Reviews for Motivation (SparkNotes Psychology Guide Series)

The average rating for Motivation (SparkNotes Psychology Guide Series) based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-12-23 00:00:00 Michael Oh My good friend and co-philosophe on GR, Alex, has written a very fine heuristic study of this book which I can't emulate, but to which I will add my two-cent addendum. Freud says, if I understand his meaning aright, that we are born impossible narcissists - and that'll we'll do anything in this life to keep pleasing ourselves. If this means six straight hours of TV and a few beers in a quiet corner after work, so be it! And if we don't like something, we will punish it for failing to give us pleasure by playing a childhood game of isolating it - away from our private play area. Punishing, as we ourselves were disciplined when young. So we put a hex on those who cross us, figuratively speaking. Does all this translate into maturity? Not on your life, Freud says. But it's the hallmark of our original narcissistic neuroses. And it's gotta stop. How? Well, that's where Freud is foisted on his own petard. For he calls in his own dark deus ex machina - the Grim god Thanatos, or Death. Those of you who know your scientific laws know it as Entropy. We may not like it when entropy starts to seize us in mid-age, but speaking as a guy in his Seventies, it's unavoidable reality. So the Reality Principle fixes Narcissism's wagon pretty handily. And disables it. How many evil-minded old witches are pleased to hear their wall mirrors telling them Snow White is now fairer by far than they are? Not many. Entropy is final, though. And lights all poor witches the way to dusty death. But in isolated ideal form, it re-enacts the voice of an adult telling us to grow up! I think by now we're beginning to find out why the Death Principle is a sad sorta cure for Narcissism... and why Freud later judged this book as a non-starter. So as psychology perhaps it fails. Plus, it hurts. But - hold on - Christians like the great writer John Donne saw in Death the sure antidote for the ills of the world. As a release from all our present sorrows. Death does not delude. And St Antony, using conviction and remorse as his personal Reality Principle, succeeded in trashing his noisy personal devils under its aegis. So maybe Freud WAS onto something, but couldn't muster up the faith to draw positive conclusions from it. Perhaps he was only half-remembering the distant childhood words, 'he who lays down his life shall take it up again!' And, for me, no words ring truer. I'll be 71 in a couple of weeks, and care much less about the rest of my life in our decaying and viral world than I do for the upcoming, infinitely more radiant and refreshing one. Remember Dylan Thomas? And Death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one... Though lovers be lost, love shall not - And Death shall have no dominion.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-02-13 00:00:00 Miriam Tracey Behold one of Freud's most over-determined navels. A piece of thought, exploration and theory that is yet to be pinned down and is a fertile seed to many theorists who came after and attempted to corral this confused yet beguiling psychical mechanism into their own works. A fount of seemingly never-ending creative inspiration for others. While also being a frustrating 78 page read… Been trying to come up with a review for this one for weeks and kept hitting some wall that I would be hard pressed not to attribute to some function of the pleasure principle / reality principle / death drive / jouissance. Overtime / bonus chapter enjoyment through experience. I know, I am rambling… But this work doesn't need to be summarized here. My only desire is to express its effect on me… As if one could say, "My *only* desire"… It seems that every time I read Freud my brain is forced to read him on 4 or more parallel tracks that range over "what he's trying to say" and "how he sometimes gets bogged down in trying to explain everything physiologically" yet "how even when that feels wrong there's always still something interesting there so you have to parse it in real time" to "considering everything within the psychological and cultural context within which he was writing" yet still "separating that from the universal truths that he would still be living" while all the while being reminded of "what an amazing and brilliant explorer of a completely new realm" he was. I'm reminded of Jacques Cousteau only if Jacques Cousteau had also basically DISCOVERED OCEANS before anyone else had thought to notice them. Here's the thing for me. Reading Freud is clearly frustrating because he was obviously on to something extraordinary and yet since he was the first one there he had to figure out from scratch how to even conceptualize, label and order it. I agree with others I've read that posit word choice might have been his biggest enemy. Pleasure principle. Reality principle. Death drive. Not only might these have been named better, but Freud himself often seemed mercurial in how he used his terms and would shift their meanings over time. I'm perfectly fine with Freud modifying and revising his concepts and theory over the years. But when that seems to happen within the limited pages of a short work it can be a bit difficult to lock on to a clear intended meaning. Maybe that's why his writings - and this work in particular - seem so ripe for interpretation and exploration... I read BtPP right before reading Alenka Zupancic's What IS Sex? () and I have to say it was a damn good match. Or maybe much of Lacanian studies revolve around this singular process/mechanism so that's not so surprising? I've now just started reading Seminar VII, and it's with some feeling that the extension of this core theory will be expanded further. Even with all the frustration and confusion it's hard not to walk away from this book knowing in your gut that Freud was on to something. The words shift, the causes are many and over-determined, and yet the psychical actions that he describes feel too true and familiar to deny. Desire for homeostasis, judging future actions against some knowledge of possible pleasure or pain (comfort or discomfort), compulsive repetition (often of "seemingly" un-pleasureable acts), a basic obsession with and avoidance of the impossibility of existing, of being conscious yet cut off by a loss/gap back in a past you can't remember yet always feel on the back of your shoulder. A desire to be inanimate if only to stop the desire machine… This is the tool box for much that would follow...