Sigmund Freud Economy Of The Libido

1222 Words5 Pages

Haley Parker
PHI 163
Kate Johnson
November 10, 2017
Philosophy Paper #2
1.) Freud describes the economy of the libido as strategies to mitigate pain and gain some pleasures. It is also the understanding that you cannot have all pleasures and we cannot reach a full stage of happiness. The libido is our desire for all sexual activity. Freud’s biggest pleasure is sexual intercourse, but obviously we cannot be having sex all day every day. The economy of the libido starts to come together when the ego begins to form. Freud talks about when the “ego forms as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctly from everything else” (12). This leads to the pleasure principal which is wanting pleasure all the time. This is a hard a principal …show more content…

The superego is formed when authority is internalized and taken over by part of the ego. Freud claims that this is our last part of our personality we develop. We have overlapping definitions of the superego this is the reason we share the same society. With our superego we end up developing a sense of guilt and it expresses itself by a need of punishment. We become guilty when we do something we know is bad and we end up feeling bad about it. We then end up fearing that we will be punished. Freud says we feel guilty because we end up being afraid of losing that person’s love. He ends up calling this the fear of the superego. Freud says, “the sense of guilt is at bottom topographical variety of anxiety” (99). For example, when we were children and we ate a cookie before dinner when our parents told us not to, we end up feeling a sense of guilt and fear of punishment. We end up telling our parents because we are afraid of losing our parents love because we are dependent on them. We are dependent on them because they do everything for us at that time they feed us, clothe us, and provide us shelter, so the sense of guilt we get is afraid of losing our parents love and if we lose their love we fear they will stop providing for us. Society can gain from the superego because we will always feel guilty if we do something we are not supposed to do. The superego ends up bringing out the best in us by helping us keep our good …show more content…

Once we satisfy a pleasure we end up wanting another thing that will give us pleasure. We will always want the pleasure principal which is wanting pleasure all the time. In reality though we have the reality principal which is where we cannot have pleasure all the time. If we are really thirsty and we want a drink of water, we go get it and the first cup of water tastes so great and you keep drinking the water to fulfill that pleasure. After about the second or third cup of water the water starts to not taste as good and you do not want the water anymore you want something else. Society also has a big part of why we are discontent in our society. Society sets laws today that makes some of our desires illegal today in society. Society today is also very judgmental towards other people in society today and some their actions, because some of the things we think are socially acceptable, society. For example, society makes laws against public sex, but some people may find a desire to have public sex because society think it is very unacceptable. This causes us to internalize our desires and expressing them in another way. Freud says that “reality shows us that civilization is not content with the ties we so far allowed it” (65). An example of why we will always be discontent in society is social media in society today. When we get on social media we feel