Structure of the Mind, Child Development & Love:

Structure of the Mind, Child Development & Love: Sigmund Freud

Section II: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Self & Literature (covered in our course) Structure of the Mind, Child Development & Love Dream and Sexual Symbols Lacan’s Views of Desire & Split Identity Psychological Disorders

Outline • Starting Questions & Key Words • Freud’s Premise • Psyche; an example • Sexuality, Love and Desire • Child Development, Repression and Sublimation • Issues and Discussion • Examples: 1) Literature and Fine Arts; 3) Dali, 4) “Eveline” • (assignment for next week)

Starting Questions • Are we rational or autonomous? How is our body related to our mind–and soul? Can the latter two transcend the former? Or are they formed by it and also in resistance to it? • What are Freud’s theories of human psyche (or mind) and sexuality? Do you agree with them? • Is intimate love definitely sexually driven? Should our sexual desires be repressed or liberated? Can college girls stay over at man’s dorms? • Have you experienced Oedipus/Electra complex and/or castration fear?

Key Words • Sexuality, libido, pleasure principle • id, ego, superego, • Reality principle, Repression and sublimation • child development: Erotogenic zones, oral, anal and genital phases; Oedipus/Electra complex, castration fear

Freud: Three Premises • 1. most of the individual's mental processes are unconscious. • 2. all human behavior is motivated ultimately by what we would call sexuality. The prime psychic force is libido, or sexual energy. • 3. Because of the powerful social taboos attached to certain sexual impulses, many of our desires and memories are repressed.

The Unconscious • --cannot be pointed at; can only be "diagnosed." • --the reverse of consciousness; takes a large part of our mind. • Making itself manifest through "gaps"-- unintended lapses in memory, slips of tongue, puns and dreams  tip of an iceberg

Our Psyche: three models (textbook pp. 149-51) More and more specific descriptions of our mind: • Dynamic:the interplay of forces within the mind, or the tensions that develop when instinctual drives meet the necessities of external reality formation of the mind out of the body and its experience of pleasure and pain • Economic: For self-preservation, ego negotiates between “pleasure principle” and “reality principle”

Our Psyche: three models (2) (textbook pp. 149-51) 3. Topographic (地形)–2 kinds of three-fold division • The conscious – perceptual or sensory consciousness which orders reality; • the preconscious –the elements of experience which can be called into consciousness; • the unconscious– desires, images and ideas unknown to and repressed by us.

Superego morality p. repository of conscience & pride Follows reason and morality circumspection protect society e.g. internalized parental discipline Id pleasure p. repository of libido Follows instinct and passion self-satisfaction e.g. babies’ non-stop crying Our Psyche: Topographic model (2) • Ego • reality p • Intermediary • protects one’s self • e.g. restrain from crying in order to get what it wants

Example I: “No Problem” • Desire for a female • -- Fantasies: 1) aerobic teacher; 2) Zolga.

Example I: “No Problem” • – Attempts frustrated 1) visits with a bunch of flowers –nervous, 2) conflicting desires

Example I: “No Problem” 2) conflicting desires

Example I: “No Problem” • In between the conflicting two: • Messy, likes to eat, sex-driven; • Polite, cautious, prohibiting.

Example I: “No Problem” • Images and their symbolic meanings: • water dripping down his face, rain, waterfalls, • embarrassment, obstacles, insatiable desire; • closing door

Images and their symbolic meanings: • black dog, foods

Solution: • Killing the two; • Combining the three; • Closing the door against the dog.

Freud’s View of Sexuality and Love (Singer 100-) • 1) love as the fusion of sexuality and tenderness. • Tenderness and affection directed toward the ones who take care of the baby; • Two currents fused only in early childhood; hardly combined in adulthood. • There is always a yearning for a confluence of these two currents. (// Lacan’s idea of desire as lack.)

Freud’s View of Sexuality and Love 2 (Singer 100-) 2) Love as libidinal energy; • Libido = energy, “dynamic manifestation of sexuality.” • Freud’s idea of Sexuality is broader than the general conception: • It includes not just adult coital sex, • but also “the sexual life of perverted persons and also of children.” • Perversion= sexual but not genital activities. • Children—polimorphous, • The Pervert – fixated on non-genital love objects which “normal” people have outgrown.

Freud’s View of Sexuality and Love 3 (Singer 100-) 3) Love as Eros • The drive or instinct of life which attaches individuals to each other and ultimately unifies mankind; 4) Love as the mixture of Eros and one’s aggressive instinct(death drive). • Almost every intimate relationship between two people which lasts for some time leaves a sediment of feelings of aversion and hostility. (Singer 114)  Agree?

Child development • oral stage anal stage phallic stage latent period genital stage What is happening in this process ... is a gradual organization of the libidinal drives . . . • Oedipus complex and gendering process • With Oedipus complex starts the process of socialization

1. oral stage (sucking) 2. anal stage (withholding, expulsion) 3. phallic stage (castration complex) 4. latent period 5. genital stage Auto-eroticism Oedipus complex (positive and negative constellation) puberty Child development (2)

Oedipus complex in Boys Loving Mother, Hating father Castration fear  Positive constellation: identifies with Father, later loves other women Negative constellation: identifies with Mother and loves Father or unable to love other women. Electra complex in Girls loving Mother loving Father + Penis envy Loving Father and identifying with Mother in order to produce babies for Father. Negative: unable to love Father or other men. Oedipus complex

Repression and Sublimation • Libido as flows of energy. • Once held back (as if water being dammed up), it has to find other outlets. • Two possible outcome – • sublimation, (indirect expressions in Dream or Art)  The return of the repressed.  “All the achievements of civilization result from the discharge of sublimated energy.” (Singer 103) // Civilization and its Discontents. • fixation (e.g. neurosis, perversion such as fetishism)

Summary: Freud’s Major Concepts • The Unconscious & Structure of the psyche • the child's sexual development-- a. polymorphous sexuality, three stages, fixation b. Oedipal stage--gendering process, Oedipus complex, castration fear • dream analysis--condensation, substitution, symbolization • repression and pyschological disorder:psychological or physical abnormalities as symptoms (or covert expressions of desire)biography

Key Issues in Freud’s views of sexuality & Oedipus complex • Recognition of Father’s authority • Development from bi-sexuality to heterosexuality • The influence of sexuality, parents and childhood on our personality • Are we born to be destructive and aggressive? Is sexuality the source of our energy?

Oedipus complex & its resolution Transitional Objects (Object-Relation Theory) e.g. receiving blanket Child development (3) Beyond Freud Pre-Oedipal Symbiosis (Identification with Mother)

Examples of Freud’s Oedipus complex • Sons and Lovers –Paul not able to love the woman who resembles his mother. • Peter Pan –as Wendy’s Other (with phallic power) • Leonardo–his androgenous figures • “Araby”– the child in lack of maternal love. • Edgar Allan Poe (next week)

Example: SALVADOR DALI • His stylistic concerns: eroticize reality + Trompe-l'oeil • 'After Freud it is the outer world, the world of physics, which will have to be eroticized and quantified.‘ Dali, IN 'THE WORLD OF SALVADOR DALI,' MACMILLAN 1962 (source: SALVADOR DALI http://www.mmlab.ktu.lt/Dali/index.html )

Example: SALVADOR DALI • "My whole ambition in the pictorial domain is to materialize the images of concrete irrationality with the most imperialist fury of precision." • "to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality"

Example: SALVADOR DALI • His Life • Gala and Dali met in the summer of 1929. In that year, Dali's paintings were full of flourishing sexual symbols. "This historic meeting was accompanied by a fit of extreme madness. Dali was in such a state of constant exaltation that every time he started to speak to Gala he burst into insane laughter" (Neret, 22). • “The Great Masturbator” bears witness to Dali's first encounter with Gala and the state in which she left him-midway between 'hard' and 'soft'" (Neret, 28).

The Great Masturbator • "The Great Masturbator" is one of Dali's classic surreal images of sexual persecution and an obsession with castration, impotence, and masturbation. It is also an image that plays off of psychic automatism and Freudian dream logic: displacement, condensation, and fetish. (source) • Where do we see displacement, condensation and fetish?

A large, soft, terrorized head, livid and waxlike, with pink cheeks; the closed eyes (embellished by very long eyelashes) suggest the state of sleeping or dreaming. Language of Dream Condensation:Metamorphosis at the neck region Fetish: A tremendous nose -- leaning on the ground The mouth, replaced by a decaying grasshopper crawling with ants.

Example 2: “Eveline” • Recurring images in The Dubliners: death, disintegration of community, degradation of religion, liquor, constraint to the degree of paralysis. Do you see them in this story? • Why can’t she leave with Frank? What is he associated with? What roles does her mother and father play in her life?

“Eveline”: Images of Decay and Constraint • Death – of people, Dust (cretonne), • Change – good old past, the priest gone, field built with houses (with bright bricks, shining roofs vs. their brown houses) • Constraint – window, people’s comments, father’s control • Hard life and work

“Eveline”: No Escape • Frank –represent the remote, the open and free, and “romantic” (Buenos Aires, opera Bohemian girl, tales of remote countries, sea and going places) • Eveline’s mother • “Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!": A slurred Gaelic phrase meaning either "the end of pleasure is pain" or the end of song is raving madness"

References • Psychoanalytic Criticism: A Reappraisal by Elizabeth Wright. Polity,1998. • Nature of Love, Vol. 2: Courtly & Romantic. Irving Singer. University of Chicago Press, 1998. • Salvador Dali 1904-1989by Gilles Neret, Giles Neret20th Century Art History Tutorials: http://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/index.html

Assignment • Subjectivity, Psychoanalysis and Criticism –p. 161 • "The City in the Sea" by Edgar Allan Poe

Structure of the Mind, Child Development & Love: