Summary Post Week 5

 Andra wrote in a post about how Freud was definitely a product of his time because he lived in a time of class struggle, war (WWI), and modernization. I definitely agree with this statement because Freud wrote a lot about our inner desires and drives and since WWI was a very brutal war- it makes sense that Freud (or anyone concerned with human nature) would want to figure out why men were so brutal with one another. What was going on in their subconscious that pushed them to act this way? I'm sure that Freud was also greatly impacted by Darwin, who wrote the Origin of Species in 1859 (3 years after Freud was born) and argued that man evolved from apes, from animals, from beasts. Darwin took man out of the lime light and once again tossed our understanding of human nature out the door. Darwin argued that man, at his basest form, was an animal- and Freud also argued that man, at his basest level (the id), was a primitive animal with the two essential desires of sex and violence. In my opinion, Freud was definitely influenced by Charles Darwin's concept of evolution/the origin of species. Therefore, when deciding if Freud was a product of his time, we can't just look at the key events happening while Freud was alive, but also that which happened before Freud was even born. We are all influenced by the present, but also by the past.