Freud describes instances in which repression is the acts which children act upon in a later time. Children are the defense and growth of our society; they hold the key to success and our future outcome. In the playground there are attitudes of all sorts: happy, sad, angry, cheerful, peaceful, violent, neglected, hurt, disturbed, and confused. After years of classing children below adults, they have finally come into limelight and have been allowed to give their opinions. As a matter of fact, children have become the aim for sales and industrialization. All the commercials, or almost all, target kids and what appeals to them- at least, what adults can convince kids to like. That’s why Disney is so successful. It feeds into the already placed likes of kids and mutates them into money cows. However, without digression, there continues to be a very vigorous sense of neglect towards children who appear to be different. How? Well, as an observant and official of a public school, as well as having attended public school, kids can be just as cruel as the people they learn it from: parents. An obese kid that cannot run as fast as the others becomes the object brutal scrutiny. The dirty kid who is ignored by his parents when it comes to hygiene and cannot afford better clothes can easily be, again, the mark of children and their playful words.
These acts, though, do not arise from the ground and into a child’s mind. Hatred, or dislike, is not something placed in food; it is bred into kids and as a defense mechanism, as Freud describes, children act out the repressed desire either in the home or at school. In this case, parents play a major and vital role in how children function socially, so if the parent is the offender against the child, for whatever reason (grades, hair, flailing of the hands, or homework), what other choice does the child have than to obey the providers of food, shelter and moral standing? The child takes what is learned at home and imprints it onto others.
Working very close to children opens up the opportunity to observe how curious these minds can be and how even the smallest thing can arouse lament, like an eraser being confiscated. Attraction, specifically sexual, is not something weaved into the child, like hatred; rather, sexuality and orientation are innate essences that evolve from crushes to confusion, and later, the liberation of those essences. It is the incarceration of these desires that help build the repeated event that Freud names in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” stating that “children repeat everything that has made a great impression on them in real life” (433). A traumatic event, such as the abuse of the narrator by his father for being homosexual, is enough for him, the narrator, to build a defense. It is in that defense that causes the narrator, in secret, to act out his yearning for men, repeatedly. Nonetheless, the damage has been done, for he marries a woman and produces offspring, which only enforces his father’s heavy hand over him and clouds his ability to remain faithful to his wife and children. His wish to be the free flowing homosexual is influenced by his contained self urging the beans to spill.
We, as humans, are able to overcome trauma, and have produced skill enough to accommodate that shock in a light that is forgetting; though not all cases are successful. If memory itself can lead to a pleasurable outcome from the initial loss of pleasure, then how does one manage to relate pleasure in adult life? These defense mechanisms that our brain creates are penetrable and it becomes evident in cases of abuse (sexual, physical, and mental) that the victim will act out on the introverted emotions. When a child experiences abuse from an adult, what are the chances of sexual repression and psychological setbacks occurring? According to Karla R. Clark, there is a 4.5% chance. She argues that when a child by nature acts out on desires, there is no room for trauma; however, if an adult, perhaps, a parent, abuses their child it opens up room for an entire lifetime of effects disrupting the functionality. Clark states that the event must be “1) sudden, unexpected or non normative; 2) exceeds the individual's perceived ability to meet its demands and 3) disrupts the individual's frame of reference” (Clark 27). The consequences that are aroused through abuse prove to be detrimental to the normal child development of the victim and may cause them to repeat the event of abuse, as seen in various cases of rape and physical mistreatment.
Clark, Karla R. “Season of Light/Season of Darkness: The Effect of Burying and Remembering Traumatic Sexual Abuse on the Sense of Self.” Clinical Social Work Journal Spring 21.1 (1993): 25-42.
Freud, Sigmund. "Beyond the Pleasure Principle." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 341-37.
These acts, though, do not arise from the ground and into a child’s mind. Hatred, or dislike, is not something placed in food; it is bred into kids and as a defense mechanism, as Freud describes, children act out the repressed desire either in the home or at school. In this case, parents play a major and vital role in how children function socially, so if the parent is the offender against the child, for whatever reason (grades, hair, flailing of the hands, or homework), what other choice does the child have than to obey the providers of food, shelter and moral standing? The child takes what is learned at home and imprints it onto others.
Working very close to children opens up the opportunity to observe how curious these minds can be and how even the smallest thing can arouse lament, like an eraser being confiscated. Attraction, specifically sexual, is not something weaved into the child, like hatred; rather, sexuality and orientation are innate essences that evolve from crushes to confusion, and later, the liberation of those essences. It is the incarceration of these desires that help build the repeated event that Freud names in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” stating that “children repeat everything that has made a great impression on them in real life” (433). A traumatic event, such as the abuse of the narrator by his father for being homosexual, is enough for him, the narrator, to build a defense. It is in that defense that causes the narrator, in secret, to act out his yearning for men, repeatedly. Nonetheless, the damage has been done, for he marries a woman and produces offspring, which only enforces his father’s heavy hand over him and clouds his ability to remain faithful to his wife and children. His wish to be the free flowing homosexual is influenced by his contained self urging the beans to spill.
We, as humans, are able to overcome trauma, and have produced skill enough to accommodate that shock in a light that is forgetting; though not all cases are successful. If memory itself can lead to a pleasurable outcome from the initial loss of pleasure, then how does one manage to relate pleasure in adult life? These defense mechanisms that our brain creates are penetrable and it becomes evident in cases of abuse (sexual, physical, and mental) that the victim will act out on the introverted emotions. When a child experiences abuse from an adult, what are the chances of sexual repression and psychological setbacks occurring? According to Karla R. Clark, there is a 4.5% chance. She argues that when a child by nature acts out on desires, there is no room for trauma; however, if an adult, perhaps, a parent, abuses their child it opens up room for an entire lifetime of effects disrupting the functionality. Clark states that the event must be “1) sudden, unexpected or non normative; 2) exceeds the individual's perceived ability to meet its demands and 3) disrupts the individual's frame of reference” (Clark 27). The consequences that are aroused through abuse prove to be detrimental to the normal child development of the victim and may cause them to repeat the event of abuse, as seen in various cases of rape and physical mistreatment.
Clark, Karla R. “Season of Light/Season of Darkness: The Effect of Burying and Remembering Traumatic Sexual Abuse on the Sense of Self.” Clinical Social Work Journal Spring 21.1 (1993): 25-42.
Freud, Sigmund. "Beyond the Pleasure Principle." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 341-37.
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