Psychoanalysis: A Journey into the Dark

1. Psychoanalysis:A Journey into the Dark HKASL ~ Literature in English

2. Introduction • A family of psychological theories and methods based on the work of Sigmund Freud • To discover connections among the unconscious components of patients' mental processes • To help liberate the patient from unexamined or unconscious barriers of transference and resistance

3. Hypotheses • Human development: changing objects of sexual desire • The psychic apparatus habitually represses wishes • Usually sexual or aggressive • Preserved in one or more unconscious systems of ideas • Unconscious conflicts over repressed wishes manifested in dreams, parapraxes ("Freudian slips"), and symptoms

4. Hypotheses • Unconscious conflicts: source of neuroses • Treated in psychoanalytic treatment: bringing the unconscious wishes and repressed memories to consciousness

5. The Unconscious • The unconscious: part of mental functioning of which subjects make themselves unaware • Not including all of what is not conscious, e.g., motor skills • Actively repressed from conscious thought, such as stereotypes and the effects of past relationships on the present

6. The Unconscious • A depository for… • Socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires • Traumatic memories • Painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression • Not necessarily solely negative • A force to be recognized by its effects — it expresses itself in the symptom

7. Psychic structures • Divisions of the psyche • The id • Primitive desires • Hunger, rage, and sex • The super-ego: • Internalized norms, morality and taboos • The ego: • Mediation between the two • May include or give rise to the sense of self

8. Roots of Neurosis • Freud’s earliest writings: all neuroses were rooted in childhood sexual abuse (the seduction theory) • Freud came to abandon or de-emphasize this hypothesis • The importance of unconscious fantasy as the cause of neurosis • Particularly fantasy structured according to the Oedipus complex

9. Roots of Neurosis: The Oedipus complex • A concept developed to explain the origin of certain neuroses in childhood • Based on the Greek myth of Oedipus: • Unwittingly kills his father Laius • Marries his mother Jocasta • To emerge in childhood • To persist into adulthood in the form of symptomatic interferences with mature sexual relationships if left unresolved

10. Roots of Neurosis: The Oedipus Complex • Including ‘positive' and 'negative‘ aspects • The positive oedipal longings: • The child's sexual wishes for and desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex • Engendering jealousy and death-wishes towards the rival same-sex parent

11. Roots of Neurosis: The Oedipus Complex • The opposite or 'negative' oedipal longings • For the parent of the same-sex • Corresponding wishes to eliminate the parent of the opposite sex • Usually are less predominant • Depending on multiple factors • The sex of the child • Other constitutional factors • The point in time during the oedipal phase • External circumstances within the child's environment

12. Roots of Neurosis: The Oedipus Complex • Conscious initially • Sometimes verbalized by children during the oedipal phase of development • Roughly between the ages of three and five • Resolution to the conflicts: • Child’s concessions to reality in his / her growth • Identifications with parental values • Unresolved residues: • Repressed to the unconscious • To be manifested in the form of symptoms and inhibitions

13. The Life and Death Instincts • Humans driven by two conflicting central desires: • The life drive • Eros / Libido • Incorporating the sex drive • Creative, life-producing • The death drive • Thanatos (or death instinct) • An urge inherent in all living things • Returning to a state of calm, or, ultimately, of non-existence

14. Post-Freudian Schools • Object relations theory • The ego-self exists only in relation to other objects • External or internal • Internal objects: • Internalized versions of external objects • Primarily formed from early interactions with the parents

15. Post-Freudian Schools • Object relations theory • Three fundamental "affects" existing between the self and the other • Attachment • Frustration • Rejection • Universal emotional states • Major building blocks of the personality

16. Post-Freudian Schools • Interpersonal psychoanalysis • Harry Stack Sullivan • Details of patient's interpersonal interactions with others: insight into the causes and cures of mental disorder • Patients keep many aspects of interpersonal relationships out of their awareness by selective inattention • Psychotherapists: • Conduct a detailed inquiry into patient's interactions with others • Patients would become optimally aware of their interpersonal patterns

17. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism • Influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud • Psychoanalytic reading as an interpretive tradition • To explore the psyche of authors and characters • To explain narrative mysteries • To develop new concepts in psychoanalysis

18. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism • Object: the psychoanalysis of the author or of a particularly interesting character • Following the analytic interpretive process discussed in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams • More complex variations are possible • The founding texts of psychoanalysisre-read for the light cast by their formal qualities on their theoretical content • Example: Freud's texts • Resembling detective stories • Archaeological narratives

19. ~Hope you enjoy the journey into your “self”~