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Selma H. Fraiberg’s Followers (10)
Selma H. Fraiberg
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More books by Selma H. Fraiberg…
![[Hebrew Title] the Magic Years](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1698058075i/160562653._SX50_.jpg)
“Theoretically, then, mental health depends upon the maintenance of a balance within the personality between the basic human urges and egocentric wishes on the one hand and the demands of conscience and society on the other hand. Under ordinary circumstances we are not aware of these two forces within our personality. But in times of conflict an impulse or a wish arises which conflicts with the standards of conscience or which for other reasons cannot be gratified in reality. In such instances we are aware of conflict and the ego takes over the role of judge or mediator between these two opposing forces. A healthy ego behaves like a reasonable and fair-minded judge and works to find solutions that satisfy both parties to the dispute. It allows direct satisfaction when this does not conflict with conscience or social requirements and flexibly permits indirect satisfactions when judgment rules otherwise. If a man finds himself with aggressive feelings toward a tyrannical boss, feelings which cannot be expressed directly without serious consequences, the ego, if it is a healthy ego, can employ the energy of the forbidden impulses for constructive actions which ultimately can lead to solution. At the very least it can offer the solace of daydreams in which the boss is effectively put in his place. A less healthy ego, failing at mediation, helpless in the face of such conflict, may abandon its position and allow the conflict to find neurotic solutions. A”
― The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
― The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
“The essence of his psychoanalytic therapy was the restoration of harmony between the biological self and the moral self, and he would have regarded it as a bad therapy indeed if the moral side of man were not strengthened in this process. Never did Freud subscribe to the theory attributed to him that liberation of forbidden impulses would cure man of his mental ills. The permission of analytic therapy is the permission to speak of the dangerous and forbidden thoughts; it is not the permission to act them. The process enables the patient to bring the forbidden impulses under the control of the higher mental processes of reason and judgment, a process which automatically strengthens the moral side of man by partially freeing it from its primitive and irrational sources. The”
― The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
― The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
“How is it then that a beloved parent will be transformed, in the child’s eyes, into a monster? If we look closely into the life of the small child we find that such transformations take place chiefly in those instances when we are compelled to interfere with the child’s pleasure, when we interrupt a pleasurable activity or deny a wish, when we frustrate the child’s wishes or appetites in some way. Then mother becomes the worstest, the baddest, the meanest mother in the world for the duration of a small child’s rage. Now it is conceivable that if we never interfered with a child’s pleasure seeking, granted all wishes, opposed nothing, we might never experience these negative reactions of the child, but the product of such child-rearing would not be a civilized child. We are required to interfere with the child’s pleasure not only for practical reasons which are presented daily in the course of rearing a child—health, safety, the requirements of the family—but in order to bring about the evolution of a civilized man and woman. The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely. So there are no ways in which a child can avoid anxiety. If we banished all the witches and ogres from his bedtime stories and policed his daily life for every conceivable source of danger, he would still succeed in constructing his own imaginary monsters out of the conflicts of his young life. We do not need to be alarmed about the presence of fears in the small child’s life if the child has the means to overcome them. THE”
― The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
― The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
Topics Mentioning This Author
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| Retro Chapter Chi...: This Week in History 2021 | 211 | 29 | Dec 21, 2021 10:17AM |
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