In the following passage, I am simply going to draw an interesting connection between two approaches that attempt to explain human behavior. While the genre of questions that both these theorists faced were quite similar, their approaches were understandably quite different, given the contrasting disciplines they were engaged in. Freud was a scientist, a pioneer psychoanalyst mapping the structure of human personality. Foucault was a historian, a French theorist who brought to light the unspoken power relations within social practices. Yet both served to analyze systems of cognition, uncovering their unconscious disciplines and socially constructed rules. Both attempted to put into words the reasons for our motives, our inner conflicts, our fears, and the mounting pressure that humans collectively feel from unseen forces. And both battled with the same perplexing question that recurs over and over in literature to this day: Is human behavior a result of a natural, biological destiny or is it a socially constructed fate shaped by the environment we grow up in and the experiences we have?

Foucault used a prison concept called the Panopticon to explain behavior. It was the idea that prisoners wouldn’t do anything wrong because they believed someone was watching them at all times. Foucault said that people retain a sense of ‘normality’ because they have a similar inner feeling that they are being monitored. This is the power structure in society. Freud used a structure of personality to explain behavior. He said people behave according to three parts of our personalities: our id, our ego and our superego. Each are quite distinct and never act alone. While our id operates in pursuit of instinctual pleasure (eating, sex, avoiding pain), our ego operates according to reality and common sense. Our superego (the part I find quite similar to the Panopticon) is our system of morals and standards and the values we are taught to hold. Out of the superego come feelings of guilt, shame, as well as of pride and satisfaction.

These feelings equate well with the content found in acting normal as they do with the deviant humiliation felt in acting abnormal. Just as the Panopticon is a metaphor for the general malaise of imperceptible guidelines draped over us in our power-ridden society, the superego serves as the same intangible power of authority that undeniably governs our actions. Just as the Panopticon idea can be a way to explain the reason for our reluctance to break certain societal rules, the superego is a way to explain those certain moral taboos we all have.
Its obvious then, that the frame of mind among the various schools of thought in the early half of this century was fairly consistent. A French historian on one hand theorizing about a new way to view our social power structure, and an Austrian psychoanalyst attempting to discover the indecipherable reasons to our behaviors.

Despite the two thousand years of brilliant minds, and all the state of the art technology in the world today, there still is this sort of mystery to our behaviors. Why some people choose to be religious, others choose to fight, why one person turns gay, and another seemingly normal kid shoots his classmate remains to be discovered. Men like Foucault and Freud do offer tremendously insightful explanations, but in the end, who knows what the real truth is anyway?