Sigmund Freud Theory

Biography of Freud

Born in 1856 in Moravia, Czech Republic, to Amalia and Jacob. Moved to Vienna in 1860, where he completes all of his education. Medical degree in 1881, specializing in Clinical Neurology. Clinical trials with patients led to the invention of the “talking cure” and the publication of Studies in Hysteria (1895). Married Martha Bernays and father to six children. Set up practice in Vienna in 1891 and began seeing patients for four decades. Witnessed the rising tide of anti-semitism in Vienna until Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. Died in 1939, after leaving Austria and enduring multiple complications with mouth cancer.

Significance of Freud

- Difficult to imagine the 20th century without Freud
- Human reason is not the controlling motivation of every human being
- Reason is a defense mechanism against unconscious desires and forces
-Invented the study of subjectivity

What did Freud Study?

-Abandoned traditional hypnosis therapy, and he preferred doctor-patient dialogue
- Studied discredited forms of knowledge revealed by dreams, jokes, memory lapses, and slips of the tongue

Key Psychological Insights

Unconscious and Repression

Importance of Dreams

Taboo against incest is central to early psyche formation

Oedipus Complex

Id

Ego

Superego

Id

-Unmovable “it” of the psyche that is home to unconscious drives and desires

-Its signals do not reach our conscious direct, easily translatable messages

-The drive and needs operate like pressures on our conscious mind, of which we do not easily understand

-Disrupts our waking life and infiltrates our dreams, sending us messages that are difficult to decode

-Guided by the pleasure principle

Ego

-The version of yourself you prepare to meet others

-You in reality, guided by the reality principle, which argues that your mind reacts to meeting the external world by balancing subjective drives with objective constraints of social life

-Mediator btw compulsions of the Id and moralizing of Superego

-Characterized by lack, often comprised of feelings and thoughts that something is always missing, whether it be something lost, a boundary that limits our behavior, or a barrier between us and what we want

-The social domain of Language

Superego

-The moral agency of the psyche

-Internalized  ideas of right and wrong established by family and culture

-Interacts with the Id by checking its irrationality and sends messages to Ego reminding it of social standards and limits to behavior

-Characterized by feelings of guilt and shame if the boundaries built by Ego are transgressed by the Id

-Sends messages in sometimes conflicting negative and positive forms, telling us “no, don’t do that” while also suggesting that maybe we should “just do it” despite the consequences

-Knows what is right and wrong, and without a moderating Ego, its messages can overwhelm us

Oedipus Complex

-Freud develops this insight by reading closely Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, a play he describes as depicting the tragedy of destiny when repression can’t hold and unconscious desires are unleashed

-Relies on Shakespeares, Hamlet to explain how unconscious desires remain repressed thus blocking conscious action

-Freud describes psychosexual maturity of children (specifically boys) as an unconscious attachment to one parent (a lot of times Mom) and a rivalry with the other (a lot of times Dad)

-Healthy maturation develops if the attachment with one parent is broken and victory is achieved over the other parent

-Neurosis develops if one or both of these achievements are blocked

-In 20th century American literature, many writers see breaking the Oedipal bonds to parents and family as a symbol of liberation, a feeling similar to the American experiment in liberty and equality

-Other writers explore how family attachment traps characters into generational trauma

Dreams - Freud

-______ are meaningful and not nonsensical

-Composed of remnants of our everyday lives chosen by our unconscious to represent disguised wish fufillment

-Reveal repressions of everyday life, the other inside of us, and human subjectivity is at odds with itself

-In ______ we construct obstacles to our desire, and obstacles are necessary

-Obstacles to desire are satifying

______ have Manifest content and Latent Content

Manifest Content

images/ message on the surface of the dream

Latent Content

images/ messages under the surface of a dream

Literary Theory and Dreams

-Storytelling and poetry are not dreams but they’re close

-Stories and poems can create a dreamlike world

-Sotires and poems sideline consious though and invite unconscious desire

-Writer creates a story/poem to satisfy a reader’s desire, like a _____ creating a ____ to satisfy his/her desire

-Stories and poems communicate more by what’s missing, using distortion, barriers, and obstacles

-Formal choices appeal to our desire but they obscure as much as they reveal

-Surface reading vs Deep Reading