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Showing posts from May, 2012

Interpersonal Compatibility Concept

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Interpersonal compatibility is a concept that describes the long-term interaction between two or more individuals in terms of the ease and comfort of communication. Individuals from similar backgrounds and similar goals in life do extremely well in relationships, while people with different aims, attitudes, thought processes find it more difficult to adjust and hence tend to fail carrying the interpersonal relationship to the next level. Existing concepts Although various concepts of interpersonal compatibility have existed from ancient times (for example, Plato's Lysis ), no general theory of interpersonal compatibility has been proposed in psychology. Existing concepts are contradictory in many details, beginning with the central point—whether compatibility is caused by matching psychological parameters or by their complementarity. At the same time, the idea of interpersonal compatibility is analyzed in non-scientific fields, as, for example Astrological compatibility. Among exi...

Life instincts and death instincts in Freudian Theory

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When the body is worn out and the brain is tired, the whole organism welcomes death.... The body dies because it wants to. It finds it beyond its power to resist the disease or to mend the injury, and so, tired out with the struggle, turns to death. If the consciousness were more sensitive to the feelings and impulses of the whole organism, it would share this desire, and, indeed, sometimes does so (Alan Watts). Instinct Theory Instinct theory is a theory that all actions, thoughts, and intents can be traced back to being caused by instinct. Human actions such as ridiculing others can be thought to be akin to an animal attacking a younger animal of the same species so as to deter them from trying to usurp a leader in the pack. It is often this that offers an explanation for why a person would act one way or another. Adultery is another form of this. Instinct tells animals to take the easiest path to survival. If a significant other doesn't produce offspring or sufficiently please a...

Id, Ego, and Superego in Freudian Theory

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Conscious and unconscious mind Freud didn't exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus unconscious mind, but he certainly was responsible for making it popular. The conscious mind is what you are aware of at any particular moment, your present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you. Working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious , what we might today call "available memory:" anything that can easily be made conscious, the memories you are not at the moment thinking about but can readily bring to mind. Now no-one has a problem with these two layers of mind. But Freud suggested that these are the smallest parts! The largest part by far is the unconscious . It includes all the things that are not easily available to awareness, including many things that have their origins there, such as our drives or instincts, and things that are put there because we can't bear to look at them, such as the memories and e...