Freud use the Pleasure Principle to understand the operation of Unconscious. To him, Unconscious is probably evolved as a necessary mental apparatus to ensure the survival of the body. Therefore many consider that idea is only adequate to explain the satisfaction of lower human level such as Food. Water and Sex. However, Humanist’s idea of hierarchy of Human need is in a means of ‘extending’ the same model of Unconscious into other psychology realm. Essentially, in the eye of Humanist, there is no difference between different human needs in terms of its basic structure: All of them rely on Freud’s Deprivation-Satisfaction model. I always ponder if there is any fundamental difference between human needs at different hierarchy? Could the need of self-esteem, the need for self-actualization be anything categorically different from the need for food and sex? Is there anything wrong by placing all Human needs in the same framework of understanding? Are all human needs share the same psychological mechanism? Or each human need has a slightly different mechanism unique to its nature? Are all of them has basis in neurology?
What led me to ask this question is an very simple observation of the most common psychological process: Thinking. The secret of all thinker, Mathematician and researcher is all of them would enjoy the pleasure upon the complete resolution of their curiosity. Is that feeling of satisfaction be any difference from the sexual satisfaction? Are they base on similar/same neurological mechanism? So is that right in asserting that Pleasure Principle not just rule the Unconscious, it is also the same mechanism in the Higher Cognitive Process like Logical Thinking and Analyzing? Humanist Psychology does open the door for the possibility of understanding the Higher Cognitive Process via the existing knowledge on the how basic Human needs are built and satisfy. Or the reality is just the opposite, it is the Basic Human need like hunger and sex mimic the satisfaction mechanism of Higher Cognitive Process? Or it is the Higher Cognitive Process doesn’t have its own expressive mechanism, it has to borrow from the Lower? How could we differentiate between them? Is the phrase ‘The pleasure of knowledge’ has any literal truth value?
psychoanalysispsychology心理學認知心理學hypothesis假說Freud心理分析學潛意識unconsciouscogntive psychologyFreudianFreudian psychologyhierarchy of human needHumanist PsychologyneurologyPleasure Principle快樂原則人類主義心理學神經心理學佛洛伊德