What does the ghost symbolize?

Xu Guangzhong, Symbol of Ghosts: A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Just like Columbus' discovery of America, Freud tore down the curtain of "rationality" hanging over the surface of human nature, revealing the great impulse of animal attack instinct and primitive instinct at the subconscious level of human beings. Freud was as great as Darwin in the history of human self-knowledge. I have read several of his books, and I can understand the basic meaning of his theory. I haven't written anything about his scholarship, so I feel very strange. I hope professionals don't joke.

Freud was an Austrian psychiatrist. In his early treatment of mental patients, he found that after being hypnotized, patients would say what they didn't say when they were awake, and their symptoms would be much relieved when they were awake. He believes that in the depths of mental patients' consciousness, there is probably a field hidden, which he calls "the subconscious". Since then, he invented his own unique psychiatric treatment method: "free association" therapy, that is, let the patient lie on the bed or chair, let him speak his thoughts at will, while the doctor records them behind his back, so as to go deep into the patient's subconscious and crack the mental trauma and unfinished special complex left by the patient's early life. After treatment, the patient's condition will generally be relieved, but later it was found that the curative effect was not good, and the patient's condition was very unstable and prone to recurrence. He thinks this is because the things in the patient's subconscious have not been fully discovered, so what is hidden in the patient's subconscious? Through analysis and summary, he found that most of the causes of mental patients originated from childhood trauma. Through the accumulation of long-term clinical experience and scientific summary, he finally formed and developed his own unique psychological theory-psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis divides people's consciousness into consciousness, pre-consciousness and subconscious. Consciousness is an activity of thinking, emotion and intention, which can be realized by itself. Pre-consciousness is the ectoderm of the subconscious mind that can not enter consciousness at ordinary times but can enter consciousness level under the guidance of special circumstances, while the subconscious mind is the deepest part of the soul that individuals can't realize, including ancient human survival experience, primitive attack impulse and sexual impulse, and all kinds of immoral survival thoughts that are unacceptable by ethics.

Freud believes that the core of subconscious instinctive impulse is sexual instinct, because as we all know, the pleasure of sexual intercourse is the most powerful and unparalleled pleasure among all the pleasures that human beings can feel. The instinctive impulse of sexual desire guides the survival and reproduction of human beings and ensures the continuation of ethnic groups. It is the most fundamental and profound embodiment of human "life instinct". No wonder western ladies blush at the mention of Freud's name.

Freud's theory of biological reduction has attracted strong criticism from modern and contemporary scholars, but in any case, his theory has gone far beyond the scope of psychology and has brought strong and profound influence on philosophy, literature, art, medicine and ethics.

Freud also put forward the "triple theory of personality", that is, the famous theory of "ID, ego and superego". I pursue the "pleasure-only principle", which is illogical, non-temporal and non-verbal, and represents people's unrealistic or immoral instinctive impulse. However, without the guidance of realistic principles, the needs of the id will inevitably be strongly frustrated in human society, and even directly lead to the destruction of individual life, and the id represents the self. That is to control the impulse of the id to meet the requirements of social law, morality and public opinion. In fact, the ego is differentiated from the outer cortex of the id, and its function is mainly to protect itself. As the result of social education, superego is a highly idealized and "moralized" self, which determines people's moral goals, including conscience, rationality and self-ideal.

Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (also translated and interpreted dreams) published in 1900 is recognized as the most famous work of psychoanalysis. In his view, during the day, people's consciousness stifles the invasion of subconscious desires to the conscious level, while during sleep, the checking function of consciousness is weakened, and subconscious desires can enter the conscious level through pre-consciousness, but this entry will still cause self-anxiety and resistance. Therefore, the subconscious invades the consciousness by playing tricks to avoid the examination of the examiner (self), while psychiatrists need to understand the art of subconscious camouflage through the training of analyzing dreams in order to decipher the subconscious complex in the patient's heart. He has a famous saying: "the analysis of dreams is the broad road to the subconscious."

Freud also put forward the concept of psychological defense mechanism, which he divided into suppression, negation, projection, reverse formation, humor, retrogression, offset and sublimation. In his view, the mental trauma in the subconscious of mental patients is not the direct cause of the disease, but the unreasonable psychological defense mechanism of mental patients is the direct cause. It is the patients who repeatedly suppress the mental trauma in the depths of the soul into the subconscious with unreasonable psychological defense mechanism, which leads to the further fixation of the mental trauma at the subconscious level, and the accumulated instinctive energy impulse destroys the mental structure of the patients, making the negative energy of the patients more and more powerful, which eventually leads to the symptoms of mental illness. The symptom of mental illness is essentially that the patient's subconscious instinct points to himself. It should be said that Freud's psychoanalysis was inspired by Nietzsche, because Nietzsche also believed that the symptoms of mental patients were the product of patients' instinctive desires. Patients use unreasonable psychological defense mechanism to prevent the subconscious mental trauma from invading the conscious level, which leads to the instinctive energy fixed on the subconscious mental trauma to vent in another way, that is, to vent in a way of "producing symptoms". Symptoms are essentially a way to vent instinctive energy fixed on subconscious mental trauma. The emergence of symptoms weakens the individual's mental tension caused by instinctive energy accumulation, so I think that the emergence of symptoms itself contains a great pleasure.

Freud also constructed the theories of "the instinct of life" and "the instinct of death". He believes that the instinct of life and the instinct of death always exist at the same time and are destroyed at the same time. Life instinct refers to the instinct possessed by organisms to ensure the emergence, development and growth of life, and its core is "sexual instinct". Death instinct refers to the energy possessed by organisms to restore an organic life to an inorganic state. Both of them are similar to his "lust for love" and "lust for destruction". The goal of all living things is to return to death, and death itself is inevitable. Engels believed that "life is always associated with its inevitable result, that is, death always exists as a seed in life." Therefore, it can be said that the day when life is born is the time when it will die. The signs of life activities show that it seems that all biological activities are trying to reduce the individual tension caused by instinctive energy accumulation, and the minimum tension is when the individual life is annihilated, so the instinct of life to death (that is, death instinct) is very strong, but the instinct of life in the organism suppresses the instinct of death. It can guide the individual's death energy to the outside, showing aggressive behaviors such as destruction, killing, attack, hatred and injury. To reduce the tension caused by death energy. In my opinion, if a destructive person loses the suppression of law and the condemnation of moral public opinion, what he feels after killing is definitely not tension and terror, but extreme relaxation and comfort, because this kind of killing behavior gives vent to the death instinct accumulated in his subconscious and reduces the instinctive savings. Nietzsche has a famous saying: the so-called morality is just an emergency lie that we are forced to produce in order to prevent being torn apart by the inner beast. I couldn't agree more. If someone asks me whether human nature is good or evil, I will definitely answer "evil" without hesitation. Freud, like a diligent miner, mercilessly tore off the beautiful veil named "reason" and "morality" that has hung over human heads for thousands of years through the continuous excavation and analysis of the deep world of human beings, and revealed the shocking boiling cauldron of the deep world under the rational face of human beings-subconscious instinctive impulse.

I am the first person I know who uses psychoanalytic theory to reveal the mystery of human fear of ghosts. I think the essence of ghosts is "a group of instinctive forces that are divorced from social laws and moral public opinion are more energy", and ghosts are repressed human nature. When social laws, public opinion and morality suppress our subconscious instinctive impulse, we can't see its existence. Not only that, but we also try our best to deny the instinctive impulse in the depths of the soul. Freud said: Why are we all so secretive about the topic of instinct, especially the topic of "sex"? I think, once the instinctive impulse is unrestrained, it will definitely point to its original goal. In this case, social civilization will suffer catastrophic destruction, so people gradually begin to deny their inner instinctive energy, so as to train their repression ability and avoid talking about these topics. Therefore, I think it is a kind of wisdom, courage and noble behavior to admit that "you are a devil". We will never forget the eternal motto engraved on the lintel of the temple of Delphi in ancient Greece: "Know yourself". In fact, in our subconscious field, we often regard others as demons, but under the strong protection of social laws and moral public opinion, we have no reason or need to show too much fear. When a person dies, the natural sense of security in our hearts due to the protection of the external environment collapses, because after the death of a person, the "shadow" left in our hearts by his instinctive energy impulse still exists, and his shadow (libido energy impulse) has been separated from the suppression of social laws, morality and public opinion, making the fortress in our hearts disappear. So we are very afraid that this shadow will bring us back to the same situation: the state of the undead. The essence of our fear of ghosts is to get rid of the evil human nature under social repression. The psychology of human being's fear of ghosts is very similar to that of human being's fear of extremely aggressive mental patients, which further proves my point of view, because extremely aggressive mental patients are similar to ghosts, and they are not suppressed by human society, which is "lawless" in popular terms. As we all know, it is not illegal for mental patients to kill at the onset.

However, we have to see that the psychoanalysis school founded by Freud blindly emphasizes the importance of sexual instinct and tries to belittle rationality. Even Freud once said that it is not necessary for psychoanalysts to separate people from animals when studying human psychology. His practice of biological reduction was biased, so he was severely criticized by later humanists. It should be pointed out that Freud's exploration and revelation of the subconscious in the depths of human hearts is a great contribution in the history of human civilization. He made us look at ourselves from a new angle. We have to admit that the impulse of sexual instinct is an important and even the most profound motivation for most of our activities. But under the oppression of human civilization for thousands of years, we have formed our own unique moral civilization, culture and art, which is different from other animals. Our sexual motivation has long been sublimated into a nobler, more civilized, more active and healthier spiritual motivation. These are the "direct motivation" of our activities, so we should not be pessimistic and disappointed at all. "The night gave me black eyes, but I used them to look for light." This is the correct attitude we should hold.