So basically, babies aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. Sure, through the next few years as they’re growing up they take in vasts amount of information coming from sounds, objects, people, colors, movies, Elmo, bros and nonbros, children’s books, etc and they start connecting the dots and making sense of the all the confusing shit around them in spectacularly amazing record time. In short, children are fucking smart when it comes to learning a lot of shit really quickly, but until these processes start occuring more and more often, babies will be as unbro as they could ever be and it’s pretty fun to observe them as you ask them for a high five and they stare at you like your hand is made of fucking glitter with lollipops for fingers.

So Object Permanence was a concept Jean Piaget developed as a part of his theory of cognitive development. Object Permanence is the understanding that an object still exists even though it is hiding behind something and cannot be seen at all. So for instance, if some very pretty broad is sitting next to you in Art History class, and you with all your bro-ness manage to get her to write her number on a piece of paper and give it to you, when you put that piece of paper in your pocket it isn’t gone forever, it’s right in your fucking pocket. A 6 month old (unbro) baby would probably think that piece of paper is gone forever because it got swallowed up by some massive black hole that lives where ever shit can’t be seen (I know babies probably don’t know black holes are, but work with me!).

Also, this is why babies love (and hate?) playing peek-a-boo. For a few moments you hide behind your cupped hands, and in those few seconds the baby is probably about to have his first existential crisis because of the fact that it realized human beings can simply vanish into thin air like it just observed happen, and then it’ll come to the horrific conclusion it is left alone in this cruel universe and will be left in charge of all its decisions which include feeding themselves and somehow managaing to flip to Baby Einstein all by themselves! And then, you suddenly appear back from the void you were in when you hid behind your hands and the baby is happy knowing it doesn’t have to do any shit on its own for a very long time. UNTIL YOU HIDE AGAIN.

Up until the baby is about 2 years old it will, through that whole time, be developing its cognitive abilities, and one of these is the understanding of Object Permanence. So when they reach the age of understanding this concept, which is around the age of two, they will understand if a toy is hidden from their eyes, it still exists, they just can’t see it. So if you try and trick a child at this age by making them look into a box where their originally was a toy, if to their amazement it isn’t there anymore, they’ll try and reason to figure out where it possibly could have gone or fallen it. They are now fully aware that it still exists though.

****

Read more about this here.

Lawrence Kohlberg was a psychologist at Harvard University who specialized in moral education. He was mad bro with Jean Piaget who was a famous developmental psychologist and philosopher that focused most of his studies on children and their unbro minds. Jean Piaget’s theories will be fun to write about later on! 

So Kohlberg based most of his Stages off of studies done by Piaget. Kohlberg wanted to lay down a foundation for how children developing through their lives tend to morally view and reason about certain situations. He presented a sample of children a story - the Heinz Dilemma. Basically a bro steals something for his ill wife, and Kohlberg examined how the child answered, he didn’t care if they said it was wrong or right, but instead he cared about the reasons the child gave. Here’s the dillemma: 

Heinz’s wife was near death, and her only hope was a drug that had been discovered by a pharmacist who was selling it for an exorbitant price. The drug cost $20,000 to make, and the pharmacist was selling it for $200,000. Heinz could only raise $50,000 and insurance wouldn’t make up the difference. He offered what he had to the pharmacist, and when his offer was rejected, Heinz said he would pay the rest later. Still the pharmacist refused. In desperation, Heinz considered stealing the drug. Would it be wrong for him to do that?

So here’s what Stage 1 (Obedience & Punishment) reasoning to this question looks like: The bro shouldn’t have broken in and stolen the drug because he will be punished by more powerful bro-er authoritarian figures than himself. The child’s reasons for this answer usually involve consequences, punishment, and police figures. Children at this stage tend to think of morality as something external to themselves.

Stage 2 (Self-Interest & Individualism): Children at this stage tend to think of gaining something from a particular action and they start to view situations as relative rather than objective. They start caring more about their own self-interest and less about others like true bros.

Stage 3 (Interpersonal & Conformity): Children tend to try and live up to views of quote on quote, good boys, good girls, or good bros at this stage. Children now want to fit in and be liked by others, so if violating a rule would turn others against them, they’ll follow whatever others are doing to be liked and maintain good relationships.

Stage 4 (Order & Law): Children now tend to place themselves in the perspective of all of society. This stage is somewhat similar to stage 1, because now children view rules and morality as a strict law one must follow because that’s how society functions. They do what someone says just because, no questioning. If one person breaks a law, then other people can and everything goes down the shithole. So at this stage, whatever someone bigger than you says, if others follow it, you better fucking adhere to it also.

Stage 5 (Social Contract): Now it gets a little interesting; these are the post-conventional stages. Dilemmas now become even more relative to children, and they understand that different people, cultures, and groups hold different opinions and you should do what’s best for the greater welfare of everyone. Laws and rules may be regarded as simply social constructs in this stage.

Stage 6 (Universal Ethics):  Now children can reason abstractly using various principles. They now tend to form reasons around justice, ethics, and rights rather than form reasons around punishments or simply conforming to society. They learn to respect every individual and look at something from their point of view. Famous people that developed some of their ideas from this sort of stage include John Rawls, Immanuel Kant, and Gandhi. Bros will now act on something because they deem it to be right rather than because it is expected, legal, or agreed upon by most of society.

****

Learn more about this here and here.

Carl Jung was an Swiss psychologist who founded the school of Analytical Psychology. Early on, he was a follower of Freud’s psychoanalysis, but soon thereafter broke off from his studies to pursue his own thoughts on Depth Psychology. Just like a bro leaves the current bro’s he’s with who are unsuccessful at getting into a party, and pursues the goal alone or with new bro-er bro’s.

So what is the Collective Unconscious you may be asking? The collective unconscious is composed of this cool shit called archetypes which basically make up its structure. These archetypes are innate and within our unconscious minds, and they pretty much represent all human behavior. Every bro and nonbro has these archetypes, they are universal, and they continuously change and collect information through time within our species evolution. 

A few examples:

The Mother Archetype - this governs the mother-child relationship and is why a lot of the same actions a mother in France performs with her child, is the same as a mother and child in America. A mother is nurturing and comforting.

The Self - the center psyche of each person. The self makes a person think and behave in “I”. The self cannot exist without the other archetypes and the archetypes cannot exist without the self (WOAH what a conundrum). The self is what grows and changes as a bro or nonbro goes bro-ing or nonbro-ing through life.

Anima/Animus - the feminine image in a male and the masculine image in a female. This is what allows men and women to be in touch with the other gender. It represents unification within a person.

There are plenty more ie. animal, father, child, family..

Archetypes can be used to help better understand a person, and images and symbols of archetypes can be found in dreams and even in real life. This is where people like Jung and Freud would try to analyze the situation, environment, and people in your dreams to see what they actually represent. So dreaming of partying with your bro’s, could for instance mean your partying archetype is trying to tell you it needs you to party more.

If any of this is still somewhat confusing, good. Depth Psychology might not make sense at times. Maybe all these bros were crazy, geniuses, or both.

****

Here are some funny cartoons of Carl Jung. And to learn more about this stuff go here.

Psychological Egoism basically states that all humans act towards and are motivated by self-interest alone. So one bro’s motives for doing, in essence, anything is because in one way or another, directly or indirectly, it will positively effect their own bro-ness. Also, sometimes people may hide the fact that their actions are for self-interested reasons because THAT itself will be more beneficial to them.

So for example, if a bro see’s a man walking in front of him accidentally drop something, like a 5 dollar bill, and the bro picks it up and runs over to the man to give it back to him he is essentially doing this for self-interested reasons. Whether that be a reward (lawl yeah right), a pat on the shoulder (all bro’s love pats), or just feeling going about themselves later, whatever the case, it was not for true altruistic reasons but only for a self-interest.

Their is a lot of criticism against this theory, some coming from evolutionary theory and a lot coming from a handful of other psychologists and philosophers. Here’s a question to stir your thinking around: What if one bro, when partying hard, see’s someone outside through the window trip down some stairs and sprain his ankle. The bro then proceeds to put his partying on hold for a few minutes and goes out of his way to run out there to help the poor nonbro (it cannot be a fellow bro because bro’s never fall down flights of stairs). So is the act of helping in this situation for self-interested reasons only? Some argue that helping this nonbro will make the bro actually feel good because it is a self-regarding desire, which means the bro will get satisfaction through the well-being of someone else. Although, some would argue that this was a true altruistic moment being displayed and we developed altruism slowly through evolution and it is definitely apparent in human beings.

Whatever the case may be, all I know is that if a man dropped a 5 dollar bill, I’d keep it and buy a beer, but if a woman dropped a 5 dollar bill, I would pick it up, write my number on it, then politely give it back to her and tell her she looks nice.. profit.

Also, Psychological Egoism is a descriptive theory that comes from empirical studies on humans; it makes claims about how things are rather than how they should be.

****

Here are some interesting links to read more about this. 

So this fucking bro, Freud, was a badass. Let me being with some basic facts: He is Austrian, he has a pretty badass name, he’s a neurologist, he was the founder of the ever-enchanting field we all know as psychoanalysis, and he also smoked a shitload of cigars (and partied), like a true bro. Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory following a few basic tenets like: 

1) We perform most of our actions through an irrational drive we don’t have full control over which Freud concluded came from our unconscious.

2) The unconscious is the place where our feelings, emotions, and thoughts that we try and forget about go to (repressing thoughts) and lay back there like a bro who’s passed out at a party.

3) It becomes hard to change certain aspects of yourself when you’re older because most of your personal development takes place in childhood.

4) Humans also have this thing called the pleasure principle (The will to pleasure) which means our main psychological and biological drive is to gain pleasure and avoid discomfort and pain (like trying to get girls in art history and literature classes).

So here’s all this new shit (and there’s much more) dealing with people and their screwed up lives, so now for the fun part. Freud was one of the first (or maybe the first) to say that we don’t have full control over the content in our minds and even our actions. So we have all this stuff in our “unconscious”, whatever that means, and all the bad, negative, unbro shit can eventually cause certain people to develop mental diseases, physical pains, and even become neurotic. So what Freud developed, was a system for a patient to see a psychoanalyst and go through certain procedures to bring to light and rid themselves of these repressed thoughts that rest in the darkest recess of their brains.

So this is where a patient dealing with some sort of problem whether it be mental or physical, goes to see a psychoanalyst, lays down on a big couch and jabbers on about what seems at first to be meaningless bullshit, like about them getting into a fight with a fellow bro in a dream, or about the fact that they are always late for meetings, or their secret passions for becoming a trombone player but being afraid to tell their fellow bros in fear of being laughed at, whatever the case, talking is what goes in at these meetings. Basically, the analyst now tries to examine the patients choice of words, look for slips of tongue, notice their posture, ask them questions to get them flustered. All of these things help the analyst put together the pieces of the puzzle that lay in the patients head, and try and give them insight into their own repressed thoughts and help them find a resolution to their problems.

This is somewhat of a quick rundown of the Psychoanalytical method created by Freud, and I didn’t even get to mention all the cool things that go along with it, like all the fancy words created by and used by Freud! Here are some:

Libido: A person’s desire & drive for sexual activity. All bros have 23k libido points when their born. Nonbros only get 3k, and they make up for it with fancy cars.

Repression: When the shit that you don’t want goes into your unconscious. 

Free Association: The process of letting the patient jabber on endlessly without much interruption, as to slowly bring to light the deep thoughts he or she has.

Transference: Transferring one’s thoughts and feelings onto someone else. So a patient, after going on and on to the analyst about how his friends are too unbro, the patient might begin to direct his feelings and desires that he has towards his unbro friends onto the analyst himself.

Id, Ego, Super-ego: Theoretical model of the psyche proposed by Freud. The id provides us our animal instincts, the ego is our realistic and conscious part, and the super-ego moralizes, perfects, idealizes, and does a bunch of other cool shit. It is a contrast of the id.

So these are some fancy words used to descibe some procedures used in the field of psychoanalysis. I didn’t even mention any of Freud’s books like, The Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and one of his works I find very fascinating, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. You should definitely read some of Freud’s work to learn more about his life and works as a bro-major badass of the human mind.

Although, these days people tend to criticize Freud for lack of empirical evidence, pseudoscience bullshit, Karl Popper argues that most of the claims cannot be tested and therefore cannot be refuted, and some people even say the acts of continuing confession resemble acts in certain religions like Christianity. While some of the things said against Freud and his work may be true, Freud was a visionary, a genius in the field of Psychology, a creator of cool words psychologists still like to use today, a badass, and a bro; but most importantly his work helped various people back in the day and throughout the 20th century, and without his work at the turn of the century, many people with something as simple as having a phobia of touching doorknobs would be deemed crazy and put into a room with even crazier people trying to eat their own ears off.

****

Here are some interesting links that may fancy your interest: Sigmund Freud, The great psychoanalysts/therapists Jacques Lacan, Alfred Adler and Carl Jung (I’ll be writing about them soon too) and a list of works by Freud.