{"id":2467,"date":"2012-02-14T17:10:21","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T22:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/?p=2467"},"modified":"2012-10-03T20:44:44","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T00:44:44","slug":"freud-in-some-ways-he-was-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/14\/freud-in-some-ways-he-was-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Freud: In Some Ways He Was Right."},"content":{"rendered":"

The more I learn about the workings of the human brain – the more I am stirred by feelings that Freud may have been right.\u00a0 Although his theories have long since been discredited, he characterized the brain as a battle ground where three forces jockeyed\u00a0 for control over your decision making.\u00a0 There was the Id<\/strong><\/em> whose hedonistic impulse drove us toward self pleasuring.\u00a0 And then there was the conscientious Superego<\/strong><\/em> whose role was to compel us to make moral decisions.\u00a0 Finally, he believed there was the Ego<\/strong><\/em> whose job was to mediate between the drives of Id<\/em> and Superego<\/em> so as to facilitate adaptive navigation of the real world.<\/p>\n

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Sigmund Freud<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Freud’s theories have always been compelling because they feel right.\u00a0 I often feel as if there is a tug of war going on inside my head.\u00a0 The struggles occur in the form of decisions to be made – whether its about ordering french fries or a salad, fish or steak, having a cookie or an apple, exercising or relaxing, jumping over that crevasse or avoiding it, buying a new coat or saving the money.\u00a0 These battles are seemingly between good choices and bad ones.\u00a0 But, where you place the good and the bad is highly contingent on one’s priorities in the moment.\u00a0 The fries, steak, cookie, relaxing and that new coat all seem like good ideas in the moment – they’d bring me pleasure.\u00a0 On the other hand, there are the downstream consequences of unnecessary calories from fat and sugar or squandered resources.\u00a0 It’s a classic Id<\/em> versus Superego<\/em> battle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But of course there are no entities in the human brain whose express duties are defined as Freud characterized them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Or are there?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well actually, there are brain regions that do wage contentious battles for control over your behaviors.\u00a0 Across time, different modules assert greater amounts of control than others, and thus, the choices we make, do likewise vary in terms of quality.\u00a0 As a result of advances in technology and understanding, we are becoming increasingly aware of the key factors associated with this variation.<\/p>\n

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Nucleus-Accumbens (NAcc) highlighted in red<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

One of the centers that play out in our multi-component brain is the dopamine reward pathway. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that serves a number of important functions in the brain. One of its most significant roles plays out as a result of activation of the N<\/strong>ucleus Acc<\/strong>umbens (NAcc)<\/a>. When the NAcc is activated it floods the brain with dopamine and we experience pleasure. Desire for an item activates the NAcc. Being in the presence of the desired item activates it further. The greater the arousal of the NAcc the more pleasure we experience. It is your NAcc that is responsible for the happiness you feel when you both anticipate and eat those fries or that steak or buy that new coat.\u00a0 It is also responsible for that rush you feel when your team wins the big game (Lehrer, 2009).<\/p>\n

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Insula highlighted in teal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then there is the Insula<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 a brain region that produces, among other sensations, unpleasantness. This center \u201clights up\u201d in brain scans when people feel pain, anticipate pain, empathize with others, see disgust on someone\u2019s face, are shunned in a social settings, or decide not to buy an item. In many cases we avoid exciting the Insula as it is the system that produces the unpleasantness of caffeine or nicotine withdrawal and the negative feelings associated with spending money (Blakslee, 2007; Lehrer, 2009).\u00a0 When you are jonesing<\/em> for that coffee or nicotine fix, it is your Insula that is making you feel badly – necessarily compelling you to feed the habit.\u00a0 And when you satisfy the craving it is your NAcc that gives you that Ahhhhh!<\/strong> – <\/em>that sense of well being.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Perhaps the NAcc is Freud’s Id<\/em> and the Insula Freud’s Superego<\/em>?\u00a0 It is actually much more complicated than this, but the overlap is interesting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In an article I posted last month I wrote about the concept of an Alief<\/a>.\u00a0 An Alief is a primal and largely irrational fear (emotion) that arises from the deep unconscious recesses of your brain and plays a significant role in guiding some of the decisions you make.\u00a0 At a very basic level, we know of two major driving forces that guide our decisions.\u00a0 Broadly, the two forces are reason and emotion.\u00a0 So how does this work? How do we process and deal with such diverse forces?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Orbitofrontal-Cortex (OFC) highlighted in pink<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Neuroscientists now know that the O<\/strong>rbitoF<\/strong>rontal C<\/strong>ortex (OFC)<\/a> is the brain center that integrates a multitude of information from various brain regions along with visceral emotions in an attempt to facilitate adaptive decision making.\u00a0 Current neuroimaging evidence suggests that the OFC is involved in monitoring, learning, as well as the memorization of the potency of both reinforcers and punishers.\u00a0 It analyzes the available options, and communicates its decisions by creating emotions that are supposed to help you make decisions.\u00a0 Next time you are faced with a difficult decision, and you experience an associated emotion \u2013 this is the result of your OFC\u2019s attempt to tell you what to do.\u00a0 Such feelings actually guide most of our decisions without us even knowing that it is happening.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The OFC operates outside your awareness: opaquely communicating with your rational decision making center using the language of feelings.\u00a0\u00a0 Our rational center, the Prefrontal Cortex, the more apt Freudian Ego analogy, is not as predominant as he suggested.\u00a0 In fact, it is limited in capacity – both easily fatigued and overly taxed.\u00a0 See my post on Willpower<\/a> for a deeper discussion of this issue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, as crazed as we view Freud’s notions today, there were some aspects of his explanation of human behavior that were rooted in actual brain systems.\u00a0 As I previously noted, these systems are much more complicated than I have described above, but in essence, there are battles waged in your head between forces that manipulate you and your choices through the use of chemical neurotransmitters.\u00a0 A portion of these battles occur outside your awareness, but it is the influence of the emotions that stem from these unconscious battles that ultimately make you feel as though there is a Devil (Id<\/em>) on one shoulder and an angel (Superego<\/em>) on the other as your Prefrontal Cortex (Ego<\/em>) struggles to make the best possible decision.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By understanding these systems you may become empowered to make better decisions, avoid bad choices, and ultimately take more personal responsibility for the process.\u00a0 It’s not the Devil that made you do it, and it’s not poor Ego Strength – necessitating years of psychotherapy.\u00a0 It is the influence of deeply stirred emotions and manipulation occurring inside of you and perhaps some over dependence on a vulnerable and easily over burdened Prefrontal Cortex that leads you down that gluttonous path.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blakeslee, Sandra. 2007. Small Part of the Brain, and Its Profound Effect<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/a>s<\/em><\/strong>. New York Times.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gladwell, M. 2005.\u00a0 Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/strong>. Little, Brown and Company: New York.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Guild, G. 2010. Retail Mind Manipulation.<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0 How Do You Think?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Guild, G. 2010. What Plato, Descartes, and Kant Got Wrong: Reason Does Not Rule.<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0 How Do You Think?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Guild, G. 2010. Willpower: What is it really?<\/strong><\/em><\/a> How Do You Think?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Guild, G. 2011. Irrational Fear: It’s Just an Alief.<\/a><\/strong><\/em> How Do You Think?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lehrer, J. 2009. How We Decide<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The more I learn about the workings of the human brain – the more I am stirred by feelings that Freud may have been right.\u00a0 Although his theories have long since been discredited, he characterized the brain as a battle ground where three forces jockeyed\u00a0 for control over your decision making.\u00a0 There was the Id … <\/p>\n

Read more “Freud: In Some Ways He Was Right.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[39,37,36],"tags":[22,96],"class_list":["post-2467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neurology","category-psychology","category-rational-thought","tag-intuitive-thinking","tag-rational-thought"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mcUm-DN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2752,"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions\/2752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geraldguild.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}