Transcript Document 7359848

Psychoanalysis (4):
The Return of the Repressed
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Structure of the Mind, Child Development
& Love
Dream and Sexual Symbols
Lacan – Desire & Split Identity
Sublimation & Psychological Disorders;
Jean Rhys
Outline
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Q & A on Freud and Lacan
Art and psychoanalysis
Kinds of Psychological Reactions and
Disorder
Example: Psycho
Possible Approaches: A Summary
Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea – Another
Example of Displaced Identity
Q & A on Freud and Lacan
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Why is dream “the royal road to our
unconscious”?
Why is the unconscious structured like
language? What’s the significance of this
view?
What is Symbolic Order for Lacan? Is it all
powerful?
How do we analyze a lit. text from a
psychoanalytic point of view?
1. Repression and Civilization
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Repression of our libido (sexual energies) is
inevitable; otherwise, we can be destructive
and society, chaotic.
Repression itself is a defense mechanism.
Repression & Displacement (alternative paths
to satisfy instinctual desires) 
1.
2.
Civilization: The result of our
transformation/sublimation of unconscious desires.
Symptoms: the return of the repressed  Behaviors
or bodily abnormalities.
Psychological
reactions and disorders
Psychoanalysis and Literature
For Freud, dream is like art because both
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1.
2.
Interpretation of Dream//Art:
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Fulfill wishes;
Use strategies to overcome the resistance of
consciousness.
detect conflicts of meanings (where wish is
confronted by resistance; the textual unconscious)
Ask the patient to make free association (decoding
figurative language and symbol through contextual
reading)
Is literature, then, to be treated as merely
patients to be analyzed?
Sublimation: Leonardo da Vinci
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An illegitimate son of a notary, Ser Piero,
and a peasant girl, Caterina. Leonardo
lived with Caterina .
Lived with Caterina for approximately five
years before entering the house of his
father, who had in the meantime married
Donna Albiera. (p. 15)
Sublimation: Examples (1)
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E.g. “Mona Lisa” –
two images of L’s first
mother: one tender
and reserved, and the
other sensual and
seductive.
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Sublimation: Examples (2)
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Saint John the Baptist, Musee
du Louvre, Paris
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St. John's androgenous image
with a mysterious smile of
“having found the secret of love”
Freud--"It is possible," Freud
concluded this section, "that . . .
Leonardo has denied the
unhappiness of his erotic life and
has triumphed over it in his art.,
by representing the wishes of the
boy, infatuated with his mother,
as fulfilled in this blissful union of
the male and female
natures." (23)
Psychological reactions &
disorders
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Reactions:
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Fixation  Regression
Compulsion to Repeat
Sexual deviance & Perversion
Disorders:
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Neurosis
Psychosis
The line between
these two is quite
thin!!!
e.g. depression
Fixation and regression
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Fixation: obsession with a person, an erotogenous
zone or an inanimate object. (e.g. oral fixation –
compulsive smoker, alcoholism, etc.)
Regression: The psychic reversion to childhood
desires. When normally functioning desire meets
with powerful external obstacles, which prevent
satisfaction of those desires, the subject
sometimes regresses to an earlier phase (e.g. the
mouth, the anus) in normal psychosexual
development. (source) (e.g. infantilization of
women in sexually reppresive society)
Compulsion to Repeat
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A lot of symptoms are repetitive in nature;
Freud sees it as the most general character of our
instinct;
fulfilling both our life instinct and death instinct: What’s
repeated is not just desire or the desirable; sometimes it
is fear or unpleasant experience (of trauma).
e.g. (1) sense of security gained in routine and repeated
stories sense of control;
e.g. (2) “compulsive” and negative: recurrent nightmares;
pattern of self-destructive behavior. (e.g. vicious circle)
Perversion: 5 forms
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1.
2.
3.
Freud: The pursuit of "abnormal" sexual objects (or
non-sexual organs) without repression.
five forms of perversion –crossing five types of
barriers
disregarding the barrier of species (the gulf
between men and animals),
secondly, by overstepping the barrier against
disgust  e.g. voyeur and exhibitionist
against incest (the prohibition against seeking
sexual satisfaction from near blood-relations),
Perversion: 5 forms
4. That against members of one's own sex
5. the transferring of the part played by the
genitals to other organs and areas of the
body" (Introductory Lectures 15.208)
(Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.
Trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953-74. )
Perversion: examples
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Desire satisfied through being looked at or looking
 2. Exhibitionist: seeks a perfect confirmation of
his desire in the desire of the other; the voyeur
finds all of his desire in his looking.
a young child will not recognize any of these five
points as abnormal—and only does so through the
process of education. For this reason, he calls
children "polymorphously perverse" (Introductory
Lectures15.209). (Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953-74. )
Neurosis
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Definition: the symbolic expression of a psychical
conflict whose origin lies in the subject’s
childhood memory (Laplanche 266);  quite
common among us!
symptoms: an exaggeration of normal patterns of
behavior.
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e.g. constantly checking the time or that doors are
locked. Or other obsession rituals;
e.g. anxiety disorder  phobia; hysteria (now called
conversion disorder)
e.g. over-eating (bulimia); stopping eating (anorexia)
For reference:
http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/psychoanalysis/freud4.html
Psychosis
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Definition: The inability of a person to distinguish
between what is real and what is imaginary.
(Primary distance of the libidinal relation to
reality.)
Symptoms: hallucination, self-delusions
e.g. schizophrenia and manic depression (躁鬱
症).
Freud: “in neurosis the ego suppresses part of
the id out of allegiance to reality, whereas in
psychosis it lets itself be carried away by the id
and detached from a part of reality” (5.202).
Fetishism
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falls between neurosis and psychosis.
An erotic attachment to an inanimate object or
an ordinarily asexual part of the human body.
"The fetishist is the adult who, because of his
attachment to the fetish, is 'saved‘ from
psychosis (which is the more typical
consequence of disavowal in adults). . . .
(Elizabeth Grosz Jacque Lacan: A Feminist Introduction p. 118)
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Freud: the fetish is able to “become the vehicle both of
denying and of asseverating (鄭重聲明 ) the fact of
castration” (5.203).
Example – Psycho (驚魂記)
Characters:
 Marion, in love with Sam. To solve the
problem of not having money for a wedding,
she steals some money from her boss and
escapes only to get to the Bates hotel.
 Norman Bates--a schizophrenic young man
who is so obsessed with his Mother that he
impersonates her to kill Marion, a possible
seduction for him.
Example – Psycho (驚魂記):
A Glimpse at the Unconscious
Elements to analyze: (Ref)
1.
Transgression easily made from moral
control to law-breaking and forbidden
self-satisfaction.
2.
Incapability of law and psychiatry to control
or fully understand human psyche, while
many characters in the film are suspect.
Psychiatrist: projection of his own desire
onto the mother, so the mother is jealous
and murderous.
Example – Psycho (驚魂記):
A Glimpse at the Unconscious
3. Norman: Fixation on the
mother  internalized as
both object of love and
super ego.  Unresolved
Oedipus complex fourfold
split personalities.
Norman the Mother the
desiring boy old and
(predator)
innocent old
woman
4. The use of symbols: The
voyeuristic camera eye +
the image of eye and the
other holes (bathtub
drainage and swamp)
Norman the Mother the
innocent
jealous and
boy
controlling
hag
e.g. Beginning and ending
Possible Approaches:
A Summary
I. Psychobiography (e.g. D.H. Lawrence, Leonardo,
E. Bishop and Jean Rhys)
II. theme—
1. child psychology and parent-children relationship "Araby" &
"Eyeline" "A Rose for Emily", Sons and Lovers; Peter
Pan, The Piano, Wide Sargasso Sea; American Beauty
2. dream-- in Wide Sargasso Sea; Spellbound; Rouseau's
Dream
3. neurosis and psychosis-- Psycho; stories by Poe; Blue Velvet
4. journey to the unconscious: “Diving into the Wrecks” (A. Rich);
Heart of Darkness; 〈馬桶〉林燿德
5. Split Identity: Wide Sargasso Sea
6. Different forms of love as explained by Freud or Lacan:
American Beauty
7. Exchange of Power (Phallic) Positions …
Possible Approaches:
A Summary
III. Sexual Symbols (symbols of castration and phallus) and
Symbols re. to Psyche
--"Sick Rose“ (worm, howling night, crimson bed) by
William Blake
-- American Beauty; The Piano
-- Psycho; “The Blind Man”
-- paintings by Dali and Magritte
The Rape 1934
Reference
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Laurie Schneider Adams. Art and Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalytic Criticism: A Reappraisal. Elizabeth Wright.
Polity,1998.
Types of Psychological Disorder
http://www.health.nsysu.edu.tw/drpan/bookmark/out_dx.htm
John E. Reilly, "The Lesser Death-Watch and 'The Tell-Tale Heart',"
revised from The American Transcendental Quarterly, II (2nd
Quarter), 1969, pp. 3-9.
http://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1990/jer19691.htm#n01