Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

With the genetic approach, we
are who we are based on our
genetic code. Our identity is
derived from something purely
internal to ourselves. But with
Freud, we are more than the
people we think we are, more
than just our ego.
The id stores the memories we
cannot bear to remember. It is a
store of our relationships with
others that are deeply painful.
The superego is the result of
our parenting. The goals we
aspire toward and the values we
internalize are not of our own
creation; they are the result of a
parent/child relationship that in
one form or another is a part of
every human being.
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If we want to understand the reality of a human life, we cannot
look at the person atomistically, according to Freud. People are
not individuals but internalized relations: relations between the
people in our lives, between the parts of the mind, and with events
in the past. Like Newtonian masses acting on each other through
the invisible force of gravitation, human beings have an invisible
connection between them. Those relations, Freud argues, are a part
of reality.
Freud, .
Phillips, .
Wertheimer, A Brief History of Psychology, part II.
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