Continental philosophy final essay Life Sciences Essay

Continental Philosophy Final Essay
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Continental Philosophy Final Essay
‘Beyond the pleasure principle’ and ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, are some of the philosophical texts advanced by Freud. The two texts strive to unravel the complexities associated with loss, grief, and traumatic experience, from the Freudian psychoanalysis viewpoint. Freud’s gist of the argument in his psychoanalysis illustrates the theory of transformation despite some of its inherent scientific flaws. Freud appears to suggest transformations from particular forms to previous states, which Malabou opposes vehemently. Malabou criticizes the Freudian psychoanalytic postulations as lacking some substance and change in some instances. However, Freud and Malabou both provoke senses regarding what transpires in the brain and mind whenever there is a loss, grief, and trauma.
‘Beyond the pleasure principle’ and ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ are crucial arguments that constitute Freudian Psychoanalysis. Are these psychoanalysis arguments aligned with the theory of transformation? Freud uses the word ichveranderungen to defined the define transformation of identity. Ichveranderungen refers to the alteration or modification of the ego (Malabou, 2012, pp.15). This transformation does not entail a change in the whole personality of the patient. The changes elicited by brain lesions result in an unprecedented change of individual's identity but in the absence of a relation to the same person’s past, and this gives rise to a new person. For instance, a person with Alzheimer's disease is not a person who has been changed or modified but a subject who has become someone else (Malabou, 2012, pp.15).
The lesions affect cerebral mechanism, which is tasked with producing and regulating emotions, especially in the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus. The impact on such brain areas results in the alteration of individual personality to the extent that it becomes unrecognizable, although the same individual may retain cognitive function (Malabou, 2012, pp.15). Such a change in personality represents a disruption to individual identity.
The theory of transformation, as elucidated in psychoanalysis, is also marked by ‘transformation’ from the brain to cerebrality. The brain is designed to perform cerebral functions. The cerebrality will be concerned with the aspects of causality and damage, which are imposed upon the brain functions (Malabou, 2012 pp.3)
The pleasure principle denotes an inclination to seek pleasure and to avoid pain, and Freud advanced efforts to expand the scope of this understanding in what is a text called Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle text presents a clash of concepts pitting in terms of life, reproduction, creativity, self-preservation, and sexual connections against an embodiment of death, aggression, and self-destruction. The death, self-destruction, and aggressions are what constitute “beyond the pleasure.” This clash reflects possible unpredictable transformations between the two sides, i.e., that of pleasure and those that are beyond the pleasure principle.
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