Dancing with Defamation

Defamation is one the biggest if not the biggest legal issue us journalists have to deal with, even on WINOL I have found myself discussing it with reporters and lecturers. So what actually is defamation , in the simplest terms defamation or defaming someone is saying something negative about a person, company or organisation. Which as a journalist can be a difficult this to avoid.

The legal definition of a defamatory statement as given in McNae's is that a statement about a person defamatory if it tends to:

• Expose a person to hatred, ridicule, or contempt; or
• causes the person to be shunned or avoided; or
• lower the person in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally; or
• disparage the person in his/her business, trade, office, or profession.

The words tends to are very important in this case because it means that the claimant, the person claiming to have been defamed, doesn't have to show that they were actually exposed to hatred or ridicule ect.

There are ways of defaming a person without actually asserting a defamatory statement, these are known as inference and innuendo.

Inference

As the name implies, is when someone infers a defamatory statement, this could be something as simple as saying “a man, known for his views against alcoholism was seen leaving a pub late last night, the local member was said to have been stumbling and dropped his mobile phone.” This implies that he was drunk and because of his stance against alcohol this statememnt would defame him. Even though I have not said he was drunk, by saying he was leaving a pub late and night and stumbling I have inferred that he was.

McNae's definition of inference is:

• An inference is a statement with a secondary meaning which can be understood by someone without special knowledge who 'reads between the lines in the light of his general knowledge and experience of wordy affairs.

Innuendo

Innuendo is similar to inference, but the main difference is that innuendo is that unlike inference innuendo can seem like a normal statement to the general public, but there is a group people with special knowledge that can then understand that the statement is in fact implying something defamatory.

McNae's definition of innuendo is:

• An innuendo is a statement which may seem innocuous by some people but which will be seen as defamatory by people with special knowledge.

The person claiming to have been defamed by innuendo must prove two thing, firstly that the special facts or circumstances giving rise to the innuendo and secondly that there are people who know about these when the statement was published.

A high profile example of defamation through innuendo which has is active at the moment is Lord McAlphine after the recent Newsnight broadcast. The BBC thought that they would be legally safe because they did not name anyone during the report, but it has become clear that they gave enough information to allude towards McAlpine, which then lead to people like George Monboit to tweet about the report, identifying McAlpine,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9683457/Lord-McAlpine-Guardian-will-not-pay-George-Monbiots-legal-costs.html

This aticle: http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/lord-mcalpine-accuses-media-defamation-innuendo-over-child-abuse-links gives an overview of the case.

With the introduction of no win no fee lawyers in recent years the realm of libel courts to the masses where as before they were mainly used by wealthy and litigious celebrities. This means that journalists have to be even more careful about what they write and say.

But of you do defame someone then there are several things the claimant must prove to be able to sue for damages, these are:

• the publication is defamatory; and
• it may be reasonably understood to refer to him/her – that is, 'identification'; and
• it has been published to a third person

An easy three word mantra to remember this is: defamation, identification, publication.

Defamation: The claimant must prove they have been defamed, I have already been through what makes a statement defamatory.

Identification: The claimant must prove that the material identifies him/her. On this subject McNae writes “The test of whether the published statement identifies the claimant is whether it would reasonably lead people acquainted with him/her to believe that he/her was the person referred to.”

In 1862 a judge said that it is only necessary that “those who know the claimant can make out that he/she is the person meant”

Journalist have to be careful when writing about members of organisations, for example if these is only a single female officer in a station and I wrote something defamatory about the female police officer, but did not name her, it is obvious who I am writing about. Also derogatory comments about institutions can reflect upwards onto the person who runs the institution, McNae especially warns about criticising schools.

Wrongly identifying is another danger we face, this means checking facts like how a name is spelt and that a picture if of the correct person. McNae gives an example from the Daily Mail who published a photo of the wrong man in the coverage of a robbery trial.

http://www.rjw.co.uk/legal-services/media-libel-privacy/defamation-libel-slander/recent-cases/case/negligent-misstatement-about-nurse-leads-to-defamation-claim/#axzz2CPFLB2Lx Here is an example in which a newspaper clearly defames a nurse, but has no legal defence because they named the wrong nurse in the article.

The way to avoid miss identification is to identify someone as mush as you can, this can mean including a persons age, address and occupation alongside the CORRECT picture. This is especially important when court reporting.

It is possible to defame a group, if the group is small enough. So if a journalist writes something defamatory about a small group or organisation, McNae uses the example of a small police station, but does not identify a specific person in the station then if the group is small enough all the members of the station can sue. There is currently no actual number with defines how large these groups can be, but a group of 35 police dog handler's was views sufficient to identify them as individuals.

A well known example of this occurred after allegations that a detective at Banbury CID had raped a woman. The publication failed to name an individual and were sued by the 12 detectives.

The final thing to talk about before wrapping up Identification is Juxtaposition. This is when a photograph is placed incorrectly or the wrong photograph is used, this can be especially bad if the position of the picture suggest that it is the person being identified in a separate story.

Publication: This is the simplest to prove, if the statement has been said to or been written down and shown to anyone other than the person it refers to then it has been published, and once it is in a newspaper it has definitely been published. As far as the internet is concerned this is where things can become a little tricky, within English copyright law a claimant cannot sue unless there is a 'significant publication'. The example provided by McNae's showed that only 5 people had viewed the defamatory material in the UK, and three of these were the claimants 'camp'.

One other thing for people to be mindful of, especially within WINOL and as students is the laws around repeating statement of others. Every repetition of a libel is a fresh publication, which creates a fresh cause of action, and there is no defence for you to day you were just repeating the words of others. One of the most common cases of this is repeating statements made by interviewees without being able to prove they are truthful.

It is key to remember that we are all publishers now, every blog, tweet and post on facebook can defame someone and can land you with a big legal bill.

Defences

Now that we can identify when a statement will be defamatory and when you can be sued lets look at the defences.

There are three main defences a journalist can use against libel claims, these are:

• Justification
• Comment
• Privilege

Justification is the simplest and best defence of the three, this defence is purely proving that what you said it true. There are some requirements you must meet to be able to use this defence, these are:

• that the published material complained of can be proved in a court to be substantially true
• the material must be proved to be true on the 'balance of probabilities'

This is less evidence than is required for 'beyond reasonable doubt' but the publication must have enough evidence to persuade a jury, or a judge when no jury is present, that their version of events is the right one. If this requirement is met it gives complete protection against the libel action.

Honest Comment

This is the second of the main defences and put simple is giving an honest opinion, like with justification there are several requirements if this defence is to be used, these are:

• the published comment must be honestly held in theopinion of the person making it
• it must be recognisable as comment rather than as factual allegations
• it must be based or provably true facts/privileged material
• it must implicitly or explicitly indicate, at least in general terms, the facts on which is it was based.

http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/analysis-opinion/2012/11/ground-breaking-libel-case-was-close-shave-for-gillettes/ Here is an example where the honest comment defence failed, even after it was amended.

Privilege

There are two types of privilege, absolute and qualified privilege, absolute privilege provides a complete defence against any defamatory action, even if malicious. Members of parliament have absolute privilege, but as far as journalist are concerned we have to make do with qualified privilege.

Qualified privilege is a defence available to journalist reporting certain events, there are:

• debates held in public at any legislature in the world
• court proceedings held in public anywhere in the world
• public meetings and press conferences
• the meetings of councils, their committees and sub-committees
• statements issued by for the public by government departments

Like all of the defences there are several requirements a journalist must meet to use this defence. Put simple these are fast, accurate and fair, which is a mantra that has been instilled in us from the beginning of the course as a general way to conduct good journalism.

Fast or contemporaneous means that the report must be published 'as soon as practicable'. For newspapers this means the day after the hearing, and for broadcasters on their next broadcast, be that the same day or the start of the next day.

Accurate as always being accurate is important in journalism, and especially so within court, this means making sure not to report a witness and the defendant or is there are several defendants making sure that you report the correct sentence for each.

Fair there are two important factors here, the first is being without malice, the journalist must only publish with the motive to inform the public.

The final defence I will talk about is the Reynold's defence, this defence came about after the 1998 case between Albert Reynolds and the Times Newspaper, the action came about after the Times published an article claiming that Reynolds had misled the Irish parliament. Although the Times lost the case, after the trial it was deemed that it is a journalists duty to publish media in the public interest, even if it cannot be proven to be true.

Lord Nichollis set out a list of rules to show if the publication is the work of a responsible journalist and therefore able to use the defence, these rules are:

1. The nature of the information, and the extent to which the subject-matter is a matter of public concern.
2. The source of the information. Some informants have no direct knowledge of the events. Some have their own axes to grind, or are being paid for their stories.
3. The steps taken to verify the information.
4. The status of the information. The allegation may have already been the subject of an investigation which commands respect.
5. The urgency of the matter. News is often a perishable commodity.
6. Whether comment was sought from the plaintiff. He may have information others do not possess or have not disclosed. An approach to the plaintiff will not always be necessary.
7. Whether the article contained the gist of the plaintiff's side of the story.
8. The tone of the article. A newspaper can raise queries or call for an investigation. It need not adopt allegations as statements of fact.
9. The circumstances of the publication, including the timing.
   
10. The Circumstances of the publication, including the timing

A recent use of the Reynold's defence can be seen here http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/21/times-libel-reynolds-defence?intcmp=239 in which the Times used it to publish an article about police corruption. The original publication in the newspaper and on the website were deemed to be covered under the Reynold's defence. But after a police investigation Flood was exonerated of any wrong doing, the Times failed to update their website and the judge in the court of appeals said that the failure to update the website was not responsible journalism. This is an important thing to remember that once a story is written and published it cannot be pushed out of your mind, because changes in the story can change your legal defence.

Currently there is a new Defamation bill going through the House of Lords at the moment which will no doubt change libel law and the defences journalists have. The key thing at the moment looks the be the inclusion of a simple and effective public interest defence which will hopefully provide more freedom for journalists. You can read more about the libel reform here http://www.libelreform.org/

A recent defamation case I saw while writing this blog is from Australia, where google has had to pay $208,000 to a man whos name was lined to a gangster. This raises the question that can a search engine defame someone when it is just running off an algorithm. I am sure google will not let this happen again because the suit came about after their failure to act.

It is interesting to see how the internet and defamation have come together this week and when English defamation law will catch up.

Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889 into an extremely wealthy family and was home schooled up until the age of 14 when he moved to Realschule in Linz and attended the school at the same time at Hitler, but it is unknown if the two ever met.

When the First World War broke out Wittgenstein enrolled in the Austro-Hungarian army in an artillery workshop, he was extremely well honoured and was decorated with several medals for his role in defending against the Brusilov offensive. He also fought on the Russian front and the Italian front. He took a military leave in 1918 and stayed in Vienna where he completed the Tractatus and submitted it for publishing.  

After he sent the Tractatus for pubhlishing a series of events which made him rethink his life and give away his vast fortune; his brother killed himself,  the Tractatus was not published; David Pinsent, a man whom he had fallen in love with as a teenager, had died in a plane crash and as if to ad insult to injury he was captured by allied roves an spent 9 months in an Italian prisoner of ward camp. When he returned to his family he talked incessantly of suicide and decided to do two things: give away his fortune, as I mentioned, and become a teacher.

While Wittgenstein was living and teaching in rural Austria, where he gained a reputation as a bit of a tyrant, the Tractatus was published first in Germany and later in England with an introduction by Bertrand Russel.

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is written as 7 short declrarative sentences which make it sound simplistic, but each sentence if followed by several footnotes, each itself a statement which proves the former.

The seven propositions of the Tractatus are:

1. The world is everything that is the case.
2. What is the case is the existence of states of affairs.
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.
4. A thought is a proposition with a sense
5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
6. The general form of a proposition is the general form of a truth function, which is: . This is the general form of a proposition.
7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein is his last and most famous statement “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” creates a limit on what can and cannot be discussed and analysed in a logical way. This puts a limit on language and philosophy and means that matephysical ideas like God, religion and ethics should not be discussed by philosophers because statements about them cannot be verified.

The rest of the statements and their relevant footnotes discuss how language relates to objects and how these objects can be analysed using language and broken down to simpler and simpler forms, this is a similar idea to logical atomism.  

Proposition 1:

1 The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
1.2 The world divides into facts.
1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.

This sets out some basic principles for the following propositions, mainly outlining what objects are, what they are made off and what does and doesn’t count as an object.

I’m going to jump in the middle here to “1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.” Wittgenstein coined this idea of a logical space which is somewhere in which everything that can, and can be proven to exist, does. So for example a desk, a chair and a computer and all the parts which make them exist in this “logical space” whereas god, love and ethics would not. I have started off here because I think it’s a good way to think about what facts are and how they relate to the rest of the statements.  

Proposition 2 is where the logical analysis is introduced in its simplest form.

2 What is the case--a fact--is the existence of states of affairs.
2.01 A state of affairs is a combination of objects.
2.02 Objects are simple.

Here Wittgenstein introduces the concepts of objects and states of affairs.

An object is basically a simple object, something that is really made up of one object so say a chair leg. Whereas the chair itself is a state of affairs because it is made up of several objects; legs, arms, a back and a bottom. This way of thinking about the world as objects and states of affairs can let you analyse objects down to their atomic states and let you create abstract ideas like a forest or a city.

Proposition 3 combined with 2 brings to an end Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language. A basic overview of this theory is that the world consists of interconnected atomic facts, and propositions make up pictures of the world.

Language is at the basis of Wittgenstein’s work and in his later book Philosophical Investigations he discussed the concept of something he called “language games”.

The “language game” is a simple concept compared to those I have talked about the in Tratatus, and at its roots says that language, for example the English language is a game and has a set of rules that in essence all the “players” must adhere to. So when you begin a conversation with a person you are both entering into a language game with a set of rules, grammar, which you have both agreed to. Different situations have different rules so for example if I were in the pub I would use different language than if I were in a job interview so the language games in the two different situations have a different set of rules.

James Joyce - Circe

Circe is the 15th chapter of James Joyce during which a man, Bloom, as he journeys though Dublin’s red light district called Nighttown looking for his friend Stephen. Throughout his journey Bloom has many hallucinations caused by his subconscious.

Blooms first hallucination begins when he is confronted by guilt after buying food from a butchers, this hallucination begins with his father Rudolph who questions why his son is in the red light district, or Nighttown. Rudolph questions whether Bloom has a soul because he is in the red light district and Bloom feels guilty about this. This guilt is personified in the hallucination by the appearance of first his mother and then his wife. This hallucination, from a Freudian viewpoint is a manifestation of Blooms guilt, which was caused by him spending money in the butchers and venturing into the red light district. Freud would say that this guilt was caused by Blooms super ego because it knows that because he is married he shouldn’t be in the red light district and because Bloom gave in to his id when he bought the food because he got the instant gratification of buying the food on an impulse. Blooms hallucinations continue in the form of Mrs Breen who flirts with Bloom and then mocks him for being in the red light district, continuing the focus on Blooms guilt.

The next hallucination begins when Bloom feeds a dog in the street, which leads to him being arrested for prevention of cruelty to animals which sees Bloom be put on trial. This trial is an examination of Blooms sexual past and his repressed sexual fantasies. These are displayed within the hallucination as letters which Bloom has written to the women, which I think in reality are his sexual desires. Freud said that this sexual repression comes from the rules put in place by society which make us repress our primitive desires, therefore it is again a conflict between the id and super ego caused by the rules put in place by society. Bloom pleads guilty to the crimes because his subconscious knows that he has had these desired and repressed them. The hallucination ends with Bloom becoming a woman and giving birth to eight perfect children.

Blooms sexual repression is explored more when he enters the whorehouse and has a conversation with his grandfather about sex and the prostitutes in the whore house. This hallucination may be Bloom repressing or coming to terms with the repression of his current sexual desires, whereas the previous ones were focusing on desires from the past.

The most graphic hallucination happens while Bloom is in the whorehouse during which he transforms into a pig and is confronted by “the sins of the past” who displays his deepest darkest perversions to him. Not only does this hallucination reveal the deepest parts of Blooms repressed unconscious but also I think the fact that Bloom becomes a female pig and admits to being a “corset lover” or in other words a cross dresser shows Blooms true perversions which have been repressed because of the society in which he lives.

Overall Blooms hallucinations throughout Circe explore his repressed sexual desires and his guilt caused by his actions, these show a conflict between his id and super ego and how repression of sexual desires because of society can manifest themselves.

Introduction by Paul Krugman to The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, by John Maynard Keynes – Seminar Paper

Krugman outlines the basic theories that john Maynard Keynes outlines in his book The General Theory. The majority of Krugman’s work is a study of each chapter of Keynes’ writing. Krugman praises Keynes’ writing style. During this overview Krugman also outlines which chapters of The General Theory should be read with relevance to economics and which ones can be purely read for entertainment. I found that to completely understand, or at least try to, most of Krugman’s writing it was important to first understand Keynesian economic theory.

“If your doctrine says that free markets, left to their own devices, produce the best of all possible worlds, and that government intervention in the economy always makes things worse, Keynes is your enemy. And he is an especially dangerous enemy because his ideas have been vindicated so thoroughly by experience.”

The basis of Keynesian theory is that the economy will not balance itself like Adam Smith believed; Keynes denies the idea of the hidden hand of the market but instead the economy is driven by consumption. If the economy is in a depression and there is mass unemployment then consumption must be increased to improve the economy. Krugman describes Keynes view and wrote “The economy’s automatic tendency to correct shortfalls in demand, if it exists at all, operates slowly and painfully” I believe that this is Krugman showing Keynes’ first step away from the classical economy of Smith.

Rather than the market being self-regulating Keynes says that instead of waiting for the economy to come back to normal it instead needs to be stimulated by the state. For example in the great depression in 1930s America Keynes argued that the way to bring the country out of the depression would be to decrease interest rates and for the government to inject income. With an injection of money into the economy this would increase consumption which in turn increases demand and creates jobs; therefore it would boost the economy. In fact at the end of Krugman’s article he mentions that the government spending and work programme that pulled America out of the depression was WW II. Chris mentioned in the lecture that wars are good for an economy because it allows a government to increase public debt by billions of pounds, which may sounds like a negative, but this then in turn stimulates the economy. For example the current costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq was reached over £20 bn in 2010.

In Krugman’s writing he breaks down Keynes’ theory to four broad bullet points :

•  Economies can and often do suffer from an overall lack of demand, which leads to involuntary unemployment

•  The economy’s automatic tendency to correct shortfalls in demand, if it exists at all, operates slowly and  painfully

•  Government policies to increase demand, by contrast, can reduce unemployment quickly

•  Sometimes increasing the money supply won’t be enough to persuade the private sector to spend more, and government spending must step into the breach.

Krugman also mentions that Keynes’ opposition to the classical economic theories was started by his rejection of Say’s Law. Say’s law said that recession is not caused by a failure in demand of unemployment. Say believed that an economy was improved by increasing production rather than increasing demand. It is clear that Keynes’ views are a polar opposite of Say’s law.

Krugman does criticise Keynes, he recognises that the economic time during which The General Theory was written was a rare economic time, where he says “unable to create employment no matter how much they tried to increase the money supply” and says that Keynes identified this as the state of the economy for the future. But we have not seen the low interest rates which plagued America through the 50s.

Overall Krugman sees The General Theory as one the of the most influential pieces of economic writing because Keynes changed the way in which people looked at economics and compares it to The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith in terms of importance. Krugman says “suddenly the idea that mass unemployment is the result of inadequate demand, long a fringe heresy, became completely comprehensible, indeed obvious.” And although not all of his ideas stand up now his effects on economics can still be seen today, especially during the current global recession.

Tom Wolfe - New Journalism

In The New Journalism Tom Wolfe tracks the development of a new journalism and the features game as he calls it. In chapter one of The New Journalism Wolfe tells the story of his move into journalism from leaving graduate school, which he seems to think is a leaping point for people to write a novel. In his early years Wolfe seemed to think that writing a novel was the overwhelming goal for any feature writers was to rent a cabin in Nebraska, disappear for 6 months and come back with a bestseller in toe. He gives the example of two features writers one being a man called Portis who Wolfe describes as “living out the fantasy” when he quits his job in London rents a fishing shack in Arkansas and comes back 6 months later with 2 bestsellers Norwood and True Grit.

Chapter two, called “Like a Novel” begins with an example the change in the way features were written. “Joe Louis: The King as a Middle Aged Man” tracked the fall of a world championship boxer into his middle aged life through several broken marriages. This article took a highly person look into his life telling the story through pieces of conversations that he had with his wife and that his friends had about him. Wolfe was shocked by this new way of writing a feature and says “what the hell is going on!” he sees the text article as a combination of a short story and a traditionally written feature article.

Wolfe sees Brelisn as a bit of a revolutionary within the world of features because he moves away from traditional columnist way of churning up the old news in a liquid oxygen powered bowling ball, and instead shocked the world by stepping out the door and finding a story. The example of Breslins work that Wolfe gives is a court case where the focus of the column is not the prosecution and the defence but instead what each party had on their pinky.

Tom Wolfe continues working through influential works that have inspired him and then seems to realise an important factor in feature writing, the role of the narrator. He says that his work on the small Sunday supplement New York made him work  to grab the reader’s attention by “Yelling in their face”. A story he did about a women’s prison called Nut Heaven, in which the women would yell names at passing men until their victim stopped and then they would “suggest a lot of quaint anatomical impossibilities for the kid to perform”. This gave Wolfe the idea to move the narrator out of a passive role and instead put them in the scene yelling along with the women. He said he liked this technique because it allowed the audience to talk to the characters.

Wolfe expands on the importance of the narrator when he has the idea of changing the way the narrator talks to match the interviewee. The example he gives is feature he wrote on the drover Junior Johnson who was a NASCAR driver who learnt to drive by running moonshine. Wolfe felt that that the “century old British-tradition” which was the style in which all other narrators would talk in would contradict the way the moonshiner talked. So instead the narrator matches the character voice, he calls this device the “downstage voice” as though voice is talking downstage from the character. By 1966 he says that a new era of writing style has been created not by novelists or short story writers but by Journalists.

In chapter 3 Wolfe begins to talk about what today we would recognise as Gonzo Journalism but Capote named them non fiction novels.  He describes 3 journalists who all put themselves inside their story: John Sack joined the army and went to Vietnam as a Journalist; George Plimpton joined a professional football team and Hunter Thompson “ran” with the Hells Angels.

In his final chapter he writes his four rules of new journalism after seeing how journalists have taken the technical aspects of writing away from the Novelist and put in their new set of rules. A basic overview of the 4 rules is:

Scene by scene construction. Rather than rely on second-hand accounts and background information, Wolfe considers it necessary for the journalist to witness events first hand, and to recreate them for the reader.

For example when I mentioned Sack, Plimpton and Thompson who all put themselves inside their work, and even risked their lives to get a fist hand account of the events.

Dialogue. By recording dialogue as fully as possible, the journalist is not only reporting words, but defining and establishing character, as well as involving the reader..

An example Wolfe gave of this would be “Joe Louis: The King as a Middle Aged Man”

The third person. Instead of simply reporting the facts, the journalist has to give the reader a real feeling of the events and people involved. One technique for achieving this is to treat the protagonists like characters in a novel. What is their motivation? What are they thinking?

This is what John Sack did in his book “M” which was his account of the Vietnamese war.

Status details. Just as important as the characters and the events, are the surroundings, specifically what people surround themselves with. Wolfe describes these items as the tools for a "social autopsy", so we can see people as they see themselves

This is noticeable at the start of The New Journalist when he introduces the New Yorker’s Newsroom.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was born in Austria in 1856 and founded the discipline of Psychoanalysis. Freud thought himself more of a scientist than a philosopher, but had a massive influence on the field of psychology especially philosophy of the mind, ethics and religion. Freud described psychoanalysis as nothing more than exchanging words with your patient. Freud thought that by simply talking to his patients would reveal some kind of psychologically traumatic event in the persons past that they have repressed. Freud came to the conclusion that the traumas dated back to infancy and were usually related to sex. This lead him to his sexual development theories.

Freud explained that there are several stages of a child’s sexual development which can affect people in later life. The first stage is the oral stage which is from birth to 15 months, during this phase pleasure if focused on the mouth for example thumb sucking and biting things. Too much or too little gratification in this stage can lead to an oral fixation in later life

The second stage is the anal stage, from the age of 15 months to 3 years old. The most important part of this phase is toilet training which is a conflict between the Id and Ego, which will be covered later. If this stage is over emphasized then it can lead to a compulsive personality and if the parents do not put enough emphasis on this stage can lead to the opposite, so a messy or disorganised person.

The third stage, and the stage that Freud focused on the most is the phallic stage, which spans the age of 3-6 years old. In this stage children becomes aware of its own body and focuses on its own genitals. During this stage a male becomes sexually attracted to his mother which leads to resentment and jealousy towards his father. This jealousy leads him to fear his father because he fears that his father will retaliate by castrating him. This leads to the boy abandoning his attraction to his mother and he begins to identify with his father and becomes sexually attracted to women, This is the Oedipus complex and is a crucial stage in male development.

In his later work Freud expanded on his work on the unconscious mind by breaking the mind into three mental apparatus: the id, the ego and the super ego.

The id is the impulsive instinctual and acts according to the pleasure principle and seeks to avoid pain and gain pleasure.

The ego is the reason and common sense and its role is to balance between the basic impulses of the id while balancing this with the super-ego. As long as there is balance between the id and the super ego then everything is ok, but an imbalance can lead to neurosis.

The super-ego makes us act in a socially acceptable manner and works in conflict with the id and seeks for perfection and is what we call our conscience. An example of the super ego in society would be the church which sets out impossible rules which if not adhered to will lead to punishment in this case eternal damnation.

Freud used these three mental apparatus to explain different mental disorders caused by a lack of harmony between the three parts of the psyche, Conflicts between the id and ego lead to neurosis for example OCD and phobias. Conflicts between the id and super ego lead to depression and if the ego comes into contact with the external world psychosis appears because people loose their contact with reality.

David Hume video

Great discussion about David Hume's philosophy to celebrate his 300th birthday.