Social Psychology

Social Psychology
Institution
Date
Introduction
An individual’s relations to his family, the people he loves, his friends, and his physician are influenced by a single person, or a segment of individuals who become an important factor in his life. This is referred to as a group psychology. A group’s psychology therefore seeks to address humanity as members of a race, caste, nation, institution, profession, or as a constituent of a crowd of people organized into a group at a particular season, for a definite purpose.
This psychology is also concerned with determining the predispositions, instincts, aims, and motives of an individual, and gives special attention to his actions and his relations with those who are near to him. It is essential to establish that human beings under certain conditions think, feel and act in quite different ways from what is expected. This paper, therefore, seeks to establish and discover what a group is, and its capacity to influence the mental life of an individual in light of Augustine and Freud’s theories.
How groups influence individual’s mental life according to Freud and Augustine
Freud, an atheist, is acknowledged for his important theories that have become modern in the psychological world. Freud struggled with the issues he writes about and apparently, Augustine also experienced the same issues. St. Augustine was also involved with the mysteries of the human psyche. Freud marvels at himself and looks at the human psyche from a totally different perspective than Augustine. Freud gives an analytic approach to understanding ourselves and religion. Freud made a discovery of the unconscious with St Augustine remembered for his works that appreciated the incomprehensibility of the human mind.
Sigmund Freud plumbs into the depths of humanity and analyzes the contents of the psyche. St. Augustine on the hand finds it difficult to understand some aspects about him. Freud takes advantage of this and studies how human beings can discover themselves. He finds and discovers that human beings have to some extent some unconscious memories, and also some unconscious desires, urges and impulses. Freud states that we do not know ourselves so well.
Human consciousness according to Freud is a type of mental activity and states of an individual. This involves the process of cognition, internal state of an individual, and some attributes of personality such as temperament and character. Consciousness, therefore, is the highest form of mental activity that is inherent in human beings, not at all times.
When individuals of a group are combined into a unit, there is a reason that makes them unite and bond. That reason forms the characteristic of such a group. Individuals who compose a group, however like or unlike their mode of life is, their occupation, their character and intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed by the group makes them maintain a collective mind that makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from how they would when in isolation. Some particular forms of feelings are not manifested or to not conform themselves to an act unless an individual is incorporated into a group. A psychological group is theref...