Lecture 3: Freud, James Joyce and the Modernist Novel

This week’s lecture started with talking about Freud and all his contributions both to psychology and to literature, as well as all the ways that it has permeated our culture and everyday life in phrases such as ‘Freudian slips’ and the ‘unconscious’.

First of all a bit of background on Freud; he was born in the 1850s in Vienna and died in London in 1939 after a long battle with cancer. Freud came up with an all-encompassing theory which made him a celebrity; he was nominated for two Nobel prizes, one in literature and one in science. He was ambitious and hard-working and believed that all of the problems with humanity could be solved with psychoanalysis. He was seen by many as a sexual renegade that damaged our idea of ourselves as noble creatures because of his ideas that sex is involved in every action, on some level and that it is the central motivator for our actions.

He challenged the Enlightenment by presenting an alternative to rationality; that we are NOT controlled by rational faculties, but by the impulsive, base Id. He also challenged the idea that we are born with a ‘blank slate’ onto which society’s values are imprinted by suggesting that we are born with the innate functions of the Id.

Freud’s Theories:

Phallic symbols are all around us and sex and the penis (seen as a symbol for sex) are crucial in every action we take.

Women have ‘penis envy’ because they thought that the reason they lacked a penis was that they had been castrated. Because of this, they love their father because he has a penis and reject their mother because they see her as being weak.

Humanity’s ‘self-love’ prevents scientific development and progress because we cannot stand to think of ourselves as less than perfect and having these aggressive, sexual thoughts. Freud also argued that this stopped us from accepting that the earth is not the centre of the universe or believing Darwin’s theory of evolution which challenge our view of ourselves as above animals. Another scientific theory that was marred by our ‘self-love’ is the fact that our conscious brain is not in charge. All the time, our reptilian brain is keeping us alive and often over-rides the thoughts of our conscious brain.

The KEY to Freud, however, is his ideas regarding the unconscious, this has been his legacy. However, many thinkers of the time did not like it as it went against the popular idea of humanity as rational beings. Freud divided the mind into 3 distinct parts that are in deadly conflict, an internal war which will constantly send us into turmoil.

1) The Id, aka the unconscious, was, according to Freud, innate and provided us with instincts such as sleeping and eating. It is the most basic, animalistic part of us and as a result can only deal with symbols rather than language, which is shown in our dreams as a way for the Id to communicate with our consciousness. It operates on the pleasure principle, wanting to follow its desires all the time no matter what the situation.
2) The Ego, aka the conscious or self operates on a reality principle and realises that we cannot always satisfy our pleasures but works to do so in a socially acceptable way. This is the part of our mind that we are aware of, our consciousness.
3) The Superego is the internalised rules and morals of our parents and society which is constantly trying to keep us civilised and telling the Id that it can’t do what it wants.

Freud also thought that childhood was essential to our development as adults and that any problems in childhood would result in mental difficulties in later life. He devised 5 stages of development in childhood and said that if there was conflict at any of these stages, it could cause you to fix at that stage and regress to it in later life.

1) The Oral stage – a stage at which the child has an obsession with the mouth and premature weaning could cause problems such as obsessive eating, smoking or drinking in later life.
2) The Anal stage – during toilet training when problems could mean you become compulsive, clean and stingy. (This idea has permeated our culture and people are often referred to as ‘anal’ if they have any of these qualities.)
3) The Phallic stage – when the child is obsessed with their genitals and problems may result, for women, in a need for domination and the Electra Complex which means that the woman eventually identifies with their mother, and the Oedipus Complex for men where they want to have sex with their mother and kill their father, however they fear castration by their father and so identify with him because he is strong. This was one very controversial part of Freud’s theories.
4) The Latent stage – where sex becomes unimportant
5) The Genital stage – when they become sexually active and their early experiences effect how their personalities with develop, for example if one is shunned they will become isolated.

The three parts of the mind battle all the time, according to Freud, and he thought that these battles can result in repression and defence mechanisms such as:
o Sublimation (turning sexual energy into something else e.g., work)
o Displacement (turning shameful thoughts into/onto something/one else)
o Projection (attributing your own feelings onto someone/thing else)
o Rationalisation (making it into a more socially acceptable explanation)
o Regression (returning to an earlier stage of development, for example one at which there was a conflict)

The key to psychoanalysis, Freud argued, is that you are hiding something from yourself that you cannot face, but he had found a way in which the Id could be dealt with directly. He used a combination of methods through which the Id could let off steam, such as Hypnosis, the ‘pressure’ method, free association and dream analysis.

Freud had quite a negative view of mankind in that he thought that sex and aggression could never be eliminated as you can never escape the Id, you can only try to control it. He also made a sort of social commentary by saying that groups want to be dominated and look for someone to be in charge, such as a father figure. This could relate to Nietzsche’s pronouncement that “God is dead” and the fact that people are simply looking for leadership and something to believe in. Freud argued that civilisation and hierarchy keeps us in check and is there to control our desires and that groups gave up their libidinal (energy linked with instinctual biological drives) feelings to the leader and unleashed their aggression on those outside of the group. This idea can be linked to what was happening at the time with Nazi and communist domination in Eastern Europe.

There were many attacks on Freud as a theorist, mainly on his methodology. Karl Popper argued that there were problems with falsibility in that there has to be a way to prove or disprove a theory and Freud’s were too general to allow any kind of testing. Advances in neuroscience such as MRI scanners and study of the anatomy of the brain, uncovering the Reptilian Brain, Limbic System and Neo Cortex which suggest that our brains have evolved as humans have, have also invalidated many of Freud’s ideas and brought up new questions such as where is the Id, Ego and Superego, in physical terms?

Another criticism came from Reich who believed the opposite of Freud; that the unconscious is good and that it is in fact the suppression which is encouraged by society that does the damage, distorting the unconscious and making people dangerous. He believed that the underlying sexual energy is good and that humanity would flourish if it was released. This thinking acted as part of the ‘free love’ movement of the 1960s.

As well as his scientific theories, Freud had a huge influence on literature and other culture. However, Freud said “The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied”, showing a modesty out of place with the huge impact of his work. Examples of his influence are; Virginia Wolfe, numerous biographies and the idea of looking back at childhood to see how it has effected adulthood as well as much influence on education.


We then went on to talk about James Joyce’s Ulysses in very general terms:

It is a modernist work, with no real beginning or end meaning that you can pick up from any chapter and still understand. It is a novel of the body and the senses, of the writer unburdening their internal life and giving the first glimpse of the habitual, the everyday. It was very much a reaction against the past and the ideologies that had come before, attacking Ireland and the high ideals that had caused World War 1, arguing that they are dangerous.

It was based on the Odyssey, portraying a journey and providing the fullest account yet of everyday life. It was also an attack on the hero, especially the nationalistic hero, which can be linked to the fall of his hero at the hands of the Catholic Church. This can be seen in the way that Joyce attacks religion, God and the Catholic Church. It has also been argued that it is an indirect attack on Irish Revivalism.

It is written in a very Irish way, which can make it difficult to understand, and all the chapters refer to one another. Joyce thought that the artist should insult rather than flatter national vanity, challenging the norms and society that it is created within.

Lastly, we looked quickly at characteristics of the Modernist novel:

1) The writer is in control, a law unto themselves
2) There is a sense of crisis in that there is a radical break in culture
(unfortunately I could not keep up for the last of the list, but I will add to this as soon as I can)

Seminar 2: Friedrich Neitzsche

Today's seminar started out with Brian explaining the laws of defamation which are there to defend reputations if someone says (slander) or prints (libel) something that damages or lowers how the public see you. Anything that is published is liable - even this! Another interesting titbit of information about libel is that London gives the biggest payouts, whereas in the US, freedom of speech is stronger so libel payouts are much smaller and harder to get.

We then went on to talk about Neitzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra which was written "for all and for none" meaning that Neitzsche wanted anyone to read it, but it was not for any specific academic camp or group of society. This was because he wanted people to follow his philosophy of their own will, rather than being forced to. He used Zarathustra to preach to the masses about things such as the origins of our belief systems, why we are here and the effect that tradition has on society.

Firstly, he thought that traditions such as democracy, morality and belief in spirits and the afterlife are holding humanity back from achieving their full potential (as Overmen). This would have been very controversial at the time because people did not want to hear that there was no afterlife, that they did not have immortal spirits or that God does not exist; Neitzsche thought that this is because God and religion gives them comfort and escape from the truth. All of this would have been very shocking at a time when most people were deeply religious.

One of the most shocking statements he made was that "God is dead". This brings up the idea of God as Clockmaker, setting up the world then going away to leave the machine ticking over and not interfering, as well as the theory of the God of the Gaps which says that things that we cannot scientifically explain, are explained by God, but anything that can be explained by science shows that God does not exist there. What also came to mind was Hegel's idea of the geist and how it is an expression of moving on and progressing. Different to all of these ideas, Neitzsche seems to be arguing that God never existed; only the idea of him did. He is saying that the idea of God is no longer strong enough to keep people aiming for a higher purpose; the values, morals and ethics of that God are gone and something else needs to come and take its place in providing comfort and purpose and progress for the world.

Hence Neitzsche's theory of the Uberman/overman/superman. He argues that humanity is merely a stepping stone between being an animal (which we evolved from) to being an Overman (which he believes we will evolve to). An overman is someone who is free from all the prejudices, traditions, values and moralities of human society and creates his own values and purpose; someone that motivates themselves and doesn't look to a higher power to give them a purpose in life. An overman also differs from humanity in that he has the strength of will to keep going through the "eternal recurrence" of every event in your life being repeated infinitely. Neitzsche said that "Man is a rope fastened between animal and overman. A rope over an abyss." He thought that out journey in life, if we let it, leads us to become overmen, but things like democracy and religion weaken us and those that are weak will never become overmen. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, the protagonist seeks out individuals that are strong and can be powerful and take control of their own lives, thoughts and moralities and abandons the herd who he sees as weak.

The idea of eternal recurrence shows Neitzsche's view on time; that it is infinite. This links to ideas of reincarnation and the journey towards paradise/ to join Buddha. We then moved on to talk about meditation and the idea that people who meditate are trying to free themselves, to find serenity, nothingness, oblivion and to overcome themselves. This, and the idea of being born again in the cycle of reincarnation, can be seen as similar to Neitzsche's progression from man to overman.

He also spoke of "the last man"; someone that believes in the old ways and refuses to accept the idea of the overman. Someone who is stuck, not progressing or challenging. In the story, the people of the marketplace liked this idea which persuaded Zarathustra that he should give up trying to preach to the masses and that he should turn his attention to those that wanted to follow him; the strong individuals rather than the herd.

Neitzsche also said that the universe is a struggle between good and evil and that religion is a barrier and burden to the overman. At one point he juxtaposed the camel, the lion, and the child (symbolically). The camel was the carrier and the provider of knowledge, while the lion was an aggressive individual with ideas of their own and the child was fresh, new and unburdened. These can be seen as the progression from animal (camel) through human (lion) to Overman (child), and reflects the theory of evolution.

Throughout the book, there are many metaphors and symbols which can be picked up on to show Neitzsche's ideas. One example is the cave that Zarathustra emerges from and later takes his followers back to. Many have seen it as a nod to Plato where the cave could be a private thinking space, away from the world and its traditions and values. The shadows in the cave are that of the real world; not close enough to effect those in the cave but still present. Neitzsche wants people to escape the cave and progress to the real world and the idea of the Overman.

One point that I made about the reading was that iI found the loose plot line very difficult to follow, however Brian pointed out that it was deliberately loose to reflect the modernist traditions where things were no longer structured, no longer sticking within "safe" boundaries, but breaking the rules and thinking outside the box.

Lecture 3: A hotchpotch of Modernism

In this lecture, Chris was talking about all the important people, ideas and events of the Modernist era which, I have to say, is very confusing. I don’t know if it was the nature of the content or the way that we jumped from one thing to another, but I was lost. However, on hearing from Chris after the lecture that “It is okay to be confused”, I am now much more relaxed about having no clue what is going on.

I will try to organise my notes into the key people of the Modernist era before going on to the key factors.

To start, I will outline what Modernism is:

Modernism is important in the history of culture, as set up by Thomas Kuhn in his structure of history. It was a reaction against Romanticism and the Enlightenment, in which the arts, maths and architecture all reflect the idea of the de-centred universe in which there is no central point and everything is in relation to another point rather than to the universe as a whole. In this way, it was thought that nothing is more important than anything else. The science behind the Modernist movement focused on particle physics and the fact that as you continue to spit objects into atoms, sub-atoms etc., it becomes more and more clear that everything is made of nothing, and as the universe continues to expand, there is less and less in it. This was reflected in the fact that Europe was no longer the centre of the world, with America emerging in the 19th century and then Asia shortly after that, creating a globalised world in which Europe is eclipsed and Eastern religions gain importance. Being the opposite of the Enlightenment, modernism was very individualist, rejecting Christianity for being “sheep” and democracy because it was seen as idiots running the world. Modernists were more likely to support an “aristocratic super-scientist”. Examples of these ideas can be found in Nietzsche’s work where Zarathustra is the “over-man”, using super-hero qualities to overcome hurdles in life, and in Schopenhauer’s music which was seen as a “supernatural force”. Another key idea in Modernism was that because of medicinal advancements, the human race has stopped evolving, one example that Chris gave was that of appendicitis; if those that have it do not die, it will continue to be passed on in the gene pool. This has forced two different views; the far right-wings say that we need forced eugenics, such as the Nazi’s idea, in order to stamp out these biological faults, however this is ridiculous and the far left-wing would argue that we need to build a communist super-utopia and evolve socially instead. Many key thinkers would blame Christianity for the advancements in science and welfare that have caused us to stop evolving and it is often seen as the “religion of the weak”. Ideas often associated with Modernism are; war, fire, power, destruction, Freudian sexual theories.

Wagner was very important in Modernism, especially as it is thought that the first moment of modernism in music was his opening of the Prelude to Tristan and Isolde in which he breaks the structural rules for composition by not resolving the piece in the “home key”. Wagner’s operas were always on a huge scale, never seen before, and were seen as a cosmic drama of the universe told through mythology. He was a conservative nationalist and common themes in his work were; burning, sex, anti-Semitism and cannibalism.

Nietzsche was also key, with his style being very important for journalists and many of his most famous quotations now being used in pop culture and journalism. His translator, an American journalist and stylist called H.L. Mencken, was also very important in the advertising industry, pop music’s hook lines and many of the traditions in headline-writing. Both of these men wrote in outbursts, which helps to make their work very quotable, hence the many aphorisms such as “God is Dead”, “Mankind is a thing that must be overcome” and “Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual”. In Nietzsche’s “The Genealogy of Morals” he reflects modernist ideas of; relativity, that the universe has not fixed centre or fixed points which means we cannot have change, the redundancy of the concepts of good and evil, that everything about science is to do with change (which reflects many other philosophers such as Hegel). He did not think there should be racialism or nationalism because of his ideas of individualism. He was a devotee and friend of Wagner and they would often go to orgies at “mad” King Ludwig’s castle.

Freud’s psychoanalysis proved to be a big player in this era mainly because he was saying that you do not really possess your own consciousness and that your subconscious is outside of your control. His ideas of wish-based fulfilment were also seen to be of significance.

James Joyce’s de-centred narrative in Ulysses can be seen as embodying Modernist ideas in that it had no set beginning, middle or end, or set characters. It was seen as an “honest portrayal of real life” and due to its sexual explicitness and radical ideas was banned from the pope-ruled world.

Dorothy Parker was another writer/poet/journalist whose lack of sentimentality has been seen as directly based on Schopenhauer.

Feminism and women came into this era only because of the references in many works to sex, but after they were introduced, they had a large impact, although I am not sure what this impact was. Chris suggested that because women are the givers of life, they are therefore the cause of all of humanity’s problems, because if we did not live we would not worry about life.
Some key events in Modernism were:

The Great War, which brought about a moral, political and economic dissolution of the European order, causing all aspects of culture (books, poems, music etc) to be haunted by the events and consequences of this horrific period. Even the Russian revolutions and the rise of the Nazis can be put down as a direct consequence. It caused huge shock because of the scale of its destructiveness.

The Jazz age; America had the Harlem Renaissance in the 1860s which meant that slavery was officially abolished and The Migration began. Arguably the most important intellectual music of the 20th Century; Jazz and Blues, came out of this as a combination of Jewish, African and American and who knows what else. This created the first world music which then became blues, then rock and roll, then pop music.

Communism, both with Lenin in Russia and with Rosa Luxembourg in Germany, was very important in the Modernist era.

Futurism emerged as part of modernism, characterised by Russian constructivist design such as photo montage and mass production which essentially was the start of magazine journalism. Futurism was against Kantean ideas of works of individual genius.

The architecture in the modernist age reflected the way that people were losing the aesthetic ideas of platonic forms and instead were focused on functional, scientific design based on ergonomics, measurement, etc. Pretty terraced housing was out and functional tower blocks were in. Along with this went the idea of central planning which underpinned fascism as highly rational and functional parts of society.

The Holocaust (organised, industrial mass murder) is thought of as the end of the Modernism era.

And there you go; a hotchpotch of notes that I don’t even understand! Enjoy…

Seminar 1: Tabloid Nation and Lord Northcliffe

The first thing we talked about in the seminar was what we thought of Lord Northcliffe (Alfred Harmsworth). The general opinion was that he was entrepreneurial, with a good head for business but was more politically motivated than journalistically.

He knew the importance of the front page of a newspaper and used this knowledge to good effect. His bold headlines caught the attention of the reader, in this he was very influential. He was very much a risk taker at the start of his career, as shown by the fact that The Daily Mirror was the first paper run by women, for women. He was also the first person to introduce supplements, which he did when he changed the Mirror into a picture paper and created a women’s supplement, so as not to completely lose that readership. However, he was not the original innovator in a lot of his ideas; he was simply bringing Hearst’s ‘yellow journalism’ to the UK.

Northcliffe created a huge newspaper empire, starting with The Illustrated London, The Bicycling News and Answers to Correspondents on Every Subject Under the Sun before moving on to bigger projects like The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail and The Times. After all the build up to the launch of The Daily Mirror, sales quickly dwindled and it became the laughing stock of Fleet Street, an embarrassment to Northcliffe who swiftly brought in Hamilton Fyfe and Hannen Swaffer to turn the publication into a picture paper that would actually sell. This new paper was meant to be entertaining, rather than factual or intellectual. This was reflected in the articles; they were “interesting and sufficiently simple” for the newly educated middle class, with big headlines and lots of pictures so that it could be skimmed rather than read, with a maximum of 250 words per article.

When Northcliffe died, Rothermere inherited the empire and brought about the age of free gifts and prize giveaways, entering it into the craze in newspapers at the time and spending much of the budget on gimmicks such as these.

We next compared Northcliffe and Hearst, with our conclusion being that Northcliffe was much less ruthless; despite the fact that he also needed to seek out and even create news, he would not go to such extreme measures. This could be partly to do with the fact that Hearst would pour as much money as he could into his papers, whereas Northcliffe was much more economically minded, wanting to use his profits to expand into other businesses rather than ploughing the profits straight back into the newspapers. This is especially true when it came to The Daily Mirror; he saw it simply as a means to get more money to put into other businesses, at one point having £8 million worth of secondary business ventures.

We also said that Northcliffe was less afraid of failure, as can be seen by his ‘try it and see’ attitude to launching The Mirror as a woman’s paper. However, he was more motivated by making profit and using his papers for politics than in the journalism side.

We next discussed the quotation on page 23 about the Freedom of the Press. The statement is generally still true today, in that if the advertisers do not like the content, they will not buy advertising and the paper will therefore go bankrupt. However, Rothermere still managed to put some pretty radical content in his papers such as his views on fascism and his support of Hitler and Mussolini. From this, it is clear that as journalists it is important to be objective, but it must not be forgotten that it will be edited and may be rejected from printing; the opinions of the audience and the advertisers are very important.

Photojournalism was an important part of the success of The Mirror. However, it can be dangerous because of the different perceptions and assumptions that can be made of a photograph. Telling a story with a picture leaves out the facts that must be put into words, which can be the essence to understanding the story. However, it is a useful tool because it captures the audience, making them aware of what the headline is in a split second. Also, pictures are important because crime and disasters sell and often the best way to represent stories such as this is through a visual image. Papers are often about appearance, and a wall of print is not enticing.

Newspapers can also be seen as a symbol of status; if you carry around a Guardian or an Observer, people will make the assumption that you are educated, interested in politics and wealthy. Whereas The Mirror or The Sun are seen as lower quality journalism.

We also discussed the fact that journalism thrives on bad things, such as crime, war, disaster, shock statistics and the government gone wrong. These headlines sell papers because we, as readers, love drama.

The last thing that we talked about was how Hearst may have felt about Northcliffe taking his ideas across the pond and poaching members of his staff, such as Kennedy Jones, who was brought over from The New York Journal to be editor of The Daily Mail, or Alexander Kenealy who was also poached from Hearst’s Journal, to replace Hamilton Fyfe as editor of The Daily Mirror. We were curious as to Hearst’s reaction to ‘yellow journalism’ spreading, and after first saying he would have been pretty annoyed at his ideas being stolen, we came to the conclusion that he was quite a self-righteous man and so would probably have been flattered at the popularity of his ideas, and possibly arrogant because he had already done so well and made a huge impact on journalism. This feeling of pride in his work would have been helped by the fact that his papers and Northcliffe’s were not in competition and therefore his sales would not be affected by the spread of his techniques.