5 Freudian Principles That Can and Should Be Applied to Dog Training
Freudian Dog
In some ways I consider myself to be a Freudian dog trainer. Here are 5 areas where I think Freudian dynamics can clearly be seen in canine behavior.
1. Impulse Control
It was Freud’s view that the conscious mind, or Ego, had the job of deciding which external or internal stimuli should be acted upon and which shouldn’t. The Ego performed this task by restraining or restricting the flow of energy. One can’t go around acting on every stray thought or impulse that pops into one’s mind. So the Ego, or conscious mind, controls, ignores, or suppresses impulses coming from the Id, or unconscious mind.
Recent studies have shown that when the human mind is engaged in a task involving willpower, delayed gratification, or impulse control, blood glucose levels in the part of the brain involved in what’s called executive function, go down, which seems to prove Freud’s hypothesis from nearly 100 years ago. (Blood glucose is what supplies the brain with most of its energy.) Two studies have been done on dogs which suggest that they may also lose some mental energy after doing an impulse-control task.
My observations have led me to believe that in a long-term dog/human dynamic—one where dogs and their owners are highly in-tune with one another—the human acts as the control mechanism for the dog’s impulses.
2. Sublimating Aggression and Sexuality
Sublimation is a process where human beings (and perhaps some other social animals) take the emotions behind their sexual and aggressive urges and transform that energy into social behaviors instead. For example, you might take the anger you have toward your boss and invest it in creating new, innovative ways to make your department function better so that you can eventually take over her position. That’s a creative use of aggression!
Oddly enough, wolves also sublimate their aggressive urges, primarily the urge to bite, into postures that scientists have called dominant and submissive displays (a lot of teeth-baring and submissive licking). Dogs have not only inherited this ability, they had to expand on it when they first became domesticated. Those who didn’t sublimate their urge to bite probably didn’t live long enough to contribute to the gene pool. So sublimation is another Freudian dynamic that applies to dogs and dog training.
3. Repressed Emotions
Nearly all behavioral problems in dogs are the result of naturally-occurring emotions that were repressed by the dog during puppyhood. When a puppy enters a human household, he’s always being stopped, scolded, or pulled away from things that he feels emotionally attracted to. Not only that, but he also has to repress his urge to pee and poop anywhere he wants to anytime he feels like it as well.
So what happens to that energy when it’s repressed? It’s bottled up like steam building inside a pressure cooker. As a result of this unpleasant feeling of pressure, the puppy starts to develop behavioral tics and neuroses, which are generally categorized by the owner as “personality quirks.” In a worst-case scenario, the repressed energy evolves into severe behavioral problems, panic attacks, separation anxiety, intense “shyness” or aggression. But behind all those behaviors is the same general symptom: repressed emotional energy that needs to be released.
4. Projecting Emotions On to Objects of Attraction
Freud called this process cathexis. It can be seen most clearly in how we fall in love. Our need to form a romantic/sexual connection with the object of our affections is at times so strong it’s almost as if we’re carrying around this magic cloud of energy, full of thoughts and emotions about the person we’re attracted to.
When we’re not in the first throes of infatuation, we still need to project some of our energy onto other things. So we invest our time and energy in hobbies, in our jobs, favorite sports teams, favorite movie stars and musicians, and the occasional fantasy about someone other than our spouse. Dreams and wishes (the conscious kind, like when we dream of a vacation or buying a new car), are also forms of cathexis.
Dogs and wolves form cathexes as well. Wolves project their emotional energy onto their prey. In wolves, seeing or searching for prey animals stimulates strong feelings of attraction toward them. In like manner, dogs project their energy onto squirrels, their owners, their doggie pals, cyclists, skateboarders, and their toys.
5. The Constant Search for Pleasure
Why do humans and dogs project our energies onto objects of attraction? Because it feels good. Why does it feel good? Because when emotional energy builds up to a certain level, it creates feelings of pressure. Projecting some of that energy onto objects of attraction releases some of the pressure, creating a pleasurable feeling of release.
This is probably the most important Freudian principle because it’s not only the underlying process behind the other four, but behind the concept of positive reinforcement as well. In fact, positive reinforcement is a clinical outgrowth of Freud’s Pleasure Principle, the idea that all behavior is driven by the desire to seek out and repeat pleasurable experiences and to avoid painful ones. The primary difference, though, is that Freud defined pleasure as the sudden release of unresolved emotions.
It works like this: a stimulus—such as a feeling of hunger (internal), or the sight of a squirrel (external)—creates an uncomfortable feeling in the dog’s body of actual physiological pressure. Nature has designed animals and humans to feel this pressure so that we’ll act, do something. So a dog’s behavior is almost always an attempt to get rid of that feeling. If he finds a way to get rid of it, he experiences a pleasurable release. This explains why giving a dog what should be a pleasurable experience—say eating a liver treat—doesn’t always reinforce a behavior, but giving him a way to release his pent up emotions always does.
Lee Charles Kelley
“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?”
