Student 23

2 May 2000

There are many views of self expression. In this class we have talked about a few of them. Each being a little different from each other, but all expressing the self. Freud, Jung, and Rilke, gave us the psyche side. Hinduism gave us a religious side, and the Romantics gave us the self through art and music. All of them gave us a different side of self expression.

For Freud the self is the "id", "ego", "superego." The "id" is the evil side, or the devil sitting on your shoulder according to Freud. It is the side of us that wants to do the evil stuff or what comes natural to humans. The "superego" is our good side, or the angel on our other shoulder. It acts as our conscience and tells if what we are doing is wrong or not. This is where we feel guilt according to Freud. The "ego" is stuck right in the middle, it is working all the time to try and distinguish between the "id" and the "superego." Freud also says that the self has a defense for anything that may come its way. It uses sublimation to change oneself to an acceptable manner, rationality to rationalize the situation, regression for the feeling of regrets, regression to put things away for a little bit, and suppression to totally forget about something that happened. Jung had a slightly different view of the self. He says that we are either extroverts or introverts. An extrovert is somebody who does think before they speak, and shows themselves through talking. An introvert tends to think before they speak and it is hard for them to be expressed though talking. The second thing that Jung presents is sensing and intuiting, thinking and feeling. Sensing is a reality function, it relies on the senses or just the facts. Intuiting is way of seeing things through unconscious processes. The thinking part is intellectual and is balanced by positive or negative. Feeling is where one gets the ability to experience anger, sadness, happiness, and fear. As for Rilke, his view of the self had to do with the faces. The faces that people where in different situations and experiences. People put on faces for different reasons, some because they are hiding and some because they want people to see them. Some people have many different faces. Freud, Jung and Rilke have contributed many great insights to the self.

Hinduism gives us a religious view of the self. The Hindu have 330 million gods which they revere. They believe that the self is considered a god. They also believe in reincarnation. If a person is alive they have been reincarnated for a reason. They have not fulfilled their purpose on earth, which is to get rid of all their bad Karma in themselves, and must try and try again until they get it right. Then they can be relinquished.

Romanticism also gave us a different view of the self through expression. They expressed themselves through art and music. As they expressed themselves they used their feelings to be their expression power. Many works of art during this period were from the artists feelings. The music was composed through feelings such as patriotism, anger, and love. The period of the Romantics is suggested to be from 1790-1914, but no one is certain.

My self portrait did not use any or very few things from these ideas. I found out a lot about myself through this project, and I also found out that I do not know a lot about myself either. I created a three-dimensional self portrait to express that I am a very deep person. I also have to mention that I am also very simple too. I used a clear container that is a rectangular-cube to symbolize stability and the top is a circle to represent wholeness. The container is filled with water to symbolize my Christianity. This is the whole essence of my self. I am a devout Christian and I see everything through it. The water also symbolizes purity, I am pure through the blood of Christ. I have items suspended in the water that represent me. I see these things through the water, or Christianity. There are many symbolic things in the Bible that uses water, for example baptism is one. The first thing is a pen top. This symbolizes the unwritten future that is before me that I am facing at this time in my life. It also shows that I should trust God who has the pen, for He is writing my future. The next thing is a band-aid. This symbolizes the scars or hurts that I have been through. God has shown me many things through my hurts and I have learned from them. I also have a paper-clip suspended in the water. This symbolizes how I tend to try and hold things together, whether it be family or anything I try and keep things together. I have a positive attitude to life. The next is a key, which represents my attitude. This key can open any door and that is my attitude. I am going to do anything I set my mind to do, but through Christ only. The next item is a shaver-blade. This symbolizes me as being a clean cut person. I am not a very rough kind of guy, I think of myself as pretty smooth. I also love to dress up and be clean. The next item is a screw and a nut. This symbolizes what I want to build my dreams, my intuitiveness. I have many dreams for myself, but I only want what God wants for me. The next item is a small Tigger. This represents my personality. I am a fun-lovin kind of guy, I love to have fun, but sometimes I also do not know my limits. The last item is my freshman pin from GC & SU. This represents where I am at right here and now in my life. God has brought me here for a reason and He will show me sooner or later. All of these items are submersed in the water. It is all contained, this is how my view myself. I am a whole person, though the water is transparent it holds my hopes in it.