PSYC 3140 Lecture Notes - Lecture 61: Johann Friedrich Herbart, Psychosexual Development, Iceberg
9 May 2018
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PSYC 3140
Lecture 61
Nietzsche, and later, Freud saw humans as engaged in a perpetual battle
between their irrational (Dionysian) and rational (Apollonian) tendencies.
o Fechner, like Herbart used the concept of threshold
▪ Freud borrowed Fechner’s likening the mind to an iceberg.
▪ Freud also followed Fechner in attempting to apply the
recently discovered principle of the conservation of energy to
living organisms.
▪ Fechner’s concept of the iceberg was used to explain
consciousness and unconsciousness.
o Darwin strengthened Freud’s contention that humans, like non
human animals, are motivated by instincts rather that reason when
he (Darwin) showed the continuity between humans and other
animals.
▪ Freud said it is our powerful animal instincts, such as sexual
activity and aggression, that are the driving forces of
personality – these instincts must be at least partially
inhibited for civilization to exist.
▪ Freud’s view of evolution combined Darwinian and
Lamarckian Principles.
• Positivistic approaches to psychology that influence Freud
o Helmholtz intolerance for metaphysical speculation while studying
humans and other living organisms at first had a profound effect
on Freud, but he abandoned Helmholtz’s materialism.
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