Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

This is always the case, even with a healthy mind. But in some cases,
according to Freud, sap the person’s mental resources by having to
be constantly repressed. They lead the id to urge certain actions that
the superego will not even allow us to consciously consider.
To cure those who suffer from hysteria as a result of traumatic
experiences, the experiences must be exposed through
psychoanalysis. The analyst has tools to plumb the depths of the
subconscious to bring the repressed to light in hopes that exposure
will allow catharsis. Failure to do so keeps the psychological
injuries buried within the psyche, constantly wreaking havoc on the
person and those around him or her.
Freud’s view was not completely novel. The idea that there is
a repressed part of the human mind whose lack of expression
gives rise to mental illness is present in the 19 th -century German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche picked up on an idea from Arthur Schopenhauer that
inherent in all beings is a will, a spirit. For Nietzsche, this is the
will to power. We all have a primal instinct to exert ourselves
on the universe. But this urge is foiled by acculturation. Social
mores train us to ignore our instinctive animal selves. Ethical
codes thought up by the weak to contain the strong are enforced
by threat of law and eternal damnation.
But these false idols cause an illness of the soul for all
humanity: They breed ressentiment, a sense of self-hatred that
becomes transformed into hatred of the other. This hatred is
poisonous and creates an unhealthy culture in which people fail
theory of gravitation. Where Aristotle had the falling of objects
originate in an internal drive, for Newton, it is the result of gravity,
which requires a relation between objects.
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