Essay on Triangulation of Freud, Jung, and Novicks Philosophies

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are not only famous for their philosophies of the unconscious mind but are also known for their well-documented friendship. The two worked closely together and came up with a couple of philosophies that serve as a basis for psychoanalysis and shed more light into understanding the human behavior. Even as friends, Freud and Jung did have their downtimes that they differed in thoughts, ideas, and perspectives. However, their legacy lies in the correspondence and the impacts that they both share. Although it is hard to tell the precise date when their friendship began, many people can trace it to 1906 when Jung sent Freud a personal and signed copy of his recent studies. The gesture by Jung created a rapport to work together and support each other in their research. It was not long before these two started sharing ideas their first formal meet up resulted in a 13-hour-long conversation.

The relationship between Freud and Jung can be described as that of a mentor and a protege. Freud had been in the field for long, and Jung was the younger and outspoken peer. In some instances, Freud would refer to Jung as his heir, successor, and Joshua to his Moses. Robert Nozick was another famous philosopher who not only wrote theories targeted for his colleagues but also for the ordinary reader. Nozick is known for, The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations. Nozick addressed a plethora of perennial concerns of the general person. Some of the topics included sex, death, love, life, emotions, and many others. This paper will focus on the triangulation of these three prolific philosophers.

Nozick altered the way people view emotions. Initially, people believed emotions to be pure feelings that cannot be affected by the practice. By giving out an example of a person being proud of reading three books, Nozick demonstrated that emotions are not only comprised of feelings. For one to feel the emotion of pride in oneself, he/she has to believe that reading three books is an achievement. Therefore, the emotion is constituted of the value of the action and the belief in it in somewhat equal proportions. The relationship between the intensity of emotion is directly proportional to the value attached to it. Nozick went ahead to establish why people are emotional and whether it is a good or a bad thing. If people could lead less emotional lives, would it be good or bad? Nozick ascertained that emotions act as a link between the inner and external values of a person. Emotions enable people to know the correct value and in a more intimate manner thus, increasing the decision-making ability. Without emotion, people would be making baseless judgments.

The psychodynamic theory was developed by Sigmund Freud, and for that reason, he came to be known as the Father of Psychology. Freud developed this theory based on a couple of assumptions. The first and primary assumptions were that the unconscious mind and desire shapes and influences a lot of the actions that we do in our everyday life. This is to say that our personality has more to do with the unconscious part of the brain than the conscious one and thus the saying, character is who you are when no one is looking at you. It is very easy to control our actions, behaviors, and speech in our conscious state and that explains the cases of pretenders and hypocrites. From his psychoanalytic theory, Freud also came up with Oedipus complex, the sexual desire of the parent if the opposite sex. The Oedipus complex was also defined by a sense of rivalry with the same sex parent. In what Freud termed as a normal developmental process, he suggested that children between the ages of three to five identified more with the same sex parent, all factors constant. Past five years of age, the superego part of the childs brain overcomes the Oedipus complex. The psychodynamic theory claims that personality is tripartite: the id, ego, and superego. The id is the primitive personality that is not learned. It is instinctive and possessed by even newborns. Being unconscious and impulsive, the id is responsible for quick reflexes and immediate responses to instincts. The superego is responsible for maintaining a moral factor of the child and thus, dominates the mind with age.

Carl Jung came up with the theory of separating the unconscious into two parts namely, collective and personal. Unlike the personal unconscious which is comprised of experiences that have been forgotten, the collective unconscious contains contents that have never been into the conscious. Carl Jungs collective unconscious theory is by Freuds psychodynamic theory. The nature of human is to act and present themselves in a manner that will appease those around them. The conscious part of the brain controls what they say and do in front of others to come off as likable people, and this may not be necessarily who they are. Freud and Jung knew this too well and decided to deliberately contrast the behavioral psychology and focus on trying to get inside the head of the study individual. By doing this, Freud would get a good sense of their relationships, perspectives, fears, experiences, and how they view life. As opposed to the behavioral theory which is based on the individuals actions that can be controlled, the psychodynamic approach revolves around the unconscious mind.