Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature

1. Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature Structure of the Mind, Child Development & Love Dream and Sexual Symbols Psychological Disorders

2. Outline • Q & A • Subjectivity, Repression and Sublimation • Interpretation of Dreams • Examples of Dreams • Freud’s • from the textbook • Other types of Dreams • Sexual Symbols • Edgar Allan Poe • Literature and Psychoanalysis

3. Q & A: examples of “family” relationships • How can the story of Peter Pan be psychoanalyzed? Does that influence your appreciation of this fairy tale? • What does the excerpt from Sons and Lovers show about Paul? (156) • What do you think about the family conflicts shown in clip 1? (18:49) • Is repression, or sexual liberation, necessary for us and for our older generation? • Is our consciousness still just the tip of an iceberg today?

5. Peter Pan • Wendy’s last night at the nursery (female dominated); • Peter never grows up, recognizing sexual attraction only in the form of mothering; • Family drama in the children’s world • Peter, mother and father to the lost boys; • Nana the dog as a “mother” • Effacement of the real fathers: • Mr. Darling; • Captain Hook

6. Subjectivity: Humanism (since Renaissance) • Opposed religious dogmatism and scientism • Affirms the human (but not the divine or the natural) • The individual (over the social and its structure) • Rational consciousness (over the unconscious) • Freedom (over determinism) • Self-knowledge (over knowledge of others or the world) • experience (over objective knowledge)

7. Subjectivity: Modern Views—split or conflictual subjects • I think, therefore I am (textbook p. 140) •  Freud: I express and repress my desires, therefore I am. •  Lacan: I am where I don’t think; I think where I am not. •  Marxism: I work, therefore I am not (alienation); I shop, therefore I am?

8. Subjectivity: Modern Views (2) • Subject as being “subjected” (p. 140) • Located; even desire is culturally instigated (e.g. Kaja Silverman) • Constructed through language because language offers us “subject positions”(e.g. Chris Weedon)

9. Repression and Sublimation • Repression: (Addition to textbook 147-48) • Two kinds: primal repression (which establishes the unconscious), second repression • Separates ideas from energy  with ideas banished to the unconscious (ascodes),  andenergy repressed, converted into another affect, orinto anxiety) •  The return of the repressed (assymptoms): when repression is not successful. • examples of symptoms (alsocoded): Freudian slips, jokes, and dreams. • Sublimation– de-sexualizes the love-object, sublimate instincts into “higher” cultural pursuits

10. The dream-work . . . • Dreams-- the royal road to the unconscious. • Transforms the 'latent' content of the dream, the. 'forbidden' dream-thoughts, • into the 'manifest' dreamstories -- what the dreamer remembers.

11. 3 kinds of Dream as wish fulfillment • 1st: wish fulfillments---the disguiseis successful and the dream proceeds undisturbed, • 2nd: anxiety dreams --the disguise is absent or insufficient; the forbidden wish emerges, causes anxiety, and the dreamer wakes up • 3rd: content is disturbing but the feeling is not -- the wish is particularly well disguised by a misalliance of content and feeling

12. Dream Language • Four elements: • condensation, • displacement, • Symbolization, or consideration of representibility, • secondary revision • Examples: • switches a person's hatred of Mr. Appleby to that of a rotting apple.

14. Examples of Dreams (1) Freud’s own dreams

16. Examples of Dreams (2) • “Dream” by Henry Rousseau • Wish fulfillment of the woman reclining on a divan. • Displacement: from a French drawing room to a jungle; • Condensation: day and night; • Sexual symbols: flowers, serpent, • “The painting is an illustration, but not a replica of dream” (Cf. Adams) • Spellbound

17. Examples of Dreams (2) • Textbook –excerpt from The Wanderground • “dream normally” • condensed images:

18. Other types of Dreams • Does every dream have its latent content? • Foreboding dreams • Dreams related one’s physical condition • Dreams as fulfillment of our conscious wishes • Ask the Dream Doctor http://www.dreamdoctor.com/index.shtml

19. Sexual symbols: • Frued's notion of symbolism: the whole world can be absorbed narcissistically, the sexual drives can attach themselves to anything the senses perceive. • Examples: Rene Margritte

20. Sexual symbols:

21. Edgar Allan Poe • Bio: born in 1809; • Father disappeared when he was 18 months old; • Pretty and childlike mother died of consumption a year later; • Married Virginia at the age of 26, when Virginia was 13 and already sickening. • Virginia died of consumption 10 years later.

22. Allan & the Women in Poe’s Life

23. Marie Bonarparte’s work on Poe • another example of psycho-biography; • Her basic point: • Fixated on his love for his mother a necrophiliac • Physically loyal to her, he married an ailing cousin and thus spares himself the need to consummate the marriage.

24. Marie Bonarparte’s work on Poe (2) • Compulsion to repeat in “Tales of the Mother” and “Tales of the father” • desire to be united with the dead mother • Desire to kill the father figure • Both desires are repressed and thus they cause anxiety. • Bonarparte sees Poe’s tales as the manifest part of his dream/desire, through which she recovers the latent part.

25. “The City in the Sea” • Thesis: Death, first as both the enthroned God and then the sunken city, is desired and held in awe by the speaker. • Conflicts between height and lowness • Death—enthroned, down within the West, • Shrines vs. waters • Light rising and encircling vs. waters • Tower vs. graves; pendulous vs. wide open • Nothingness vs. movement (of the towers) • Town going down vs. Hell rising. Finally it is the City that is presented as more powerful than Death.

26. “The City in the Sea”: the paper (chap 3: pp. 164- ) • Thesis: (p. 167) (conclusion) the poem is rich with sexual imagery and shows Poe’s id at work, striving to convey the deep passions and desires of his unconscious mind. • Structure: • Freud’s theory, • Bonarparte’s reading of Poe’s life-- • His art of sublimation of his sexual desires • Phallic symbols in the poem; Poe’s repression • Symbols of vigina, quickening of his desire • Climax and post-climax

27. “The City in the Sea”: the paper (chap 3: pp. 164- ) • Strengths: • Notices the pulsating activities of the city. • Attentive to various images.

28. the paper-- Problems? • Thesis paragraph should be moved to the beginning. • Introd. to Freudian theory & Poe’s life is good but a bit too long; • Id as a conscious agent. (167) • “forgotten” • Missed the importance of death and the sea

29. Literature and Psychoanalysis • Are Bonarparte’s and ‘s readings of Poe reductive or not? • Is literary work like a patient in front of literary critics as analysts? (Cf. textbook 144-46) • It’s hard to tell how much “control” an author has over his/her work; whether it is “manipulated” dream or fantasy. (Cf. 153) • The reader/critics themselves can be patient/texts. • Psycho-analyzing a text or its author cannot exhaust their meanings or values.

30. One evaluation

31. Next Week • Jacque Lacan -- Identity as Split and in Lack, Desire as Displacement (Reader: chap 3 pp. 156-163; chap 4 pp. 161-76) • Elizabeth Bishop's 3 poems; • Ref.〈性欲主體性之疑雲〉