Reference no: EM132307349

Assignment

Once you have done that, please compose a 500-word response to this reading, these quotes, and this website. Note: You may have to plan extra time for the Freud reading and re-read it a few times to figure it out. Please answer each of these three questions in your response:

1. What does Freud mean when he says that man is "a savage beast"? That can't possibly be true, can it? What evidence does Freud give for this claim? Please list every piece of evidence Freud uses to back up this claim.

2. What does Freud mean by this statement:

"It is clearly not easy for man to give up the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression. They do not feel comfortable without it. The advantage which a comparatively small cultural group offers of allowing this instinct an outlet in the form of hostility against intruders is not to be despised. It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness." (98)

The full text for the homework assignment is here: (the pdf file)

3. Please also give some thought to what Jung is saying and how his ideas may be similar or different than Freud's. What is Jung saying about "the shadow"? What is it? How does it work? And what does this have to do with us or human nature?

Carl Jung and "The Shadow"

"'We have a shadow,' says Jung. 'There's a part of me that just loves maiming, killing, and torturing'" (68)--from Karl Marlantes, What It Is Like to Go to War.

Carl Jung on "The Shadow":

Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.

"Psychology and Religion" (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.131

It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself.

But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster's body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.

"On the Psychology of the Unconscious" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.35

We know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but in the hearts of ordinary men and women who pass by without exciting attention, and who betray to the world nothing of the conflicts that rage within them except possibly by a nervous breakdown.

What is so difficult for the layman to grasp is the fact that in most cases the patients themselves have no suspicion whatever of the internecine war raging in their unconscious. If we remember that there are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves, we shall be less surprised at the realization that there are also people who are utterly unaware of their actual conflicts.
"New Paths in Psychology" (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.425