the unconscious

Examples of the unconscious in the following topics:

• Freud

  • Freud went on to develop theories about the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression and established the field of verbal psychotherapy by creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.
  • The liberation from the effects of the unconscious material is achieved through bringing this material into the consciousness.
  • Freudian psychoanalysis refers to a specific type of treatment in which the "analysand" (the analytic patient) verbalizes thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst induces the unconscious conflicts.
  • Through the analysis of conflicts, including those contributing to resistance and those involving transference onto the analyst of distorted reactions, psychoanalytic treatment can hypothesize how patients unconsciously are their own worst enemies: how unconscious, symbolic reactions that have been stimulated by experience are causing symptoms.
  • The id is the completely unconscious, impulsive, child-like portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and is the source of basic impulses and drives; it seeks immediate pleasure and gratification.

• Psychological Approaches to the Self

  • The psychology of the self is the study of the cognitive or affective representation of one's identity.
  • In modern psychology, the earliest formulation of the self derived from the distinction between the self as "I," the subjective knower, and the self as "me," the object that is known.
  • It signifies the coherent whole, unifying both the conscious and unconscious mind of a person.
  • This total personality included within it the ego, consciousness, and the unconscious mind.
  • To Jung, the Self is both the whole and the center.

• Theories of Socialization

  • Socialization is the means by which human infants begin to acquire the skills necessary to perform as functioning members of their society.
  • Although cultural variability manifests in the actions, customs, and behaviors of whole social groups, the most fundamental expression of culture is found at the individual level.
  • The id is the completely unconscious, impulsive, child-like portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and is the source of basic impulses and drives; it seeks immediate pleasure and gratification.
  • The ego acts according to the reality principle (i.e., it seeks to please the id's drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bringing grief).
  • It comprises that organized part of the personality structure, mainly but not entirely unconscious that includes the individual's ego ideals, spiritual goals, and the psychic agency that criticizes and prohibits his or her drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions.

• Marx's View of Class Differentiation

  • In Marxist theory, the capitalist mode of production consists of two main economic parts: the substructure and the Superstructure.
  • The working class, or the proletariat, only possess their own labor power, which they sell to the ruling class in the form of wage labor to survive.
  • In a capitalist society, the ruling class promotes its own ideologies and values as the norm for the entire society, and these ideas and values are accepted by the working class.
  • A temporary status quo could be achieved by employing various methods of social control—consciously or unconsciously—by the bourgeoisie in various aspects of social life.
  • Diagram the relationship between the owners of production, the proletariat, the substructure and the superstructure according to Marx's view

• The Absent Father and Serial Fatherhood

  • In East Asian and Western traditional families, fathers are the heads of the families, which means that their duties include providing financial support and making critical decisions, some of which must be obeyed without question by the rest of the family members.
  • The Father complex in psychology is a complex pertaining to a group of unconscious associations, or strong unconscious impulses, which specifically pertain to the image or archetype of the father.
  • Whereas the idea of the father complex had originally evolved to deal with the heavy Victorian patriarch, by the new millennium there had developed instead a postmodern preoccupation with the loss of paternal authority, or the absence of the father.
  • Alongside the shift from a Freudian emphasis on the role of the father to object relations theory's stress upon the mother, psychoanalysis tended to single out the search for the father, and the negative effects of the switched-off father.
  • Many fathers are married to the biological mothers of their children.

• The Law as an Instrument of Oppression

  • Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.
  • Injustice refers to the absence of justice.
  • The term oppression, in such instances, refers to the subordination of a given group or social category by unjust use of force, authority, or societal norms in order to achieve the effects mentioned above.
  • Oppression is customarily experienced as a consequence of, and expressed in, the form of a prevailing, if unconscious, assumption that the given target is in some way inferior.
  • In sociology and psychology, internalized oppression is the manner in which an oppressed group comes to use against itself the methods of the oppressor.

• Racism

  • Samuel George Morton, an American physician and natural scientist of the nineteenth century, measured the cranial capacity of the skulls of non-Caucasians as a way to 'prove' the inherent inferiority of non-white races.
  • In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet.
  • Racism may be expressed individually and consciously, through explicit thoughts, feelings, or acts, or socially and unconsciously, through institutions that promote inequalities among races.
  • The researchers view these results as strong evidence of unconscious biases rooted in the country's long history of discrimination.
  • For example, racial deficits still exist in formal education, and unconscious racist attitudes still exist against certain members of the general population.

• Applied Body Language

  • One of the most basic and powerful body language signals is when a person crosses his or her arms across the chest.
  • This can indicate that a person is putting up an unconscious barrier between themselves and others.
  • However, it can also indicate that the person's arms are cold, which would be clarified by rubbing the arms or huddling.
  • This is especially so if the person is leaning away from the speaker.
  • Note the significant attention paid to body language.

• Racism

  • The United Nations uses a definition of racist discrimination laid out in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and adopted in 1965:
  • Racism may be expressed individually and consciously, through explicit thoughts, feelings, or acts, or socially and unconsciously, through institutions that promote inequalities among races.
  • The researchers view these results as strong evidence of unconscious biases rooted in the country's long history of discrimination.
  • Additional examples of structural racism include apartheid in South Africa, the system of Jim Crow laws in the U.S., and the inequitable lending practices of banks (i.e., redlining).
  • Historical economic or social disparity is a form of inequality caused by past racism, affecting the present generation through deficits in the formal education and other kinds of preparation in the parents' generation, and, through primarily unconscious racist attitudes and actions on members of the general population.

• The Functionalist Perspective

  • According to the functionalist perspective, race and ethnicity are two of the various parts of a cohesive society.
  • As noted sociologist Michael Omi observes, "The structural-functionalist framework generally stressed the unifying role of culture, and particularly American values, in regulating and resolving conflicts.
  • From this perspective, societies are seen as coherent, bounded, and fundamentally relational constructs that function like organisms, with their various parts (such as race) working together in an unconscious, quasi-automatic fashion toward achieving an overall social equilibrium.
  • It also allows for the micro-analyses that much of modern sociology is oriented around, such as identity formation and the socially constructed nature of race.
  • Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a functionalist approach to race