What is psychoanalysis?

a medical practice: the “talking cure”

founded and developed by Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Literary psychoanalysis

psychoanalysis or “psychoanalytic theory” is also an established interpretive approach to literature and film

a methodology for reading and interpreting texts and films

cultural texts are – like patients’ dream narratives – full of signs which we, the reader / interpreter – like the psychoanalyst – must decipher

Freud and literature

Freud often used literary ancestors to embellish his medical case studies

a reading of Oedipus The King (Athenian tragedy by Sophocles, 429 BC) underpins his theory of the Oedipus complex

his theory of das Unheimliche, “the uncanny” is based on his reading of the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann’s work Der Sandmann, 1816

What are the basic tenets of psychoanalysis?

events in early childhood determine our personality (e.g. the Oedipus Complex)

human behaviour and experience is often driven by irrational drives

these drives remain unconscious

Basic tenets of psychoanalysis

repression is the force that keeps the drives unconscious

nevertheless the drives exert influence on human experience and behaviour

this can make people “sick”: neurotic, psychotic, anxious, depressed

Cure?

the way to resolve the disturbance of the drives is to access the unconscious under the guidance of a psychoanalyst

psychoanalysis helps to bring the repressed into the conscious mind where it can be made sense of cognitively

in other words the repressed becomes “narrativized” in therapy

On the couch: a session with a psychoanalyst

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Psychoanalysis and the modern self

an important development in Western concepts of the modern self

this self is divided between conscious and unconscious forces

the self is a battle ground for unresolved repressed drives

Freud’s timeliness

a timely theory for Freud’s era (late 19th and early 20th centuries)

Victorian era – known for sexual repression and strict moral codes

Freud’s theory comments on this and heralds a new era and a new subjectivity: the modern self

Anti-rational

Freud is also radical in that he restores the body to Western philosophy

modern Western philosophy since Descartes (Early Modern era) and the Enlightenment (Kant) based on reason and rationality

René Descartes 1596-1650

Je pense, ainsi je suis

Ich denke, also bin ich

I think, therefore I am

Mind/reason v body/unreason

precedence of mind (rationality and reason) over body (lower order)

body: secondary to reason, not the essential part of the individual’s identity

Return of the body

Freud restores the body to Western thought through his theory of the drives

central position of sexual desire which society compels us to repress from the earliest point

we are sexual physical beings; we can be aggressive and violent

Pyschoanalysis and secularisation

Freud’s view modifies the idea of man as a noble creature apart from the animal world

he thus undermines the Biblical idea of man being made in God’s likeness

“God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”. (Genesis 1:27)

Psychoanalysis and evolutionary biology

influence of Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859), foundational text of evolutionary biology

principle of natural selection (survival of the fittest)

“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” (full title)

Important points to note

the conscious and unconscious minds are not two separate halves of one mind

Freud does not mean to present us with an “upstairs / downstairs” model of the mind

it is more useful to think of the mind as a forcefield comprised of mutually co-determining conscious thoughts and unconscious drives

in short, the mind is a battleground for these forces

sometimes the unconscious drives will have the upper hand….

Dream theory

one of Freud’s most famous examples of when the drives have the upper hand is in his theory of dreams

the mind is resting – in sleep mode – so repression and censorship relax….

repressed thoughts can thus rise to the surface – often referred to as “the return of the repressed”

A Freudian slip by President George H.W. Bush

"For seven and a half years I've worked alongside President Reagan. We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex... uh... setbacks."

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar