a waiter. 

The second example that Sartre gives us the example of a woman who has to make a choice about whether or not she wants to date a man who is romantically interested in her.  He describes a situation where they meet at a restaurant.   She is faced with a choice of whether she accepts his intentions and goes with it or to totally reject it. But she is not fully ready to make that choice. Thus may act in bad faith in her mind and behaviour, to put off the decision as long as possible.
She sits down and is talking with the man.  He is making conversation to the effect that it is obvious that he is interested in her.  She is not ready to make the choice of whether to accept this advance or not.  So when he says something like “I find you so charming”, she ignores the sexual connotation of the statement and instead lies to herself that what he is referring to is her personality.  You see she is still uncertain of whether or not she wants to embrace this intention of his or not. 
She has to make a choice but she is not ready to do so yet.  However, the flattery and attention that he is giving to her is intoxicating.  It feels good that someone is paying so much attention to her, and her alone, out of all the other women.  She is enjoying the fact that she has his attention, his flattery.  BUT STILL, she is not sure that she wants to enter into a more explicit declaration of her intentions.  She starts to act in bad faith and lies to herself that she is being charming and interesting and that he is interested in her intellectuality, what she has to say about life and her philosophical opinions.  She does this so that she can still keep his attention (because she is enjoying that) and she doesn’t want to lose that attention.  So she will not tell him that she is still not sure whether she is going to accept his intentions or not because she herself has not made that choice. 

But she has to make herself feel better about the choice that she is making right now – which is not a really honourable choice – which is the choice of “playing him” or giving him the wrong idea that his attention to her is going to lead to something more amorous.  The consequences of admitting that choice is a hard thing for her to admit to herself, this choice that she is making is not something that personally she can be proud of, because it would mean that she is giving him the man the wrong idea just so that she can prolong the sexual validation she is getting from him and that she wants to keep that for herself and not have it be redirected to any other woman.  So what she does instead, to make herself feel better is that she acts in “Bad Faith”, she lies to herself that all she is doing is being polite and interesting and that he is responding to her great personality and interesting ideas, she pretends to herself not to acknowledge or be aware of his romantic intentions, she pretends to herself to be innocent and not aware of it by saying to herself that this is all just really good conversation.  Although, deep down somewhere in her being she knows that that is not why he is paying attention to her, it is not about her intellect at all, he is paying attention to her because he wants it to lead to a romantic encounter. 

She needs to make a choice of whether she is going to accept that and go with it or not – she does neither – she is enjoying his attention so she tells herself a lie (acts in Bad Faith) that he is interested in her engaging personality, that she is a fun person to talk to so that she can both keep his attention, and still not have to make the decision of whether to accept his advances or not.
Then the situation changes slightly, the man who feels that she is giving him all the favourable signals that she is amenable to his advance, reaches over and takes her hand in his.  Now the intention of the man is more explicit, this gesture is very direct in terms of what he wishes for from her.   The choice is upon her again to make a decision. Now what shall she do? 
If she shows any acknowledgement of him taking her hand – for instance if she looks down at him holding her hand and then smiles at him, it becomes explicit that she accepts his romantic intentions and wants it to go down that route for herself as well.  If she takes her hand away, it indicates to him that he has gotten the wrong idea and that she is not interested in his advances. 
She wants to do neither.  She still wants to keep his attention even though she is not entirely ready to commit to a decision and go with it.  She wants to preserve the “harmony of the hour” – the state of pleasing and comfortable non-committal.  So what does she do?  Again she commits an act of “Bad Faith”, she decides to leave her hand there in his but in her mind she lies to herself that she does not realise that she is leaving it there in his.  She pretends to herself that she is unaware of the gesture of his intention.  It is almost as if she removes herself or distances herself from her hand. She doesn’t use her hand to return his gesture, she just leaves it lifeless.  Her hand is no longer a part of her person.  Furthermore, she becomes as Sartre writes:  

all intellect, all personality, all consciousness, by speaking of "Life, her life," etc. (Being and Nothingness - pg97)”

So, even though it does seem rationally impossible to lie our to selves – Sartre argues that life is not as rational as the Rationalists would like us to believe.  It is rationally impossible to lie to ourselves because in order to lie, you must know the truth and purposefully tell an untrue thing.  It is possible to lie to others but lying to your self seems rationally impossible – how can you tell yourself a lie, if you already know the truth?  But as we have seen – Sartre says that lying is possible and that it happens all the time. 

Sartre would reject the idea of man of both the Rationalists and the Christian Philosophers because as we saw earlier – he views the idea of religion, a way to escape from the responsibility and consequences of the choices we make.

Sartre would reject the Freudian Idea of the nature of man as being controlled by interactions of the conscious and unconscious mind because Sartre doesn’t believe that the Unconscious mind exists at all. For Sartre Anna “O”’s hysteria would be a result of “Bad Faith”. She lies to herself that she has all these symptoms because she wants to escape the reality of all the choices she is capable of making and being solely responsible for the outcome of those choices.

What do you think? Which Philosophical perspective on Human Nature do you agree with?
 
 

Freud - The Secret Passion

In this 1962 film you will see a great film adaptation of all the themes of Freud's theory of the unconscious that we have covered in class.  Dr Freud and Dr Breuer are referred to as themselves in the film, but the role of Anna O is a character called Cecile.  It is worth watching - I was able to grasp so much more than I already know about the case of Anna "O" as well as Freud's general theory.  Seeing this enacted in the form of a movie will help you understand the theories better as well.

Freud's theory of Dreams

Hi guys - today I haven't made a summary of Freud's theory of Dreams because I thought it would be more fun if you could go and read Freud's whole theory as written by himself.  If you click on the link below you will be able to read the book, if you are connected to the internet right now.  Click on the left and right arrows to go to the next page in the eBook or to go back a page.

(eBOOKS Psychology Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams pdf

Found at ebookbrowse.com

Freud – Hysterical Paralysis as a proof of the unconscious mind (Part 3)

Do you know what paralysis is? 
Some of you might watch a TV show called Glee.  You might recognise this character Artie.  Artie is in a wheelchair.  He is paralysed from the waist down.Artie the character was born this way.
Something went wrong when he was still developing in his mother’s womb and the part of his spine that would have made him able to walk didn’t develop properly.


If you like old movies you might remember this guy – Christopher Reeve.  He was famous for playing Superman.  In 1995, while competing in a Horse Riding competition, he was thrown from his horse and he broke his spine.  Because of that injury, he became paralysed from the neck down.  

Sometimes people contract a bacterial or viral infection that leads to a condition called meningitis.  The membranes surrounding the brain become infected and this may stop the blood flow to the brain.  In some instances the lack of blood causes damage to the part of the brain that controls walking and movement and people become paralysed.

As we can see in these cases above – the paralysis was caused by a physical or observable reason – either a genetic deformity, physical injury or a disease.  In ordinary paralysis we can pin point exactly what has caused the paralysis.

However in some cases of paralysis – there are no observable or physical reasons why the person seems to be paralysed.  The person is not faking the paralysis – in some instances doctors have held a burning candle under a woman’s "paralysed" arm and she didn’t flinch at all.  Neither has the person been injured in some way, nor has the person contracted or show any signs of disease.  Freud called that kind of paralysis – HYSTERICAL PARALYSIS.

But why would a person with no injury, no sign of disease and who was born with the ability of movement suddenly become paralysed out of the blue?  How can we possibly explain that?
Take a look at this peculiar case.  

The 19th Century was an uncomfortable time in history for women.  Woman were not as free as they are today, women were not allowed to vote in most places and couldn’t do things like open bank accounts in their own name or have control over their own finances.  In fact, if you were born a woman in the 19th century, your chance of survival largely depended on finding a husband to support you.  In exchange for that support, it was generally expected that a woman would “earn her keep” by providing sexual services and and bearing children for the husband so that his family line could continue.  If a woman was not able to bear children – her life might have been very sad.  No one wanted a woman who couldn’t provide that.  Those kinds of women were left homeless, loveless and unfulfilled.  In truth, if a woman ever found herself in a position like that, it was possible that those would be grounds for divorce – if she couldn’t bear children, her worth as a wife would be nought and the husband could legally divorce her and not be expected to support her.  People would have looked down on her, she could easily find herself in the position of being an outcast, penniless and emotionally broken.  In that time women were also not given the same kind of consideration as men had – a woman’s happiness may not have been as important as it is today.  

  Sometime in the 19th  century, a young woman in her twenties, mother of one child, is brought to Dr Freud.  She seems to be paralysed from the waist down.  The only reason she is referred to Dr Freud is because all the other doctors have no idea what the cause of her paralysis is.  They have done every test imaginable to check whether her paralysis is organic, that means - to see whether she is paralysed because of damage to her spinal cord, or injury to her brain.  She was not paralysed until a few months ago.

Before that she had walked, moved as normally as any other woman or man.  The other doctors were confused – what was causing the paralysis?  The other doctors had heard that in addition to Dr Freud being neuroscientist that was really successful at treating patients for whom other doctors could not find the physical cause for their illness, so finally after trying everything, they asked Dr Freud if he would come and examine the patient and see if there was anything that he could do.

Dr Freud agreed to see the young lady.  He began to talk to her and ask her questions.  He asked whether she had had a fall, whether she had been ill, whether she had problems walking when she was a child, whether prior to her paralysis whether she felt any numbness in her limbs, or whether she had experienced any headaches or pain in her limbs?  To all of his questions, the young lady answered that nothing of the sort had happened.  Dr Freud then began to ask her about general things in her life.  She started to tell him that her parents were dead, and that the only family she had was the family she married into.  She told him she was married to a handsome young man that all the girls admired.  She spoke proudly about her child and how after the child had been born she loved taking care of the child and how happy her husband had been.  She told him that her husband often told her after that child was born, that he wanted her to have more children.  She told Dr Freud that she knew that nothing would make her husband happier than if she were to have more children.  Dr Freud asked her if there was anything unusual about her life before she became paralysed, whether something had disturbed her during her last doctors visit.  She told Doctor Freud that it was strange but that she remembered going to the doctors office but she couldn’t remember anything about the visit so it must have been unremarkable.  She remembered going home and going to bed but nothing more than that, about that day.  After talking for a little while longer, Dr Freud said goodbye and that he would see her again in a few days time.

Dr Freud went back to his office – he thought that he had an idea of what was wrong with the young woman and that it had had nothing to do with a neurological disorder.  So Dr Freud asked her old doctors if there was anything unusual about her first pregnancy.  They told him that she had had a very difficult pregnancy, that she had to be confined to a bed for most of her pregnancy.  They said that when she went into labour she nearly died several times, the stress of childbirth had put her heart under enormous stress and that she had lost a lot of blood.  (Remember that the doctors in those days didn’t have the science, research, invention or technology to either treat those kinds of conditions or stabilise them – in fact in those days they didnt even have things like condoms or the pill to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.)
After she gave birth she was fine again, she healed and she was soon running around the house and taking care of her baby, she would often be seen taking her baby for a walk.  She went back to the doctor to see if enough time had passed for her to try for another baby. It was then that the doctors had told her that it was a very dangerous risk, a bad idea all around.  He said that in her last pregnancy she had been lucky to survive, he said that her body would not be able to take another pregnancy and if she did try to give birth to another baby – that she would die.  In fact the doctors told Doctor Freud that they had advised her that even strenuous intimate contact with her husband would put her heart at risk again and that she could die from that alone.  The Doctors told Dr Freud that it was only a few days after that her husband had asked them to come have a look at her because she couldn’t get out of the bed and that she seemed to be paralysed.
Dr Freud thought about it and suddenly realised why the young woman was paralysed.  She was not suffering from organic paralysis, she was suffering from hysterical paralysis.  Her paralysis had to do with the incredible psychological dilemma that she had to confront.  A dilemma that was too painful for her conscious mind to deal with and that her paralysis was in fact the effect of the work of her unconscious mind trying to help her out.  He proceeded to tell the other doctors exactly what he thought was wrong with this woman.
-----------~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-
Now imagine that you are Dr Freud –

• How would you explain to the other doctors what the function and the effect of the unconscious mind is?
• What would you think would have been the intense psychological dilemma that she faced? 
• Why would the woman be experiencing such conflict over her dilemma?
• Why did the woman not remember anything about her last Doctors visit?
• How did this young woman’s unconscious mind help her out?
• Why does the unconscious mind helo her out by making her paralysed – what purpose would it serve?

Here is the slideshow that Mrs Latecka presented in class

2013 freud and the concept of the unconscious mind from C

Do you get it?!!!!! – Mrs Austin’s Summary of the themes covered in class

This course in Philosophy is not about remembering random stuff.  There is no point to that – what is the use of being able to repeat weird, disconnected, strange things without really understanding them – you would be no smarter than a parrot in the way it randomly call outs - “Golden apples – cats are nice – 3 teabags – give me some shower gel”.  We could never accept that a parrot is smart because it can say a few random things.  Remember – things have to make sense.  If things make sense to you – studying would not be as boring a task as it has a reputation to be.  The people who do say that studying is boring may think that because they have not realised that when you understand something – you dont really have to “learn” anything – you just know it like the way you know how to ride a bicycle.  Every time you get on a bicycle – you don’t have to memorise the way to ride a bicycle do you?  You just know how to do it – there is no more effort than it takes to pedal your way to your destination.  It is the same sort of thing with understanding.  Once you understand something – there is no need for you to actually put more effort other than the effort it takes to think about it.  So before we begin today’s summary – here are some questions that should help you decide whether you have understood what we have been discussing in the last couple of lectures.  If you are unsure of whether you understand what is going on – go back and refresh your memory and then continue with this next bit.  The worst thing you could possibly do is try to make sense of something if you dont understand what come before it.
-  Our overall theme for this year is to discover the various views of what the nature of man is.  Another way of saying this is to say that we are trying to figure out what man is really like, what unique thing about man makes him different to other beings.     If another race from another planet were to abduct you and take you to their leader would you be able to explain what man is like? Different groups of people have different ideas.
- Do you know what the Rationalist Philosophers believe about the nature of man?  Does it make sense to you, why they would think that?  Can you see what it is that makes them have that belief of what man is like? 
- Do the Christian Philosophers have the same idea of what man is like as the Rationalist Philosophers?  Can you see where their belief of what man is like is different from the Rationalist belief of what man is really like?  What is that difference and how does it change the way that man might behave or live his life?
- The next idea we look at is that of the opinion of Freud.  Freud presents a more psychologically based idea of what man is like.  He wants us to accept that what humans are like, is largely determined by things that go on inside them.  In order for us to get an idea of what he means he tells us that all humans have a mind.  He says that the mind has 3 parts – the conscious mind, the preconscious mind and the unconscious mind.  Imagine that you are trying to explain this to a 12 year old child.  How would you explain what the mind is?  How would you explain what the conscious mind is?  How would you explain what the unconscious mind is?
-  To explain this to a child, you might want to make an analogy.  Do you know what an analogy is?  Can you make an analogy for this idea - “John is very ,very strong” ……. you could say:  “John is an ox”  or “John is like a rock” or “John is ……………………..”
- Sometimes the memory of an experience makes its way from conscious awareness to the unconscious mind.  What is the word we use to describe that moving from the conscious mind to the unconscious mind?  Why would a thing like that happen in the first place?
-  Why does Freud talk about funny things that happen like momentary amnesia and Freudian Slips?  What are they?  What is he trying to show us?

Freud: Proving that the Unconscious Mind exists! (Part 2) - Mrs Austin’s summary of the themes covered in class.

Like we discussed in the previous summary – it seems to be quite difficult to prove that a mind exists since we cant see it, touch it or even smell or taste it.  The existence of the conscious mind is relatively easy to prove because we have instant and direct awareness of everything that we are paying attention to or we can directly experience the things that are happening around us in the moment.
The preconscious mind is also easy to prove because we know that there are things stored in our minds that we are not thinking of right now, but if we wanted to – we could bring that thought immediately from the part of the mind that stores it (the preconscious mind) to the part of the mind where we can have direct experience of that thought in the moment (the conscious mind).  For example right now I am not thinking about all the clothes I have in my closet.  But if I wanted to choose something to wear to work tomorrow – I could go quickly to the part of my mind that stores the memory information of which or what kinds of clothes I have in my closet, and when I start thinking about that – that information comes into my conscious mind.
We have access to both the conscious mind and the preconscious mind.  We can directly experience it so we know that is there.  As far as the unconscious mind is concerned though – Freud’s assertion that this big part of the mind that is that part that we are unaware of – makes it’s existence difficult to prove.
So Freud tries to prove that it exists by giving us examples of things in human behaviour that happen that seem to be odd or for which we can’t find directly accessible causes for.
One of the ways he uses to prove that the unconscious mind exists is by explaining the phenomenon of “Freudian slips”.  A Freudian slip is a verbal or memory mistake that you dont mean to make, you have no observable reason to make such a mistake, and even you might not realise that you have made it or are going to make it until after the mistake has been made.  That sounds complicated – so let us look at a few examples of what Freudian slip might sound like:
I once was doing some clerical work at a school I was working at.  Myself, an average looking male teacher and a young, very attractive and sexy teacher were organising school supplies into sets.  The male teacher was responsible for calling out the name of the set and what was in it.  The pretty female teacher was responsible for writing down the items in the set in the inventory logbook.  So it would go something like this – Male Teacher:  “Set B – chalkboard ruler, chalkboard duster, box of chalk….” etc.  The male teacher however kept saying “SEXY – chalkboard ruler, chalkboard duster, box of chalk….”  Once he said it he would get really embarrassed and blush and apologise profusely.  Freud would say that the male teacher saying “Sexy” instead of “Set B” was a Freudian Slip.  Freud would argue that the male teacher obviously found the pretty teacher very attractive and sexy, but at the same time regarded it inappropriate to either act or draw attention to his private thoughts or he might even be nervous that if he expresses his feelings she might reject him.  To deal with the conflict of having feelings and at the same time trying to not acknowledge them, the young man carries on with his work not trying to actively draw attention or concentrate on his feelings.  BUT THOSE FEELINGS ARE THERE and the unconscious mind knows it.  The man is struggling to contain his feelings of attraction so the unconscious mind tries to help out.  Like we talked about in the last summary – the unconscious mind is like your own inner champion, defender, protector and “wingman” – so when he wants to say “Set B” what comes out is actually “sexy” because that is what is in his unconscious mind, and that is the unconscious mind’s childish or irrational way of relieving the tension of having those feelings but not acting on it.
As you can see it can be shown from that example that beyond the explanation of the unconscious mind’s influence on that mistake, there is no real reason why the male teacher should’ve said “sexy” instead of “set B” – they are two different words, with two different meanings and neither of which have anything to do with each other.  So for Freud – the fact that we make “Freudian Slips” in everyday life and that the only way we can explain that is through the effect or influence of the unconscious mind – proves that there must be something like the unconscious mind.  Otherwise how would you explain such a strange mistake?
Another way Freud uses to prove that the unconscious mind exists is through what is known as momentary amnesia.  We will talk about that in Part 3 in the next post.