Do as ye will

I honestly believe in freedom. That people have the right to life, liberty, and property (pursuit of happiness). In my mind, people have the right to do anything they want and society (or govt.) can only curtail these freedoms if that freedom imposes on the life, liberty, property of another citizen.

People are going to do whatever they want.
Many things can happen in relation to human urges
people will repress the urges
which usually causes internal harm and they tend to redirect the urge. Sometimes in a good way, most times in a bad way.
I believe the good way only comes when they seek help for their urge and are taught healthy ways to redirect.
Then there is Expressing those urges despite the conflicts it may create in the community, family, religion
Expressing those urges and finding a community that accepts that behavior
Eliminating the urge. For innate biologically predisposed urges, it's virtually impossible to eliminate the urge. This is where redirection comes in.
For urges caused by nurture, trauma... it is possible to eliminate an urge.

If it is an urge that is supported by a group, they will often times segregate themselves from the rest of the community and create their own space

People are always looking for information that confirms their desires. Often ignoring or invalidating info that goes against their urges.


Defense mechanisms

Denial: You completely reject the thought or feeling.

Suppression: You are vaguely aware of the thought or feeling, but try to hide it.

Reaction Formation: You turn the feeling into its opposite.

Projection: You think someone else has your thought or feeling.

Displacement: You redirect your feelings to another target..

Rationalization: You come up with various explanations to justify the situation (while denying your feelings).

Intellectualization: A type of rationalization, only more intellectualized.

Undoing: You try to reverse or undo your feeling by DOING something that indicates the opposite feeling. It may be an "apology" for the feeling you find unacceptable within yourself.

Isolation of affect: You "think" the feeling but don't really feel it.

Regression: You revert to an old, usually immature behavior to ventilate your feeling.

Sublimation: You redirect the feeling into a socially productive activity.

Repression is the blocking of unacceptable impulses from consciousness.

Intellectualization is the use of a cognitive approach without the attendant emotions to suppress and attempt to gain mastery over the perceived disorderly and potentially overwhelming impulses. An example might be an individual who when told they had a life threatening disease focuses exclusively on the statistical percentages of recovery and is unable to cope with their fear and sadness.

Fantasy, when used as a defense mechanism, is the channeling of unacceptable or unattainable desires into imagination. This can protect ones self esteem as when educational, vocational or social expectations are not being met, one imagines success in these areas and wards off self condemnation.

Compartmentalization is a process of separating parts of the self from awareness of other parts and behaving as if one had separate sets of values. An example might be an honest person who cheats on their income tax return and keeps their two value systems distinct and unintegrated while remaining unconscious of the cognitive dissonance.

Compensation is a process of psychologically counterbalancing perceived weaknesses by emphasizing strength in other arenas. The "I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover" philosophy can be an example of compensation as can the Napoleonic complex.

Acting out - The individual copes with stress by engaging in actions rather than reflecting upon internal feelings.
Affiliation - Involves turning to other people for support.
Aim inhibition - The individual accepts a modified form of their original goal (i.e. becoming a high school basketball coach rather than a professional athlete.)
Altruism - Satisfying internal needs through helping others.
Avoidance - Refusing to deal with or encounter unpleasant objects or situations.
Compensation - Overachieving in one area to compensate for failures in another.
Humor - Pointing out the funny or ironic aspects of a situation.
passive-aggression - Indirectly expressing anger.

In Sigmund Freud's topographical model of personality, the ego is the aspect of personality that deals with reality. While doing this, the ego also has to cope with the conflicting demands of the id and the superego. The id seeks to fulfill all wants, needs, and impulses while the superego tries to get the ego to act in an idealistic and moral manner.

What happens when the ego cannot deal with the demands of our desires, the constraints of reality, and our own moral standards? According to Freud, anxiety is an unpleasant inner state that people seek to avoid. Anxiety acts as a signal to the ego that things are not going right.

Frued identified three types of anxiety:

1. Neurotic anxiety is the unconscious worry that we will lose control of the id's urges, resulting in punishment for inappropriate behavior.

2. Reality anxiety is fear of real-world events. The cause of this anxiety is usually easily identified. For example, a person might fear receiving a dog bite when they are near a menacing dog. The most common way of reducing this anxiety is to avoid the threatening object.

3. Moral anxiety involves a fear of violating our own moral principles.

In order to deal with this anxiety, Freud believed that defense mechanisms helped shield the ego from the conflicts created by the id, superego, and reality.

Not a big fan of Freud but I'll ride with him on this theory.

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