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Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud Jacque Lacan. How we understand ourselves as individuals and how literature plays a part in this. Lacan - Psychological theory. Psychoanalytic theory deals with these questions How do we understand ourselves as individuals?
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PsychoanalysisSigmund FreudJacque Lacan How we understand ourselves as individuals and how literature plays a part in this
Lacan - Psychological theory Psychoanalytic theory deals with these questions • How do we understand ourselves as individuals? • How can literature help us understand ourselves? • How do we become fully functioning members of society? • How do we gain a sense of identity?
Our Unconscious • The unconscious is the foundation of all being and it is structured like language. • Our unconscious is made up of wishes, desires, images that are always the signifiers and never the signified. • There is an endless chain of signifiers without an anchor. • Self is an illusion, the product of the unconscious. • How do we go from infancy to the illusion called “self” The process of becoming an adult (a “self”) is the process of creating an illusion of an anchor, a stable reference point for all the signifieds. • The Other is a structural position in the symbolic order. It is the place that everyone and everything is trying to get to.
Reality vs Real • Reality: fantasy world constructed through language/signifiers. Our idea of the real. • Real: a materiality of existence beyond language and thus beyond expressibility.
Lacan’s Mirror Stage • the mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold value. In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body image.
Tension between real and imaginary Desire = fantasy therefore Desire = lack
The objet a • Desire’s main task is to keep itself circulating. • That objet a is perceived as a missing piece, shows that Other is not clearly distinguished from self. Value comes from being perceived as a missing part of the subject self. • The meaning is in the pursuit. The pursuit of the objet a is the condition for the production of art – the enjoyment of otherness. The objet a grants an excuse for the pursuit. There is a reason to pursue otherness when you see self as lacking. • The missing piece is retroactively given. It was not necessarily ever missing. It’s just a perception. • Narrators can work like advertising. To create the perception in the reader that something is missing.
Abjection • Abjection and the abject character - embracing what we are supposed to be pushing away as impure. • Abject hero (Shrek) (Quasimodo) • Abject characters haunt the edges of society • Physical abjection can be impossible to mask • Young deal with abjection especially as adolescents. • Notice how Arnold is abject in our next novel.