Freud and Psychoanalytical Theory

1. Freud and Psychoanalytical Theory

2. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • Austrian Psychologist • Founded the clinical practice of psychoanalysis to treat psychopathology in patients through dialogue • Investigated the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind • Repressed fears and conflicts are brought into the conscious and faced openly, instead of remaining buried in the unconscious

3. The Unconscious is a dimension of the human mind that is only partially accessible to consciousness • Repository of repressed desires, memories, and instinctual drives • Many have to do with sexuality and violence

4. Dreams • The unconscious often expresses itself in dreams • Express wishes or desires that cannot be expressed consciously because they go against society • Dreams distort the unconscious material and makes it more acceptable towards the conscious

5. Defense Mechanisms • psychic procedures for avoiding painful admissions or recognitions • Screen Memory – inconsequential memory whose function is to obliterate a more significant one • Freudian Slip – repressed material in the unconscious finds an outlet through slips of the tongue, slips of the pen, or unintended actions

6. Repression and Sublimation • Repression • Forgetting or ignoring of unresolved conflicts, unadmitted desires, or traumatic past events • Forced out of the conscious into the unconscious • Sublimation • Repressed material is promoted into something grander or is disguised as something noble (religious experiences, art, etc…)

7. Displacement and Condensation • Displacement • One person or event is represented by another, which is in some way linked to or associated with it • Because of similar sounding word or symbolic substitution • Condensation • A number of people, events, or meanings are combined and represented by a single image in the dream

8. Displacement and Condensation II • They disguise the repressed fears and wishes contained in the dream • Gets past the censor that prevents wishes and fears from surfacing into the conscious mind • They fashion fears and dreams into images, symbols, and metaphors

9. Transference and Projection • Transference • The patient under psychoanalysis redirects the emotions recalled towards the psychoanalyst • Projection • When aspects of ourselves are not recognized as part of ourselves • Rather they or perceived in or attributed to another

10. 3 Part Model of the Psyche • Ego – has to manage the demands of the superego, while resisting the desires of the id • Id – inappropriate desires and impulses • Superego – the conscience or what society deems acceptable

11. Sexuality • Begins at infancy, not puberty • 3 stages • Oral • Anal • Phallic • Libido – energy drive associated with sexual desire • Eros – life instinct • Thanatos – death instinct

12. Oedipus Complex • Male infant desires to eliminate the father and become the sexual partner of the mother • Only the father’s intervention prevents incest • Male infant gives up sexual attraction to mother and identifies with father • Learns to desire other women other than the mother

13. Homosexuality and Women • Freudian theory based upon heterosexual men • Negative views of women • Sexuality based on feelings of narcissism, masochism, and passivity • Penis envy: women suffer from an innate form of inferiority complex

14. Psychoanalytic Criticism • The unconscious (like a poem, novel, or play) cannot speak directly and explicitly • Speaks through images, symbols, and metaphors • Literature expresses experience through imagery, symbolism, and metaphor

15. Psychoanalytic Critics • Give central importance to the distinction between the conscious and unconscious mind • Pay close attention to unconscious motives and feelings • Those of the author • Those of the characters • Demonstrate the presence of psychoanalytic symptoms, conditions, or phrases • Oral, anal, phallic stages • Oedipus Complex • Defense Mechanisms