Freud and the ideas of the Enlightenment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Freud and the ideas of the Enlightenment - Essay Example Sigmund Freud was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1856 in Jewish family background. His father was a freethinker while Freud was a vowed atheist. Freud is regarded as the most famous, influential, and controversial thinker in figure in psychology (PBS, 1998). Sigmund Freud has many works and theories to his credit that has helped in shaping our childhood, personality, memory, sexuality, and therapy views.  Indeed, Sigmund Freud has made immense contribution to the understanding of irrationalism. Through Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin, irrationalism began to explore subconscious and biological roots of experience. Though he did not invent the theory of consciousness, Sigmund Freud introduced the wider public to the notion of the unconscious mind. He noted that unconscious is the source of our motivations for food or sex, artist, or scientist (Boeree, 2009). He theorized the idea that forgetfulness/ repression or slips of the tongue are not accidental but a revelation of dyn amic unconscious. This was an articulation of the concept of unconscious. Freud claims that human behavior relies on drives or instincts, which are the neurological representations of physical needs. He also theorized the idea that sexual drive was the most powerful shaper of a persons psychology, and that sexuality manifests itself from childhood. Indeed, he claims that young boys develop attraction to their mothers and develop hate towards the fathers and vice versa for girls. This refined the concept of the infantile sexuality. Additionally, Sigmund Freud devised innovative treatment of human dreams, actions, and cultural artifacts (Liukkonen, 2008). This innovation has significantly brought relevant input in the fields of psychology, semiotics, appreciation, anthropology, and artistic creativity (Thornton, 2010). Most of these fields seek to define irrationalism. Freud also classified anxiety that is a feeling that signals ego into realistic, moral, and neurotic anxiety.