Continental philosophy final essay Life Sciences Essay

Continental Philosophy Final Essay
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Continental Philosophy Final Essay
‘Beyond the pleasure principle’ and ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, are some of the philosophical texts advanced by Freud. The two texts strive to unravel the complexities associated with loss, grief, and traumatic experience, from the Freudian psychoanalysis viewpoint. Freud’s gist of the argument in his psychoanalysis illustrates the theory of transformation despite some of its inherent scientific flaws. Freud appears to suggest transformations from particular forms to previous states, which Malabou opposes vehemently. Malabou criticizes the Freudian psychoanalytic postulations as lacking some substance and change in some instances. However, Freud and Malabou both provoke senses regarding what transpires in the brain and mind whenever there is a loss, grief, and trauma.
‘Beyond the pleasure principle’ and ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ are crucial arguments that constitute Freudian Psychoanalysis. Are these psychoanalysis arguments aligned with the theory of transformation? Freud uses the word ichveranderungen to defined the define transformation of identity. Ichveranderungen refers to the alteration or modification of the ego (Malabou, 2012, pp.15). This transformation does not entail a change in the whole personality of the patient. The changes elicited by brain lesions result in an unprecedented change of individual's identity but in the absence of a relation to the same person’s past, and this gives rise to a new person. For instance, a person with Alzheimer's disease is not a person who has been changed or modified but a subject who has become someone else (Malabou, 2012, pp.15).
The lesions affect cerebral mechanism, which is tasked with producing and regulating emotions, especially in the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus. The impact on such brain areas results in the alteration of individual personality to the extent that it becomes unrecognizable, although the same individual may retain cognitive function (Malabou, 2012, pp.15). Such a change in personality represents a disruption to individual identity.
The theory of transformation, as elucidated in psychoanalysis, is also marked by ‘transformation’ from the brain to cerebrality. The brain is designed to perform cerebral functions. The cerebrality will be concerned with the aspects of causality and damage, which are imposed upon the brain functions (Malabou, 2012 pp.3)
The pleasure principle denotes an inclination to seek pleasure and to avoid pain, and Freud advanced efforts to expand the scope of this understanding in what is a text called Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle text presents a clash of concepts pitting in terms of life, reproduction, creativity, self-preservation, and sexual connections against an embodiment of death, aggression, and self-destruction. The death, self-destruction, and aggressions are what constitute “beyond the pleasure.” This clash reflects possible unpredictable transformations between the two sides, i.e., that of pleasure and those that are beyond the pleasure principle.
One of the key centralities in ‘Beyond the pleasure principle’ is a repetitive compulsion. Freud deploys that analogy of a child who plays games with a view of compensating for disappointments associated with being left by the mother. The game symbolizes the comeback of repressed emotions that are connected to his mother, which are reincarnated in the form of a game. Through Freud’s understanding, the repetitive compulsion is an outgrowth of repressed memories, where a victim cannot recall the whole trail of what has been repressed. Thus, the past experience associated with a traumatic set of events and emotional imbalance tends to pop up.
Death instincts are based on a biological basis for existence. Freud argues that there is always an urge to transform or return to an earlier state. Thus, though the Freudian lens, the purpose of death is to take a shortcut to death rather than avoid death.
Many believe in the overarching principle of pleasure in not only mental life but also in mental apparatus, which attempts to the quantity of excitation in balance, i.e., either to be constant or to make it as low as possible. The quantity of excitation is to be kept low in mental apparatus, and if there are events that increase the excitation levels, the net outcome is quite unpleasurable. But it appears incorrect to advance the concept of dominance in pleasure principle over the mental processes because if such dominance existed, the majority of the mental processes could be associated with pleasure or lead to pleasure. The real-life contradict the overarching pleasure principle due to many forces and circumstances that make the final outcomes not to be in constant harmony with mental processes. The pleasure principle is not constant: it is a subject of transformation. Individual instincts are dynamic, and this may create incompatibility regarding aims and demands at any given time.
The examination of dreams is the most trustworthy approach to investigating deep mental processes. The dreams that are confined in traumatic neuroses have features of reincarnating the patient’s experience into the context of the accident, which causes him or her to wake up in another fright: this is a demonstration of traumatic experience strength. Some might argue that an individual might be fixated to the traumatic experience.
In Mourning and Melancholia, Freud establishes contrasts between the normal expression of grief related to mourning and an unusual way of responding to grief in the case of melancholia. These texts depict a correlation with the theory of transformation, whereby the interpretation of the concept is subject to valid changes based on perceptions. It is arguable that Freud’s insights into the nature of melancholia and mourning were precise and transformative because they were anchored on his personal and transformative experiences in mourning.
Freud argues that mourning and melancholia may be similar, but the two terms ...