Kasey Morgan's Archive

Alfred Adler is very interesting man with a set of attention-grabbing theories. Adler started the psychoanalytic move alongside Freud. Although he did help found this movement, Adler rejected Freud’s emphasis on sex and kept with the theory that personality difficulties are rooted in inferiority. Adler’s two contributions that I am going to talk about are fictional finalism and his personality theory.

Fictional finalism was very new to psychology when he first wrote about it. The theory states that there are future fictional goals to which a person aspires. The goals are usually he end to which the person is aspiring. These are also called the self-ideal and the guiding fiction. The second theory that Adler brought to psychology was that the human personality could be explained teleologically. He argued that parts of the individual’s unconscious self ideally work to convert feelings of inferiority to superiority, or completeness.

I believe that these two theories have the ability to place human nature into the Redemption category. Individuals are considered to have their own incomparable life. Adler believed that each person is their own individual being and should be treated as such. The way Adler talks about a persons experience seems to be congruent with the ideas of Redemption.

After listening in class about Lovass, I decided to write my post about his theory. Behaviorism is something that seems to be easy to attach to because of the success that comes from these techniques. Putting aside the controversial idea that humans are more than the sum of their behaviors, I think behaviorism can explain a lot about humanity. Behaviorism does not care where the disorder or behavior came from, but they care about changing it. Lovass’ study of applied behavior analysis with autistic children changed the field of psychology. Autistic children have poor social skills and Lovass used simple behavior techniques to train them out of it. His success rate was surprising to most.

Behaviorism doesn’t care about the past, or necessarily the present, but knows that the future can be different. I think that Lovass could be put in the category of New Hope. I know this seems pretty far out there, but his thinking is very futuristically oriented. Lovass knows there are flaws within the human system, but he also knows that he can fix them. Redemption is about fixing the problems and creating a new world. Lovass believed he could do just that with behavioral techniques.

I kind of wanted to take this blog post a little differently than I have before. I chose someone from the book, and someone who doesn’t really get a lot of attention. I wanted to use Anna Freud in my blog post for this week because I think her contributions were very interesting. Most of her life, she was mentored and a student of her father, so she never really got to do much research or branching out on her own. She loved working under him and when he died, she kept working on his ideas. in her own respect, she did a lot of work in the field of child psychoanalysis. She worked as a teacher and began to develop her own theories about child development and began to write her own articles. Her ideas came out around the same time as Melanie Klein, and were extremely opposing. Freud believed that her father was correct and expanded in his ideas about play therapy and dreams. One of the terms she uses is “developmental lines”. This is when a child needs to adapt to life’s demands, and proceeds to the next developmental stage. I think this idea is very interesting because she believed that these were very clear stages and children display these stages as they occur. She does not seem to think that they can occur in a sliding transition, but that life experiences and demands bring children to the next hurdle. This theory seems to fit under Creation. Creation is about how we are made; along the same lines, after we are created, we don’t just stop and stare around all day; we need to develop into fully functioning humans. Developmental psychology, whether it be psychoanalytic or any other kind, seems to fit under this category for that reason.

Soren Kierkegaard is a very  person. I think a lot of his ideas are somewhat contradictory. Within his 3 stages of life I find several different stages of our salvation line. His first stage, the “aesthetic” stage, is a starting point for the human condition. There is no control over self or anything around you. Humans lack commitment and almost cannot take responsibility for anything they do. In this stage, I see his theories fitting into the fallen category. His next stage is the “ethical” stage. In this stage, humans begin to take a true direction in life and become more personally responsible. They begin to understand right and wrong and morals take priority over pleasure. Their autonomy, reflection and social awareness begins to increase. I believe that this stage shows redemption. Not only is he saying that humans are flawed, but he is saying that we can be fixed. As we grow older we can be saved. The third stage of individual existence is “religious”. This stage requires some commitment to some moral absolute. He considers religion to be the highest stage of human existence. If one can achieve this level of human development, they have come to fully understand the incarnation and human sinfulness. So in that respect, I find it hard to categorize Kierkegaard. I think that his development of human existence speaks very fully into all of the stages of humanity in general. His theory is almost an allegory for humanity in the way we must grow. There is creation, the fall, redemption and a new creation; Kierkegaard speaks our own development into each of these.

In studying the philosophies of Averroes, I have decided to put him into the category of redemption. One of his most famous ideas is that religion and philosophy can go hand in hand. I think that this idea is a very forward thinking idea for him. They are rather different paths to get to the same truth. He also believed that souls are not eternal. All humans are at the same basic level and share one divine soul. This idea that the collective soul of all human beings in divine speaks very much into the idea of redemption. He fully believes that we can be saved, or already saved from our own terrible fate because our pure forms, souls, are divine. Destiny was another idea that he spoke into. Man’s destiny is to progress towards pure thoughts. After the fall, we are searching for meaning in our own lives. Averroes thought that “to think is to live; it is to unite with the cosmos”. I think this is a very cool idea for us as humans. We are such small creatures compared to what the entire universe contains. Averroes is so hopeful that we can unite, not only together as humans, but also into whatever is out there in the entire universe. The last idea that I think plays a large part in redemption is he thought the future held education of women and equality of the sexes. Redemption is about bringing peace and hope to a broken world and human souls. I think that this is a very interesting moment when someone predicted that there would be equality. This was not the custom at the time, and even though there would not be equality between the sexes for a very long time.

Epicurus believed that the good life meant getting “pleasure”, but pleasure was living modestly and gaining knowledge of the world and oneself. This journey led one to two states: tranquility and freedom from fear and the absence of pain. These two states in combination constitute happiness in its purest form.  He believed that if you were sick or hurt, it was because you were not in this state of tranquility. Overindulgence in things that gave one pleasure was not part of the “good life”. Epicureanism believed that this would lead to suffering and physical pain. If one is overindulging in pleasures then usually they are trying to cover their suffering or fill a hole in their life, which ironically, will only lead to more suffering. Since there is a belief that pleasures of the mind were to be sought over the pleasures of the body, social and political involvements were to be discouraged. Knowledge was sought, but only to gain self-consciousness, such as ridding oneself of fears.

Ideas such as these constitute putting this philosophy under redemption. Not only does he try to explain how to live ones life, he explains how to live it fully and well. As creatures of habit, humans have a hard time breaking out of routine or breaking out of our cycle of sin. Epicurus tells us that it is possible to know oneself and to live a “good life”.