Chapter 33

The Freudian Revolution

Psychoanalysis = the talking cure

The Tripartite Psyche The id—the repository of the libido. Demandin

g swift satisfaction and fulfillment of biological desires, it is lawless, asocial, amoral.

The ego—making the id’s energies nondestructive by postponing them or diverting them into socially acceptable actions.

The superego—similar to one’s conscience, operating according to the morality principle. (parents, institutions) (Dobie 51)

Erogenous 性感 Zone The oral stage—associated with the drive to inc

orporate objects The anal stage---The anal stage is sadistic, in t

hat the child derives erotic pleasure from expulsion and destruction; but it is also connected with the desire for retention and possessive control, as the child learns a new form of mastery and a manipulation of the wishes of others through the ‘granting’ or withholding of the faeces.

The phallic stage---only the male organ is recognized. (Eagleton 153)

Fixation 固戀 When one’s desire is tied to an object of

desire connected to an earlier phase in one’s psychosexual development.

Example: a fixation on oral pleasure, which Freud would see as “stuck” at the oral phase, even though other aspects of one’s development may have proceeded normally. (Felluga)

RegressionWhen normally functioning desire

meets with powerful external obstacles, which prevent satisfaction of those desires, the subject sometimes regresses to an earlier phase in normal psychosexual development. (Felluga)

RegressionExample 1: a normally

functioning woman is dumped by her boyfriend and starts over-eating (thus regressing to the oral phase).

RegressionExample 2: the neurotic begins o

ver-eating; the pervert gives up men and becomes a lesbian (a sexual identity that Freud saw as perversion, though many have since critiqued him on this point). (Felluga)

The Oedipus Complex

The boy’s close involvement with his mother’s body leads him to an unconscious desire for sexual union with her.

What persuades the boy-child to abandon his incestuous desire for the mother is the father’s threat of castration.

The Oedipus Complex

This threat need not necessarily be spoken; but the boy, in perceiving that the girl is herself ‘castrated’, begins to imagine this as a punishment which might be visited upon himself.

He thus represses his incestuous desire in anxious resignation, adjusts himself to the ‘reality principle’ . . . . The boy makes peace with his father, identifies with him, and is thus introduce into the symbolic role of manhood. (Eagleton 155-156)

The Oedipus Complex

It is the point at which we are produced and constituted as subjects.

It signals the transition from the pleasure principle to the reality principle, form the enclosure of the family to society at large, since we turn from incest to extra-familial relations; and from Nature to Culture. (Eagleton 156)

The Oedipus Complex

The human subject who emerges from the Oedipal process is a split subject, torn precariously between conscious and unconscious; and the unconscious can always return to plague it (Eagleton 156).

Dreams The “royal road” to the unconscious is d

reams. Dreams allow us one of our privileged gl

impses of the unconscious at work (Eagleton, 157).

Neurosis We may have certain unconscious

desires which will not be denied, but which dare not find practical outlet either; in this situation, the desire forces its way in from the unconscious, the ego blocks it off defensively, and the result of this internal conflict is what we call neurosis.

Neurosis The patient begins to develop symptoms whic

h. . . at once protect against the unconscious desire and covertly express it.

Such neuroses may be obsessional (having to touch every lamp-post on the street), hysterical (developing a paralyzed arm for no good organic reason), or phobic (being unreasonably afraid of open spaces or certain animals). (Eagleton 158)

PsychosisThe link between the ego and the

external world is ruptured, and the unconscious begins to build up an alternative, delusional reality. The psychotic, in other words, has lost contact with reality at key points, as in paranoia and schizophrenia.

Art & Literature Literature and the other arts, like dream

s and neurotic symptoms, consist of the imagined, or fantasied, fulfillment of wishes that are either denied by reality or are prohibited by the social standards of morality and propriety. (Abrams 248)

Art & Literature

Manifest content The disguised fantasies that are evident to consciousness

Latent content The unconscious wishes

Art & Literature

What distinguishes artists from the patently neurotic personality is sublimation昇華 .

Art & Literature The artists possess an ability to shift the insti

nctual drive from their original sexual goals to nonsexual ‘higher’ goals. They could elaborate fantasied wish-fulfillments into the manifest features of a work of art in a way that conceals or deletes their merely personal elements, and so makes them capable of satisfying the unconscious desires of other people.

Psychoanalyst The chief enterprise of the

psychoanalyst as a therapist, is to reveal the true content, and thereby to explain the effect on the reader, of a literary work by translating its manifest elements into the latent, unconscious determinants that constitute their suppressed meanings. (Abrams 249)

References Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Te

rms. 7th ed. Harcourt Brace, 1999. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory. U of Mi

nnesota, 1983. Felluga, Dino. http://www.purdue.edu/guidetothe

ory/psychoanalysis

Impact of New Psychology

LiteratureProustKafkaJoyce

Visual ArtsExpressionismMetaphysical art and fantasyDadaismSurrealism

Expressionism

MunchKirchner

Munch, The Scream, 1893

Munch, Madonna, 1895

Munch, Puberty, 1895

Munch <Self Portrait in Hell> 1893

Kirchner, Berlin Street Scene, 1913

Metaphysical Art and Fantasy

De ChiricoChagall

De Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, 1914

De Chirico, The Enigma of the Hour, 1912

De Chirico, The Nostalgia of the Infinite, 1913-14

“We experience the most unforgettable moments when certain aspects of the world . . . suddenly confront us with the revelation of mysteries lying all the time within our reach, which we cannot see . . . .”

Chagall, Green Violinist, 1923-24

Chagall, I and the Village, 1911

Dada

"Dada had no unified formal characteristics as have other styles“. . .it is characterized only by its "destruction of all artistic forms . . . a raging anti, anti, anti" (Richter).

Duchamp

“I wanted to get away from the physical aspect of painting, I was much more interested in re-creating ideas in painting. For me the title was very important. . . . I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.”

Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913/1964

Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q, (She’s hot in the tail.)1918

Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

Surrealism

“psychic automatism, in its pure state”

André Breton

Surrealism: Two Trends

Abstract Surrealism (Automatism)–Picasso, Miro, and Klee

Visionary Surrealism–Magritte, Dali

Automatism the automatic way in which the images

of the subconscious reach the consciousness. These images should not be burdened with "meaning.“

believe that lack of form was a way to rebel against them

Miro, Pollock, de Kooning

http://www.bway.net/~monique/history.htm

Picasso, Seated Woman, 1927

Miro, The Tilled Field

Miro, Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird, 1926

Miro, Dog Barking at the Moon

Klee, The Gold Fish, 1925

Klee, Embrace

Klee, Angelus Novus

Visionary Surrealism saw academic discipline and form as th

e means to represent the images of the subconscious with veracity

hoped to find a way to follow the images of the subconscious until the consciousness could understand their meaning.

De Chirico, Dali, Magritte

http://www.bway.net/~monique/history.htm

Magritte, The Treason of Pictures, 1929

Magritte, This Is Not An Apple, 1964

Magritte, The Lovers, 1928

Magritte, Black Magic, 1933

Magritte, The Therapist, 1937

Magritte, Time Transfixed, 1938

Magritte, Collective Invention, 1934

Magritte, Song of Love, 1964

Magritte, Clairvoyance (Self-portrait), 1936

Magritte, Son of Man, 1964

Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Dali, Sleep, 1937

Women Surrealists:

–Georgia O’Keeffe

–Frida Kahlo

O’Keeffe, Jack-in-the-Pulpit No.V, 1930

O’Keeffe, Yellow Calla, 1926

O’Keeffe, Poppy, 1927

O’Keeffe, Cow’s Skull: with Calico Roses, 1931

I painted my cow's head because I liked it and in its way it was a symbol of the best part of America I had found.

Kahlo, Self-Portrait between the Borderline of Mexico and the United States, 1932

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939

The End