My Dog Freud

In his text, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," Freud discusses repetitive behavior that leads to various neuroses in adults. As an example, he describes a child's simple game in which he repeatedly throws a toy out of sight, exclaims that the toy is "gone," then retrieves the toy and exclaims, "there," thus mimicking the feelings he has when separated from his mother.

For some unexplainable reason, this reminded me of an episode of Cesar Millan's "Dog Whisperer." In the episode, a woman is having trouble with her dog barking incessantly whenever she leaves her apartment, and is therefore driving her neighbors crazy with the constant noise. The dog obviously suffered from the neurosis that his owner would never return after leaving him home alone, even though she inevitably, always returned home. In order to fix the problem, Cesar had the owner leave the apartment for short spans of time, starting with only 10 minutes, so that the dog would learn that even if his owner left, she would always return. Of course, Cesar was correct and the dog eventually overcame his neurosis.

So using, Freud's example, maybe dogs aren't as human like as many choose think of them. Perhaps if the dog had the mental ability to devise a game like that of the child in Freud's example, he would have been able to overcome his neurosis about being left at home alone, and like the child, could have dealt with those feelings on a smaller level, thus allowing him to deal with the real situation more effectively. However, if the dog had those childlike capabilities, how would Cesar Millan make his millions?