Women’s Right (Compare and Contrast) Essay Example

Women’s Right (Compare and Contrast) Essay Everywhere, regardless of color, nationality, religion, and educational background, most women found them selves at disadvantage level compared to men in most aspect of their social lives. In the work place women suffers from sexual harassment, at home they suffers sexual assault and in some cases sexual abuse. In general, women suffer discriminations that are often times a result of either religious or government implementations of laws or doctrines that is discriminatory. Thus, even in their own domain, most women suffer physical and emotional abuses. There may not have justifiable reasons for this women dilemma although some put the blame partly on women victims themselves in view of the manner most women dressed. However, it cannot be denied that there are many women whose skills, intelligence, and leadership are far better than men are and yet they are either victims of discriminations in the work place or sexual harassment. What does the different gender based movement say about all these misfortunes that has befall on women. Mainstream sources said that women are helpless victims of systematic discriminations in all aspect of their social life, while independent source partly blame women for their own predicament. We will write a custom essay sample on Women’s Right (Compare and Contrast) specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Women’s Right (Compare and Contrast) specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Women’s Right (Compare and Contrast) specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer What Mainstream Say about abuses and discrimination on Women The two main opinions on women discrimination tells that there seemed to be differing reasons why women became victims of abuses and discriminations. Mainstream source tells us women are vulnerable and often systematically discriminated just because of their sex. The mainstream source noted that in countries like Ukraine, Moldova, Nigeria, the Dominican republic, Burma, and Thailand women are bought and sold, traffic to work in forced prostitution, while government action to protect their rights are insufficient. The same source reveals that in some countries such as Guatemala, South Africa, and Mexico, women’s capability to enter and stay in the work is thwarted by private employers using women’s reproductive status to keep them out from the work. This action according to Mainstream source is backed up by discriminatory laws as well as by discriminatory enforcement of the law. Not only women were discriminated in many countries, they were even legally held inferior with men. In some Islamic countries like Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, women faces government-sponsored discrimination that legally held them unequal before the law. These countries’ discriminatory family code nullifies women’s legal authority and bestowed their legal rights in the hands of male family members, while restricting women’s involvement in public life (Mainstream source). In general, Mainstream source tells us that all these discriminations and abuses on women are beyond their control. Women are helpless against all these abuses that some times even lead to physical violence resulting to fatal consequences, including increased risk of HIV/AIDS infection. They do not enjoy government protection against physical violence at home, and they do not even have personal rights. Mainstream source calls all these violence, abuses, and discrimination on women as â€Å"global social epidemics† and three areas wherein women suffers discrimination and abuses. These includes legal, cultural, and religious areas in which according to mainstream source, women are methodically discriminated against, barred from political involvement and public life, isolated in their every day lives, beaten in their homes, raped in armed conflict, killed for having sex, assaulted for not conforming to gender norms, forced to marry, sold into forced labor and denied equal divorce or inheritance rights (Women’s Rights). Therefore women discrimination should be abolished. Title VII of the US constitution declares the discrimination is illegal. Due to these offenses on women, some loose gender based movements rallied against gender-based discrimination. Among this movement is the anti sexism movement which denounced gender based norms that promotes inequalities between men and women. This movement specifically noted the discrepancy in the division of work between men and women citing that fulltime work belongs to men while part time work is the domain of women. The difference is that full time work gets high salary (Five Cram). What the Independent source say about women Discrimination Independent source claims that some women are partly to blame of their misfortunes. Citing a new poll in Ireland an internet source entitled Significant Numbers of Irish Blame Women for Rape, pointed out that a huge numbers of people of Ireland think that women are at least partially responsible for rape if she flirts with man. The same article contends that more people are willing to blame a woman for rape if she would go somewhere at night alone and dressed provocatively.   The survey says ten percent of the people think the victim is completely at a mess if she has had a numbers of partners, while one in three believes that a woman is either partly or fully to blame if she wears seductive clothing (The Curvature). The article remarked that However, despite of the recent public opinion in Ireland, in general, many women are victims of discrimination. In many occasion, women are portrayed as sexual object. Pictures of nude women are used by certain companies to attract potential male customer. Women also serve as the attraction in most bars and clubs, which categorized women as mere objects of men’s desire, or as something that men can use (Women’s Right). In many countries, women’s rights are ignored. Women do not have access to education, and are subject to violence, which deny them control over their own bodies. In her article entitled For India’s Untouchable women, Cleaning Human feces, Linda Lowen noted that in India, women are used as manual scavengers to clean up public toilets with no water to flush the excrement (Linda Lowen). These women have only broom and a tin plate to gather up human feces, which they put into a basket and carry with their heads for up to two miles distance in which contents often drip into their hair, faces, and bodies. Despite that the work is illegal and hazardous to women’s health due to potential bacterial and viral infection, yet this practice still persist in India. Lowen pointed out that these women were forced to take on this kind of work because of poverty and the failure of the government to provide alternatives. Comparing and contrasting the Sources In most of the arguments it appears that there are similarities of opinions between the two sources as both were against discriminations. However, the mainstream sources emphasized that in general, women are innocent and helpless victims of discriminations and abuses just because of their gender. They therefore call for equality and the granting of the women’s right on global scale. They call on government and all concerned to stop discrimination and violence against women. The mainstream source emphasized on the abuses, violence, and discriminations that women are experiencing on a general situation or may be on a global scale to which in many countries women does not have enough protection from the government. They reveal the helpless conditions of women perpetrated either by the macho image of men who tend to display their dominance to conform to this norm. Because of these the anti sexism movement which aim to promote equality between men and women emphasized on the soluti on to these dilemma that women are facing. They offered practical solution to abolish the discrimination in the work place such as a practical shift in the distribution of the task between men and women in which in their view, it would open door to many changes (Anti Sexism + Work) This source also suggest for the reduction of the averaged work hours which in their view, will help reduce women unemployment. In contrast to this assertion of the mainstream source, the Independence sources although they might also denounce violence on women, yet they tend to put the blame on women victims. They emphasized that in most cases of rapes woman are partly to blame for their provocative manner of dressing. They also pointed out that when women would go somewhere at night alone, they should be responsible for their own safety and welfare. Thus when they are raped, they are partly to be blame for their predicament. The emphasis therefore of the independence sources are on the individual actions and misfortunes resulting to misfortune. The independence sources tells us about the result of how individual women carry themselves, and the manner they dressed which are provocative to such offence as sexual abuse and rape. However, discriminations on women in the work place and elsewhere are clearly beyond the women’s control and they are innocent of their struggle. Domestic violence on women and s exual abuses are also beyond their capacity to control and that these women are innocent of such sufferings. Conclusions Women are the same human beings as men and care for the same things as men do. It is clearly unfair to discriminate women based on their gender or their weaknesses. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides protection for the individual against employment discrimination based on sex, national origin, race, color, and religion. The provisions also protect women against sexual harassment and discrimination because of pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions. In other words, although in some Islamic countries, discriminations on women is tolerated by government, yet the fact remain that women must have their own right as an individual human being and fellow citizen of this world. There is no justifiable reason fir women discrimination. The feminism quest therefore for equality and fairness is with men is acceptable as they are merely seeking for their own place in the society which long dominated by men.

Freud’s Theory of Defense Mechanism Essays

Freud’s Theory of Defense Mechanism Essays Freud’s Theory of Defense Mechanism Essay Freud’s Theory of Defense Mechanism Essay Psychoanalytic ego psychology is distinguished by the priority that it assigns to the egos management of instinct-derivatives. Ego psychology had its foundations in Freuds writings of the 1920s, but first became a distinctive approach to psychoanalysis in the 1930s. In Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, Freud (1926a) listed ten manners by which the ego defends itself against dangerous thoughts: regression, reaction-formation, isolation, undoing, repression, introjection or identification, projection, turning against the self, reversal, and sublimation or displacement of instinctual aims. To this list of defenses, Anna Freud (1966) added identification with the aggressor (pp. 116-120). The list has since continued to grow. For Freud, das Ich, â€Å"the I, † was a metaphor that signified the part of the mind with which a person consciously identifies. In a loose sense, it was Freuds way of discussing the self. More technically, however, he defined the ego as the part of the mind that performs rational thinking, the type of thought that he considered a â€Å"secondary process.† Freuds (1923a, 1940b) concept of the ego did not include the defense mechanisms that Anna Freud (1966) attributed to it. Freud (1926a) explained: Symptom-formation†¦has two assets: one, hidden from view, brings about the alteration in the id in virtue of which the ego is removed from danger; the other, presented openly, shows what has been created in place of the instinctual process that has been affected-namely, the substitutive formation. It would, however, be more correct to ascribe to the defensive process what we have just said about symptom-formation and to use the latter term as synonymous with substitute-formation. (p. 145) : In this formulation, defense consists of (1) unconscious stimulus barriers, such as repression, that enlarge the dynamic unconscious repressed and so remove the ego from danger, and (2) the substitution of a fantasy for the repressed that manifests the repressed in symbolic fashion. The stimulus barriers are ego functions, and they alone are truly defensive. The substitute-formations are not ego functions; they are products of unconscious symbol-formation. Freud (1926a) explained them as pathological symptoms to which the ego makes an accommodation: It is†¦only natural that the ego should try to prevent symptoms from remaining isolated in one way or another, and to incorporate them into its organization†¦. The ego now proceeds to behave as though it recognized that the symptom had come to stay and that the only thing to do was to accept the situation in good part and draw as much advantage from it as possible. It makes an adaptation to the symptom-to this piece of the internal world which is alien to it-just as it normally does to the real external world. (pp. 98-99) Freuds (1926a) notion of defense mechanisms as â€Å"a kind of frontier-station with a mixed garrison† (p. 99) reflects the complexity of their origin. Every so-called defense mechanism combines a stimulus barrier, belonging to the ego, with a fantasy formation, of unconscious origin, to which the ego has adapted. Why does the ego accommodate selected pathological symptoms? Were the unconscious to be constantly producing new symptoms, the ego would be obliged to respond to them all, resulting in unwanted and frequent mood swings. Instituting selected symptoms as permanent structures does not lessen their irrationality. It has the advantage, however, of making the type of irrationality predictable. Because the predictability provides the ego with stability that is necessary for mood regulation, the automatization of selected symptoms may reasonably be regarded as a kind of defense. Unfortunately, Freud failed to distinguish clearly between stimulus barriers and the symptoms that the ego automatizes for its purposes of stability. The oversight led to the widespread neglect of the origin and nature of the automatized symptoms. Anna Freuds The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1966), first published in 1936, expressed an over-simplification that went unchallenged for half a century. Anna Freud (1966, 157) postulated â€Å"the egos primary antagonism to instinct-its dread of the strength of the instincts† (p. 157). She maintained her position throughout her life. â€Å"Many disputed it when I said it, and I still say that the ego as such is hostile rather than friendly and helpful to the instincts, because its against its nature to be friendly† (Sandler with Freud 1985, 494). Anna Freuds concept of defense flowed similarly from her failure to embrace the subtleties of her fathers formulation of psychic structure. Anna Freud wrote: The part played by the ego in the formation of those compromises which we call symptoms consists in the unvarying use of a special method of defense, when confronted with a particular instinctual demand, and the repetition of exactly the same procedure every time that demand recurs in its stereotyped form. (p. 34) In this presentation, defenses belong exclusively to the ego and are not themselves compromise formations. Symptoms and defenses are mutually exclusive; and it is symptoms that are compromise formations-between the instincts and the defenses! Anna Freuds account of defenses agreed with her fathers formulation in so far as stimulus barriers were intended, but it misrepresented the circumstances of such defenses as regression, reaction-formation, undoing, introjection or identification, projection, turning against the self, and reversal. In her fathers view, these defenses were themselves pathological symptoms. Anna Freuds hypothesis of â€Å"the egos primary antagonism to instinct† was able to command the devotion of ego psychologists presumably because Freuds structural concepts of id and ego were understood, for clinical purposes, on the topographic model of the old systems Unconscious and Perception-Consciousness. Anna Freud stated that for many decades she and many other psychoanalysts used both the topographic and the structural models of the mind in alternation, depending on whether, for example, they were momentarily concerned with dreams or defense mechanisms. â€Å"I definitely belong to the people who feel free to fall back on the topographical aspects whenever convenient, and to leave them aside and to speak purely structurally when that is convenient† (Sandler with A. Freud 1985, 31). In similar fashions, Bertram D. Lewin (1952), Jacob A. Arlow and Charles Brenner (1964), and Heinz Kohut (1984) estimated that most of their contemporaries reverted to the topographi c hypothesis when conceptualizing dreams. Bernard Apfelbaum (1966) drew attention to the distinction I have emphasized between Freuds view of the ego as the secondary process and Anna Freuds expansion of the ego to include character defenses: A distinction must be drawn between two conceptions of the ego: what may be called the â€Å"reality ego† versus the â€Å"defence ego.† The â€Å"reality ego† emphasizes the egos temporizing, compromising function-as a busy mediator between the demands of reality and of the drives. The â€Å"defence ego† is a more active principle, having superordinate goals of its own, before which both reality and the drives must yield. (p. 462) Ego psychologys transformation of the ego from a â€Å"reality ego† that performs rational thought, into a â€Å"defense ego† that includes the â€Å"character armor† (Reich 1949) of irrational defenses, depended on equating the ego with the sense of self. This step, taken within American ego psychology, later served as a point of departure for Heinz Kohut (1971, 1977, 1984), whose system of self-psychology may be seen as both a valuable contribution and an inappropriate expansion of defense analysis into a complete program of psychotherapy. Continuing David Rapaports (1960, 1967) project of introducing academic methodology and systematizing within ego psychology, Roy Schafer (1968) took issue with the â€Å"traces of the machine analogy in the prevailing conception of defence mechanisms† (p. 52). There are no machines in the mind. There are only thoughts. The notion of a mechanism is either a fallacy or a metaphor that refers summarily to both â€Å"the instinctual act and the defence against it† (p. 54). Morris Eagle (1984) added that â€Å"the supposition that the intensity of the instincts is threatening to the ego† derives from a reification of the metaphor of psychic energy. It is a purely fictitious notion. â€Å"The idea that instinctual impulses, particularly those of great intensity, are inherently dangerous to the ego derives from an a priori tension-reduction model of human behavior and a conception of the nervous system as naturally and ideally quiescent, and disturbed, in varying degrees, by excitation† (p. 111). Because too much energy will shatter or burn out a machine, reifying the metaphors of psychic energy and psychic structures leads to the idea that the structures of the psychical apparatus are inherently and necessarily threatened by psychic energies. In â€Å"Analysis Terminable and Interminable, † Freud (1937) corrected his daughters formulation without naming her explicitly. He asserted that â€Å"id and ego are originally one† and â€Å"the psychical apparatus is intolerant of unpleasure†-implicitly, of unpleasure alone (pp. 240, 237). He also emphasized that defense mechanisms and symptoms are two ways of discussing the same psychic elements: The mechanisms of defence serve the purpose of keeping off dangers. It cannot be disputed that they are successful in this; and it is doubtful whether the ego could do without them altogether during its development. But it is also certain that they may become dangers themselves†¦these mechanisms are not relinquished after they have assisted the ego during the difficult years of its development. They become regular modes of reaction of his character, which are repeated throughout his life whenever a situation occurs that is similar to the original one. This turns them into infantilisms†¦. The adults ego, with its increased strength, continues to defend itself against dangers which no longer exist in reality; indeed, it finds itself compelled to seek out those situations in reality which can serve as an approximate substitute for the original danger, so as to be able to justify, in relation to them, its maintaining its habitual modes of reaction. Thus we can easily understand how the defensive mechanisms, by bringing about an ever more extensive alienation from the external world and a permanent weakening of the ego, pave the way for, and encourage, the outbreak of neurosis. (pp. 237-38) Freud here took for granted his previous account of the origin of defense mechanisms as amalgams of stimulus barriers and symptoms. Defenses can alienate the secondary process from the external world only because symptoms are among their components. As flights from reality, symptoms are inconsistent with the reality principle of secondary process thought. Anna Freuds misunderstanding of her fathers theory of defense was one of several developments in the 1930s that collectively accomplished a paradigm shift in psychoanalytic theory and technique. Wilhelm Reichs Character Analysis (1948), first published in 1933, emphasized that differences in character types reflected differences among the defense mechanisms that individuals favored. Ernst Kris (1934) introduced the concept of â€Å"ego-directed regression, † or â€Å"regression in the service of the ego, † which permitted unconscious manifestations such as play and creativity to be diagnosed as whole-some, where their classical descriptions as â€Å"regression† had meant that they were pathological. Kriss revalorization of fantasy anticipated Anna Freuds revalorization of defense mechanisms. Her catalog of defenses, first published in 1936, supported the clinical technique of defense analysis, where interpretations are made of the defenses, and efforts to interpr et the unconscious drives are postponed until a later phase of the treatment. Heinz Hartmanns (1939) emphasis on the egos devotion to adaptation completed the basic paradigm of ego psychology. Where classical psychoanalysts thought of the benefits derived from symptoms as â€Å"secondary gains† of illness, ego psychologists construed defenses as positive adaptations and left unremarked their inherently fantastic and irrational nature. The idea of repression is perhaps one of the Freudian concepts that call for psychoanalytic treatment. Freud split the mind into three parts, the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious. The conscious part of the mind is what is being used to read this paper at the moment. The subconscious contains information that is not in the conscious processing zone but could be very readily retrieved. For example, ones spouse, may not be present in consciousness but could quickly be prompted by just mentioning the name. The most important part in the field of psychoanalysis and in which the id and superego operate is the unconscious. The unconscious is that part of mind where so much information is stored but very hard to retrieve. Freud believed that the unconscious is a reservoir of human experiences forced to obscurity by the ego so that they protect the subject from unbearable pains if and when those experiences are remembered. Freud argued that when the ego fears the inability to balance between the ids sexual and aggressive needs and the proper way to attain it as the superego demands, the result is anxiety. In order to deal with this anxiety Freud proposed that the ego develops defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms reduce anxiety by reducing or redirecting anxiety in various ways, but always by distorting reality. Before listing the Freudian defense mechanism its prudent to highlight the defense mechanism categories as prescribed by Freud. First, reality anxieties which are fear of objects that can be physically escaped, for example, fear of a snake. Second, neurotic anxiety is a type of anxiety that comes from unconscious worries that the impulses of the ID will overpower the person, leading to impending punishment. Finally, this is fear of moral judgments or fear of violating moral values which result in guilt and shame. The defense mechanism of displacement involves the transfer of feelings or behaviors from a dangerous object to one that is less threatening. A person who is angry with the boss may maintain a discreet silence, then go home and shout at a family member. Or aggressive impulses may be unconsciously diverted from a frightening object to oneself, which may lead to self-inflicted injuries or even to suicide. Anxiety may also be displaced, as when a child who is victimized by abusive parents shies away from people in general. In contrast, the defense mechanism of projection conceals dangerous impulses by unconsciously attributing them to other people or things. For example, projected anger may lead to the belief that you are disliked, hated, or being persecuted by other people. In displacement, you know that you are angry and choose a safer target; in projection, you repress your anger and believe that other people are angry at you. Also, projection always operates unconsciously, whereas some displacements may be conscious. Although projection plays a significant role in the development of paranoid behavior, it is a normal way for very young children to deny their mistakes. Denial is often accompanied by another defense mechanism, fantasy, where unfulfilled needs are gratified in ones imagination. A child may deny weakness not only by playing with reassuring symbols of strength like toy guns or dolls, but also by daydreaming about being a famous general or worthy parent. Virtually everyone daydreams to some extent. As with denial, however, an excessive amount of fantasy prevents the ego from fulfilling its main function perceiving and dealing with reality.