Garrett Beach's Archive

Sigmund Freud was a very interesting man with some very interesting ideas. In my opinion, however, Freud makes some very questionable leaps in his theories. While I do agree that there are many processes that take place subconsciously, I tend to disagree with Freud that obscure symbols in dreams always have some sort of hidden meaning. I also disagree with the jumps that he makes in his interpretations. For example, Freud once interpreted a boy’s fear of horses to be a fear of his father because the horse wore blinders and had prominent parts and the father wore glasses and was fully grown. Things like that kind of reminded me of the clip from Monty Python that we watched at the beginning of the year about a woman accused of being a witch. To determine whether or not she was, they made giant leaps in logic that are really very comical. The other criticism that I have with Freud’s psychoanalysis is that you can’t tell if it actually does any good. As Dr. McAnulty said during class, “Psychoanalysis is like mental masturbation. It’s interesting and it feels good, but it doesn’t get anything done.” I feel like with Freud’s interpretations, he could just make anything mean whatever he wanted, and that what he did, for the most part, probably didn’t help that many people.

The Binet-Simon scale, developed by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, and first released in 1905,was made up of thirty items increasing in difficulty designed to identify intellectually subnormal individuals. In 1916 came the Stanford-Binet IQ formula: IQ score=mental age / chronological age x 10. Today, the scale is still used and is in its fifth edition. During World War I, Robert Yerkes, a psychologist from Harvard University, convinced the government that army recruits should be tested, using his own modified version based off the Stanford-Binet, to classify and assign them. The goals were to identify those with mental deficiencies, to classify men in terms of their intelligence level, and to select individuals for officer training. After coming up with a test, they discovered that about 40% of those enlisted were illiterate and therefore could not take it, so they made a Beta version for those who could not read. The army testing program was supposed to be a great example of how practical psychology was, but, in reality, only .005% of those tested were recommended for discharge as mentally unfit, and, in many cases the army ignored the recommendations. While, in theory, Yerkes’ ideas were good, he was never able to get them to work. Such is the life of a psychologist. Many of them are just a little off, and most of them are largely ignored. Maybe someday someone will develop a scale that can more effectively measure intelligence, but, in my opinion, for now it is just better to watch what people can do in real life situations rather than what they can do on paper.

Kierkegaard, like many of us today, spent a great deal of his life wrestling with religion. His father was a prominent religious figure, and, growing up, Kierkegaard worshipped him as a god. When Kierkegaard’s father admitted sexual sins, it shattered the boy’s world, and he gave up Christianity altogether. Eventually, he would return to the faith, and, in fact, was schooled in theology at the University of Copenhagen, but rejected the institutionalized church. He was an outspoken critic of the established church for its worldliness and its insistence on the acceptance of prescribed dogma, the book says. He said that the most meaningful relationship with God was a purely personal one that was arrived at through an individual’s free choice, not one whose nature and content were dictated by the church. This viewpoint has become a dominant idea in the church of Christianity today. Kierkegaard was concerned that too many Christians were praying simply because it was what was expected of them rather than having a true relationship with God and, according to the book, would have argued that for most people a genuine, personal, emotional relationship with God does not exist. Religious people still worry about that today, but now it goes under the name hypocrisy. Sadly, many people today, when asked to describe Christianity, will think of the word hypocrite. People say that they are Christian, but then go out and fail to act as they should. Others see their hedonistic lifestyles, think of them as a hypocrite, and associate the word with the church. The question then becomes how we can turn this trend around. Kierkegaard would probably say that it cannot be done unless we each achieve a personal relationship with God.

The dictionary definition for truth is a verified or indisputable
fact, proposition, principle, or the like, but how true is this
definition for truth? Gorgias, a Sophist, proposed that because the
self can be aware of nothing except its own experiences and mental
states, there can be no way of determining truth.  It reminds me of
the story about a group of blind men who encounter an elephant and
touch it to figure out what it is. The first touches its trunk and
says that the elephant is a tree. Another touches its side and says
that the elephant is a rough wall. Another feels its tail and says
that the elephant is a piece of rope. Each comes into contact with a
different part of the elephant and is convinced that their own
explanation is correct and that the others are wrong. None of them
realizes that they are all experiencing just one part of the same
elephant and that none of their explanations are correct. In this
story, each man is only aware of himself. Each man does not experience
the same things that the others experience, but can only be aware of
his own self and know only his own private perceptions. Therefore,
each man has a different truth; the first man’s being that that the
elephant is a tree. How can I really know that I am not the only one
that exists? Perhaps my life and this physical world are simply
figments of my own imagination. Though, if they are, I’d like to think
that I wouldn’t create work such as this writing this blog post for
myself to have to do. Do I really think that Gorgias’ hypotheses are
true? I think that they were Gorgias’ truths; not necessarily mine.