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)
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