HWC 205 Study Guide - Psychoanalysis, Human Behavior, Sigmund Freud
30 Oct 2014
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Emphasis on primary role of the unconscious in human life, an unconscious dominated by instinctual drives rooted in our biological nature. Two cultural contexts for freud"s psychoanalytic doctrine: the scientific worldview that emerged from the enlightenment: Emphasis on our ability rationally to understand the world and ourselves and thereby improve our condition. His approach to the investigation of human nature was entirely scientific. His scientific investigation produced the view that human beings are not primarily rational, but are governed to a large degree by non-rational- unconscious and instinctual forces. Freud was a determinist: all events result from cause that, if known, fully explain them. He assumed that there are no accidents in our mental life. Everything we desire, think, or do, whether conscious or unconscious, has a reason or reveals a meaning that fits together with everything else in our mental life: the more traditional perspectives of classical humanism:
