The last class we talked about the 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 and these ideas are associated

with Sigmund Freud and B. F.

Skinner and are psychoanalysis and behaviorism.

And I want to talk about psychoanalysis today and

behaviorism next week. Now, one of these things--One

of the things that makes these theories so interesting is their

scope. Most of the work we're going to

talk about in this class--Most of the ideas are narrow.

So, we're going to talk about somebody's idea about racial

prejudice but that's not a theory of language acquisition.

We'll talk about theories of schizophrenia but they're not

explanations of sexual attractiveness.

Most theories are specialized theories but these two views are

grand theories. They're theories of everything,

encompassing just about everything that matters,

day-to-day life, child development,

mental illness, religion, war,

love. Freud and Skinner had

explanations of all of these. Now, this is not a history

course. I have zero interest in

describing historical figures in psychology just for the sake of

telling you about the history of the field.

What I want to tell you about though is--I want to talk about

these ideas because so much rests on them and,

even more importantly, a lot of these ideas have

critical influence on how we think about the present.

And that's there. Now, for better or worse,

we live in a world profoundly affected by Sigmund Freud.

If I had to ask you to choose a--no, name a famous

psychologist, the answer of most of you would

be Freud. He's the most famous

psychologist ever and he's had a profound influence on the

twentieth and twenty-first century.

Some biographical information: He was 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

retreating there at the beginning of World War II as the

Nazis began to occupy where he lived.

He's one of the most famous scholars ever but he's not known

for any single discovery. Instead, he's known for the

development of an encompassing theory of mind,

one that he developed over the span of many decades.

He was in his time extremely well known, a celebrity

recognized on the street, and throughout his life.

He was a man of extraordinary energy and productivity,

in part because he was a very serious cocaine addict,

but also just in general. He was just a high-energy sort

of person. He was up for the Nobel Prize

in medicine and in literature; didn't get either one of them;

didn't get the prize in medicine because Albert

Einstein--Everybody loves Albert Einstein.

Well, Albert Einstein really wrote a letter because they

asked for opinions of other Nobel Prizes.

He wrote a letter saying, "Don't give the prize to Freud.

He doesn't deserve a Nobel Prize.

He's just a psychologist." Well, yeah.

Okay. While he's almost universally

acclaimed as a profoundly important intellectual figure,

he's also the object of considerable dislike.

This is in part because of his character.

He was not a very nice man in many ways.

He was deeply ambitious to the cause of promoting

psychoanalysis, to the cause of presenting his

view and defending it, and he was often dishonest,

extremely brutal to his friends, and terrible to his

enemies. He was an interesting character.

My favorite Freud story was as he was leaving Europe during the

rise of the Nazis, as he was ready to go to

England from, I think, either Germany or

Austria, he had to sign a letter from the Gestapo.

Gestapo agents intercepted him and demanded he sign a letter

saying that at no point had he been threatened or harassed by

the Gestapo. So he signs the letter and then

he writes underneath it, "The Gestapo has not harmed me

in any way. In fact, I highly recommend the

Gestapo to everybody." It's--He had a certain

aggression to him. He was also--He's also

disliked, often hated, because of his views.

He was seen as a sexual renegade out to destroy the

conception of people as good and rational and pure beings.

And when the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s he was

identified as a Jew who was devoted to destroying the most

sacred notions of Christianity and to many,

to some extent, many people see him this way.

And to some extent, this accusation has some truth

to it. 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 ask somebody who

doesn't like Freud what he said, they'll describe some of the

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 for his account

of phallic symbols, arguing certain architectural

monuments are subconsciously developed as penile

representations. And related to this,

he developed the notorious theory of penis envy.

And penis envy is an account of a developmental state that every

one of you who is female has gone through,

according to Freud. And the idea is that you

discovered at some point in your development that you lacked a

penis. This is not--This is a

catastrophe. And so, each of you inferred at

that point that you had been castrated.

You had once had a penis but somebody had taken it from you.

You then turn to your father and love your father because

your father has a penis, so he's a sort of penis

substitute. You reject your mother,

who's equally unworthy due to her penis lack,

and that shapes your psychosexual development.

Now, if that's the sort of thing you know about Freud,

you are not going to have a very high opinion of him or of

his work, but at the core of Freud's

declamation, the more interesting ideas,

is a set of claims of a man's intellectual importance.

And the two main ones are this. The two main ones involve the

existence of an unconscious, unconscious motivation,

and the notion of unconscious dynamics or unconscious conflict

which lead to mental illnesses, dreams, slips of the tongue and

so on. The first idea – the idea of

unconscious motivation – involves rejecting the claim

that you know what you're doing. So, suppose you fall in love

with somebody and you decide you want to marry them and then

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 love the 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 if this is your honest

answer – you're not lying to anybody else –still,

there are desires and motivations that govern your

behavior that you may not be aware of.

So, in fact, you might want to marry John

because he reminds you of your father or because you want to

get back at somebody for betraying you.

If somebody was to tell you this, you'd say,

"That's total nonsense," but that wouldn't deter a Freudian.

The Freudian would say that these processes are unconscious

so of course you just don't know what's happening.

So, the radical idea here is you might not know what--why you

do what you do and this is something we accept for things

like visual perception. We accept that you look around

the world and you 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 but it's

unpleasant and kind of frightening that this could

happen, that this could apply to things

like why you're now studying at Yale, why you feel the way you

do towards your friends, towards your family.

Now, the marriage case is extreme but Freud gives a lot of

simpler examples 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 doing

something or you're arguing for something or making a decision

for reasons that you can't fully articulate?

Have you ever forgotten somebody's name at exactly the

wrong time? Have you ever called out the

wrong name in the throes of passion?

This is all the Freudian unconscious.

The idea is that we do these things--these things are

explained 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 out for your best interest.

But, according to Freud, that's not the way it works.

According to Freud, there are three distinct

processes going on in your head and these are in violent

internal conflict. And the way you act and the way

you think are products, not of a singular rational

being, but of a set of conflicting creatures.

And these three parts are the id, the ego, and the superego

and they emerge developmentally. The id, according to Freud,

is present at birth. It's the animal part of the

self. It wants to eat,

drink, pee, poop, get warm, and have sexual

satisfaction. It is outrageously stupid.

It works on what Freud called, "The Pleasure Principle."

It wants pleasure and it wants it now.

And that's, according to Freud, how a human begins – pure id.

Freud had this wonderful phrase, "polymorphous

perversity," this pure desire for pleasure.

Now, unfortunately, life doesn't work like that.

What you want isn't always what you get and this leads to a set

of reactions to cope with the fact that pleasure isn't always

there when you want it either by planning 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 figure out how to

make your way through the world, how to satisfy your pleasures

or, in some cases, how to give up on them.

And the ego – the emergence of the ego for Freud--symbolizes

the origin of consciousness. Finally, if this was all there

it might be a simpler world, but Freud had a third

component, that of the superego. And the superego is the

internalized rules of parents in society.

So, what happens in the course of development is,

you're just trying to make your way through the world and

satisfy your desires, but sometimes you're punished

for them. Some desires are inappropriate,

some actions are wrong, and you're punished for it.

The idea is that you come out; you get in your head a

superego, a conscience. In these movies,

there'd be a little angel above your head that tells you when

things are wrong. And basically your self,

the ego, is in between the id and the superego.

One thing to realize, I told you the id is

outrageously stupid. It just says,

"Oh, hungry, food, sex, oh,

let's get warm, oh."

The superego is also stupid. The superego,

point to point, is not some brilliant moral

philosopher telling you about right and wrong.

The superego would say, "You should be ashamed of

yourself. That's disgusting.

Stop doing that. Oh."

And in between these two screaming creatures,

one of you; one of them telling you to seek

out your desires, the other one telling you,

"you should be ashamed of yourself," is you,

is the ego. Now, according to Freud,

most of this is unconscious. So, we see bubbling up to the

top, we feel, we experience ourselves.

And the driving of the id, the forces of the id and the