The Public Educator

Sigmund Freud’s lasting contribution to psychology is his notion of the unconscious.  Briefly, he postulated that whereas the individual, at the conscious level, intends to do certain things in certain manners that unconscious forces affect what he actually does. As he saw it, each of us has in his head three parts: Id, Ego and Superego.

The Id is the biological (instinctual) force in the individual, such as the desire to live, and to procreate via sex hence the desire for sex; the desire for food hence territoriality and the aggression necessary for obtaining food etc. As Freud sees it, the Id forces (sex and aggression) are irrational and simply motivate people to do certain things whether they like them or not. For example, if reason is your guide, would you engage in sexual activity?  If you detach and watch folks engaged in the sexual act, what do you see? You probably see two seeming ridiculous animals; just imagine whomever you construe as a very important person engaged in sex, one pounding on the other as if he is insane. If you think about it you would consider those engaged in the sexual act as bloody fools. That is to say that pure reason would not approve sex, yet to live and procreate folks must engage in sex (until an alternative means is discovered by science).  They do so because a force beyond reason makes them do it.

According to Freud, Id forces are not conscious; indeed, to the extent that they are conscious we try to repress them. Most societies, for example, socialize children to not even think about sex or aggression; we are ashamed of these activities.  Nevertheless, those activities drive our lives. 

As Freud sees it, the Id affects people’s conscious motivations. For example, consider a boy who was raised in the Catholic Church. He was probably told that he should not feel sexual upon seeing a beautiful damsel.  As an adolescent, he sees a beautiful damsel and his body automatically feels excited by her presence. The Id has come into play.  His internalized social norms, the Superego tells him not to feel sexually aroused by the beautiful damsel.  

Now, the Id and the Superego are at war. His ego comes up with a compromise. The ego, if he is properly socialized, says to him: if you must have sex you should do so within the marital context. Thus, a good Catholic boy marries young and has sex. 

The Id is the natural desire, the Superego is the social injunctions people internalized and the Ego is the referee mediating the two other forces. As Freud sees it, each of us has these three forces at war in his mind and the extent of his balancing them determines his level of sanity. If they are unbalanced the individual becomes neurotic.

Consider a very strong superego. Here the individual cannot even acknowledge his Id desires. The extremely socialized Catholic boy finds it difficult to acknowledge that he has sexual or aggressive desires. Now what kind of life do you think that such a person would live? He would live a screwed up life. This is the price of civilization: been screwed up. To be civilized is to be neurotic, to thwart natural desires in the individual. (This is the argument that Freud made in his book, Civilization and its Discontents.)

Psychoanalysis is meant to help folks balance the three forces at war in their lives. The idea is not to deny Id desires but to understand them and balance them. In the analytic situation, through transference relationship with a psychoanalyst, the individual free associates and says whatever comes to his mind, including his probable wishes to have sex with his mother, sisters (the so-called oedipal complex whereby the child desires sex with the parent of the opposite gender) etc and the analyst helps him cope with these repressed issues in his life. When repressed desires that nevertheless affect thinking and behavior are cathected; that is, when what is in the unconscious is brought to the conscious level and analyzed, the individual is able to deal with them.

Freud’s disciples, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Jung gave their own twists to the notion of unconscious. To Adler, in childhood we all feel small and inferior and resent it and compensate with desire for superiority. In our unconscious is our desire to be powerful and better than other people. Thus, whereas we may consciously see other people as equals and friends but secretly we fancy ourselves better than them. This wish for superiority manifests itself in different ways, such as pointing out other people’s errors etc. 

Carl Jung took the idea of unconscious to a different level and believes that there is not only an individual unconscious but a collective unconscious. In the collective unconscious of the species is what our ancestors did to cope with their world. That is, what our past forebears did and how they did it is in our unconscious minds and we somehow employ them in doing things today. For example, our ancestors learned fear of snakes. Somehow we still fear snakes even when they are harmless. A child who has never seen a snake in his entire life would run away from a snake, why?  Because he has an unconscious understanding that snakes are harmful to him?  But since he had not dealt with snakes before, where did his fear of snakes come from? Jung would say that it came from mankind’s past understanding that a snake is dangerous; a fear that is, now reposed in our collective unconscious and influences our thinking and behavior. Jung talked about several subjects, including speculating on the possibility that our real self is spirit and that our personalities are mere masks we employ in navigating life on earth. Personality, he thinks, is a mask and beneath it is the spiritual us, our real self.

I am not holding a brief for European thinkers. I am not a European and really cannot fully understand European thinking, nor do I want to.  It is African thinking that interests me. More importantly, it is my thinking that interests me.  

I ask myself: is there such a thing as unconscious operative in my thinking? Can I verify it through my own personal experience and, if so, how does it work?  Additionally, I ask myself, is there such a thing as a group unconscious?

I believe that there is such a thing as the individual’s unconscious mind (unconscious thinking) and a group unconscious mind.  I believe that each human group (tribe, nation, race etc) has its own unconscious mind, its unconscious pattern of thinking and behaving.  We need to understand these unconscious patterns of thinking and behaving.  

Let us consider the individual’s unconscious and later the group unconscious.

THE INDIVIDUAL’S UNCONSCIOUS

Clearly, the individual has an individual unconscious. I think that much of what is in the individual’s unconscious are what he learned in childhood. Beginning from the day he was born, each individual is socialized to his group’s culture. He internalizes his group’s norms. He is told that if he does certain things that he is positively reinforced and if others he is punished. 

Learned approved behaviors and the child’s proclivities clash. I do not think that we need to resort to Freud’s sex oriented explanation to understand this phenomenon. It is simple enough.

Each of us learns certain things and those things may conflict with his desires. He tries to reconcile both. Consider wealth. It is probably safe to say that most human beings have a desire for the good things in their world.  I doubt that there is any one who would not like to have access to a Rolls Royce and or Maserati car.  In the real world some cannot even afford a bicycle.  The reality of poverty conflicts with desire (good things of life).  There is then conflict in the individual’s mind. Some may try to resolve this cognitive conflict by working very hard to obtain what they desire whereas others may seek the easy way out by stealing.

If you think about it, in nature animals take what they want. If a tiger is hungry it eats the nearest weaker animal; if a cow is hungry it eats available grass. There is no morality in nature; what obtains in nature is survival of the fittest. If you extrapolate from this natural reality and assume that human beings are like other animals, amoral, and that morality is a learned social variable, the poor individual experiences natural desire to take what satisfies his desires, as predatory animals do, but also is cognizant that in society that there is such a thing as laws and that if he takes what does not belong to him that the agents of law and order would arrest, try and imprison him. His nature and his learned nature therefore conflict: to steal or not to steal?

(The term steal, like the term crime, is a social construct; in nature who is the tiger stealing from when it eats a sheep? Who is the sheep stealing from when it eats grass?  You can only justify morality if man is more than his body; if there is a spiritual dimension to people. If people are mere animals, as the social science pretending to be science tells us, there is no reason why the powerful should not enslave the weak, for, in nature powerful animals use weak ones to survive; male lions do not work; they have female lions work for them. Are we spiritual beings? Does morality exist in the universe?  Those are subjects for a different occasion.)

The events of childhood do shape what is in the child’s unconscious. A child raised as a Catholic probably internalized the image of a Catholic priest as symbolic of a Holy man.  In his unconscious is the picture of a holy man thus: a white male attired in Catholic priests robes. Indeed, he may even picture God and Jesus as white men even though if, in fact, Jesus existed in Israel two thousand years ago he was probably brown in complexion.

If the properly socialized Catholic person were to have a dream where a Holy man, Jesus or God, is featured, the chances are that it would be in the image of a white male in Catholic priests’ robes. His unconscious would produce what is placed in it as the image of a holy person and has him do whatever the holy person is supposed to do for the individual in his dream.

It is the individual’s unconscious mind that produces his dreams and what his dream figures do or say is what he wants to do or say. If in his dream Jesus appeared and told him to go do something, what actually happened is that he wanted to do something, was afraid of doing it and believed that he needed the blessing/assurance of the authority of Jesus/God before he does it and his mind produced Jesus and made him tell him to  go do what he wanted to do; that is, it is the individual who says and does what his dream figures do or say; there are no external figures doing what is done in our dreams. (According to Freud, dreams are wish fulfillment; in day life we wish for certain things and are unable to accomplish them given the laws of society and nature; in our dreams we gratify those impossible wishes.)

The individual’s private unconscious is what motivates his behavior. Each person has something that motivates him, something that makes him get up and go do something, to go engage in action, something what makes him want to live at all. That which makes him do what he does, his beliefs and his wishes are in his unconscious (thinking/mind). 

If that which motivates the individual is gone he is no longer able to do what he used to do. Indeed, when ones motivation to live is given up one despairs and lives as the living dead and eventually dies.  This is why we must be careful in asking people to give up their wishes, even crazy ones; they need to examine their wishes and make them rational rather than give them up. 

Consider the child who feels weak. In childhood each of us evaluates his strength or lack of it. If he feels physically weak the chances are that he does not like that feeling. Why so?  To survive in an impersonal world requires strength; therefore, a weak child probably hates to be weak. Instead of accepting his weakness he resolves to be strong. In Adlerian terms, he compensates with desire for superiority.

The wish for superiority is now in the adult child’s unconscious and he is not necessarily thinking about it but it influences whatever he does in life. This influence could be very subtle; it could be in the form of trying to seem powerful or being idealistic. Such a person may withdraw from social activity and in isolation dream of how he could become strong and powerful or merely wish that things are ideal and perfect.

The idealistic person wishes for things to be different and better than they are in fact and tries to bring them into being. Of course, he must fail for nothing in the real world would ever become ideal.

In the real world human beings juxtapose their muscles (flesh) against each other and against the environment (matter, space and time) and those limit what they can do.  In wishes alone we come up with ideas of perfection, perfection that if tried in the real world must be made imperfect by the realities of the impersonal environment we live in.

Those who live in the real world, those who work with other people, join with other people in pursuit of goals know that there are differences in people’s strengths and abilities.  If you get several kids on their marks, and say get set and go, not all of them would win. Only a few would be first, second and third at the finishing line. Each kid’s inherited muscle strength and training determines how far he runs in life. That is how life is; there would always be winners and losers, idealism notwithstanding.

Now if one understands that one is an idealist and is motivated by wishes to make ones self ideal (as one wishes for ones self one wishes for other people, thus one wants to make other people ideal and make the world ideal) and recognizes that one cannot make ones self ideal, make other people ideal and make the world ideal, then one gives up ones idealism and replaces it with realism. This is called growing up, maturity, and replacing wishes with reality; life is not fantasy.

Of course, there were reasons why the individual was seeking ideals, in the first place.  Usually, the reason is inherited physical weakness and or deprived childhood (what Alfred Adler calls organ inferiority and social deficits). Something disposes folks to seek power and or ideals.

If one is an idealist, one would always be an idealist for what caused it is always there: one is always physically weak and socially deprived.  An idealist would always be idealistic but if he understands what he is doing he can alter it by injecting a dose of realism into his wishes, desires, dreams and fantasies. That is, he joins the real world, plays by the rules of the game of life and accepts that some win and others lose.

All that the individual can do is find an area where he has competitive advantage and do what he must do to win in that area.

Simply stated, if the individual understands and corrects his abiding motivation and becomes realistic, the chances are that he would no longer feel frustrated for not living up to ideals that no human being can live up to; he would do the small things that are doable for him.

When an idealist (in Western Psychiatric nomenclature, an obsessive-compulsive personality) gives up his pursuit of ideals and perfection and accepts himself as he is, accepts other people as they are, accepts social institutions as they are (only incremental improvements are possible in life) he tends to become a wonderfully accepting person, a mature person. The purpose of psychotherapy is to get the individual to give up his hankering for impossible ideals and accept the real world and its real self and live peacefully and happily with whom he is and what is.

GROUP UNCONSCIOUS

We all have noticed that members of the same group (tribe, race etc) tend to be treated alike and that they tend to experience the same fate. Black people all over the world are treated with disrespect (even by themselves); white people are treated as oppressors, Indians are treated as purveyors of religions (as dreamy, speculative etc), Arabs are treated as hot headed and are willing to throw their lives away in the service of their Allah but are unable to organize their societies to mount a worthwhile civilization.

Simply stated, each of us is treated as a member of a group and treats other people as members of the groups they are believed to belong. 

Each of us receives outcomes from life predicated on how his group is treated. A black man is discriminated against and as such not likely to go far in racist white societies. In Africa , the Igbos are, generally, persecuted by other groups. (Of course, Igbos did something to instigate their persecution; they tend to be arrogant, boastful and condescending; they look down on other people etc.)

The relevant point is that the individual is treated as a member of a group and receives the consequences of how his group members are treated. If so, is there such a thing as a group unconscious?  Why do we treat members of a group similarly?

For example, does an Igbo person have an Igbo group unconscious manner of thinking and behaving that generates other people’s anger at him? 

Could it be that despite their conscious acceptance of human equality, Igbos secretly wish that they were a superior people and imagine that all other groups, Blacks, Whites, Asians etc were inferior to them?  I think so.

Of course, this assumption is wrong.  In the real world all people are the same and equal. The relevant point is that each member of a group has a trait in him that is rooted in his ethnic unconscious pattern of thinking and behaving. Therefore, it behooves each of us to understand our group and individual unconscious pattern of thinking and behaving. Where there are problematic aspects to what is in the individual’s personal or group unconscious he ought to correct them. 

Consider young African-Americans tendency to call each other Nigger. This is probably rooted in their white masters calling them niggers. As it were, they internalized their masters’ derogatory attitude towards them and now call themselves nigger. They try to minimize that terms impact by calling themselves niggers, that is, by calling themselves niggers, they hope to deflate the sting of been insulted.

Nevertheless, calling each other nigger means that such persons do not respect each other.  Their lack of self respect is shown in their tendency to rob each other and kill each other; these behaviors indicate that they unconsciously believe that their lives have no value.

In the inner city ghettos, some of the brothers actually drive by and randomly shoot at other black folk. Black on black crime is astronomical.

One would think that an oppressed people should protect each other and show their anger at their oppressors. No, these people redirect their anger to themselves, rob and kill each other. This is a problematic behavior, a behavior that needs to be understood and given up.

No one goes any where in this world that does not respect him and respect those like him. One must have positive self esteem, in effect, say to ones self: I am as good as any other human being. People who value their lives work for their people’s welfare. It is mostly those with negative self esteems that commit most of the crimes in society. 

For our present purposes, the salient point is that we have to understand what is in our individual and collective unconscious minds (mind is a synonym for thinking; that is, we have to understand our thinking, conscious and unconscious aspect of it) and where they are working against us reshape them so that they work in our favor.

CONCLUSION

I do not pretend to have made a convincing argument about unconscious mind (unconscious thinking). Think about the concept and come to terms with what you think about it. What is salient is that as one thinks one behaves and as one behaves one rips results.

The outcomes we obtain from life are mostly the product of our thinking. If we change our thinking we tend to behave differently and obtain different results. If, for example, one was an unloving and fearful person and one changes ones mind, changes ones pattern of thinking, and now loves and approaches most people,  other people tend to sense that one loves and cares for them and go out of their way to make life peaceful and joyous for one. Thus, one must make sure that ones thinking are positive, be it conscious or unconscious thinking.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

May 22, 2007

ozodiosuji@gmail.com

Robot  Villager

# 1 var sbtitle6908=encodeURIComponent(Our Unconsc...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 24.05.2007 09:05

oluye  Villager

# 2 Dr Osuji wrote, "The Id is the natural desire, the Superego is the social injunctions people internalized and the Ego is the referee mediating the two other forces. As Freud sees it, each of us has these three forces at war in his mind and the extent of his balancing them determines his level of sanity. If they are unbalanced the individual becomes neurotic." Dr. Ozodi, thank you for NVS-PSY 101 I like responding to your articles to remind you that some of us are reading them even if not all of us post responses. I also believe that there are many routes to the market but in arresting a thieve in the market place, all routes must be identified and guarded. While you try to analyse human behaviour through the eyes of psychology(which is the result of the research and findings of several specialists in that field, whom you quote), I want to look at the same issues through the light of Christian scriptures, which again is the result of the revelation, research and findings of several men. That explained, now to my reactions. What you have identified as the Id is basic, like the propensity of the earth to grow weed if unchecked by effort, the Bible calls the Id the flesh. Untamed, unchecked it controls man instinctively. Then you talked about the superego, the bible says it is the heart. It is that part of being that is subject to culture(i.e.social injunctions people internalized) hence the Bible warns "guard your heart diligently for it is the wellspring of life" also also, "...out of the overflow of his heart, a man speaks." We see clearly that not only does the Bible point out that the heart can be cultured, it also points out that we must guard the kind of culturing we receive. You also talked about the ego. The Bible says that is the mind. Where you "make up your mind" decide between Id and Superego or between native instincts and your cultured instincts. Where both discipline differ is in a fourth factor, the Spirit. According to the scriptures, a spirit is so powerful, it can boost or supplant the activities of flesh, mind or heart. When David, that King who was mightily used by God despite his human failures(Id) repented of his sins, he declared Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me (i.e. re-culture my heart, and make sure my own spirit becomes more diligent in empowering my good side) 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.(i.e. God has a Spirit that can live in men to influence their heart, mind or flesh but when the man is unresponsive that Spirit may leave) 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.(i.e. in addition, detail unto me a servant spirit, a spirit that is sent specifically to effect a purpose) From the above, you see where the scriptures have gone further. In revealing that everyman has a spirit, everyman can also be host to the Spirit of God and to other spirits. This is what enables the workings of Juju and casting of spells. A servant spirit does not necessarily have to be a good one. What is the importance of all this? Psychology is good, but it is merely a diagnostic tool. For it to be effectual. it must team up with other disciplines. Psychology may tell you that there is an imbalance in ID, Superego and Ego( as if we need someone to tell us that a person is going bonkers!) But why? Is it as a result of chemical imbalance(drugs and hormones), social pressure(stress) or spiritual possession(wrong spirit in the right place). Sadly science, which prides itself as been objective, denies the result of the research and findings of the noblest souls in history. If you study the healing miracles of Jesus, you will notice that at every point he diagnosed the patient before deciding whether what they needed was a forgiveness of sin(which had compromised their superego) or deliverance from evil spirits or physical miracle. In closing my response, let me submit that the subconscious results when our flesh(Id), heart(superego) or spirit(be it ours, the Lord's or some other) bypasses the ego to manifest. Posted by oluye| 24.05.2007 18:04