Psychoanalysis

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Psychoanalysis

• Conclusion Continuation
• Fetishism as an Example

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Outline

• Sigmund Freud
• Jacque Lacan
• Fetishism
• Continuations
• ego psychology object-relations theory
• Connections with Marxism

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Freudian Psychoanalysis General Comment
--Deconstruction

• Freud begins with a series of hierarchical
  oppositions
• normal/pathological
• Sanity/insanity
• Experience/dream
• Conscious/unconscious
• Life/death.
• The first prior and richer The second negation
  or complication
• Freud the first a special case of the
  fundamentals designated by the second term.
  (Jonathan Culler qud in Wright 124)  

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Freudian Psychoanalysis possible functions
criticism

• A.  Psyche Id psychology Child development
  The theory of Oedipus complex and penis envy
• -- helps explain gendering processes in
  patriarchal society.
• -- Freuds limitations or our misunderstanding
• -- inability to explain female sexuality--What
  do women want
• -- its focus on infantile psychology.  Between
  ordinary adult personality traits and infantile
  psychology there are layers upon layers of
  relationships experiences values and meanings.
    

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Freudian Psychoanalysis possible functions
criticism

• B. Psychobiography and Art as Dream work.
• -- psychobiography (treating artists as patients
  art as dream work and explaining art in terms of
  his/her life) can be reductive ignoring arts
  aesthetic aspects on the conscious level. (e.g.
  E. Bishops objectification/distantiation of her
  loss )
• -- We can examine our own transference in
  reading.
• -- interpretation of dream helps us understand
  the languages of dream.

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Freudian Psychoanalysis possible functions
criticism

• C. Psychological Pattern Disorders
• Pattern
• -- repression displacement/sublimation or
  fixation/regression
• -- repetition compulsion defense mechanism
  death/life instincts
• Disorder -- the return of the repressed through
  symptoms.
• -- Helpful for character and self analysis
• -- entering the symbolic order means having
  reality checks otherwise we may become
  psychotic.

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Freudian Psychoanalysis Lacan

• Add linguistic elements to Freuds analysis.
• Barred subject S-ier/S-ied or S
• The differences between need demand (with
  language) and desire.
• The mother as feminine Other our needs for the
  others (objet a).
• The three orders of human existence constant
  antagonism between the Real and the Symbolic our
  mirror images and the need to look.
• --Is this another fiction

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Fetishism

• An example of controversies and continuation

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Fetishism of Different Kinds

• (Religious fetishism  -- )
• Erotic/Sexual fetishism
• Commodity fetishism and Colonial fetishism

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FETISHISMgeneral def.

• Erotic fetishism-- the dependence on particular
  objects (part of a body or an inanimate object)
  to obtain sexual arousal.
• Most common fetish objects are Female underwear
  Leatherwear and Rubber. Using female underwear
  for fetishistic purposes is one reason for
  partial cross-dressing. http//www.schools-out.org
  .uk/san_definitions.html

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Erotic fetishism- Examples

• Clothing Fetishism- underwear- uniforms (e.g.
  Exotica)- gloves - shoes/boots/pantyhose
• (Body) Modification- tattoos- piercing
• Material Fetishism - leather- fur- velvet
  (e.g. Blue Velvet)

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Erotic fetishism- Examples

• Body Fetishism - legs/feet - hair- nails/claws
  - belly buttons
• Other Fetishism- manaquins/robots- cross
  dressing
• - cigarette

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Erotic fetishism- Freuds analysis

• Disavowal The little boy sees the mothers
  genitals and simultaneously denies his perception
  of her castration.
• //his castration fear
• Solution -- denial/acceptance of her
  castration and by extension his own by finding
  a substitute.
• Fetish
• A substitute for the mothers missing penis
• Linked metonymically to the female genitalia
• Never the same as the original which is a
  fiction. (imaginary phallus or phallic mother)

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Erotic fetishism- Reasons

• Fetishization
• eroticizes an object or a non-genital part of
  ones body
• allows the boy to remain intimate with the
  phallic mother while at the same time enter the
  symbolic accepting the fathers law and
  developing his masculinity.
• Lacans example Little Harry (Grosz 119-20)
• Is fetishism all about need for power and
  identification
• Are we all fetishists one way or another

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Fetishism example

• Fazios Mistress 1863.D.G.Rossetti 

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Erotic fetishism- Extention

• Visual Pleasures in Hollywood films
• the camera takes a male perspective watching
  female stars as passive object of look
• Satisfy two kinds of desire
• Male voyeurism peeping in order to possess
• Fetishism --look and identify with the
  glamorized female stars
• -- fetishizing womens body on the screen in
  order to project them as phallic mother (//e.g.
  film noire the woman has to be a lack losing
  memory of her identity.)

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Erotic fetishism- Criticism

• Reflects Freuds emphasis of--
• Female castration male castration anxiety
• Freuds privileging the phallus
• Feminist responses
• 1. Rejection fetishism coincides with the norm
  of phallocentrism.
• 2. Female fetishism e.g. collection of
  memorabilia self-fetishization
• 3. Rewriting female disavowalwomen disavow
  their own castration through narcissism or
  hysteria. It also explains female development of
  lesbianism.

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Examples for analysis Mulholland Dr. its
Narcissistic Elements

• As a revision of film noire it has a woman but
  not a man in pursuit of a femme fatale (who is
  mysterious and amnesiac).
• The fetishistic images in the film turn to be
  those of herself.
• Mirror/reality forms a vicious circle and there
  is no outlet for her.

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Greta Garbo vs. Diane
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Rene Magritte The Dangerous Liaisonhttp//bert
c.com/magritte_menu.htm

• The woman hides behind a projected phallic
  image of herself. contradiction between
  soliciting gaze with the gesture of modesty and
  self-projection.
• (Cf. Wright 185)

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Fetishism Literary Examples

• Hemingway
• his male heroes all amputees. (Jake Barnes is
  missing his penis. Harry Morgan is missing his
  arm. Harry Walden has a gangrenous leg. Colonel
  Cantwell has been shot twice through the hand.)
  
• a fear of castration envy of masculine grace.
• an unsettling identification with the
  castrated woman which paradoxically
  intensifies castration anxiety. e.g.

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Fetishism Literary Examples

• by
• -- Some fetishes may not be sexual in nature
• e.g.
• -- green light in The Great Gatsby (national
  fetish)
• -- commodity fetish (e.g. The commodities in such
  realist novels as Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath or
  Sister Carrie)

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Fetishism of Other Kinds Colonial Fetish

• sexual fetish the sexualized fetish of
  colonial discourse (Homi Bhabha)
• colonial fetish
• in the ambivalent space in between
• an imposed identity and the reality of their
  humanity for the colonized
• between the recognized and the disavowed
• between fear and desire for the colonizers.
• The tropes of the sexual fetish are present in
  the colonial fetish but syncretized with certain
  tropes of colonialist experience and identity to
  embody the larger socio-political context of
  colonial relations.

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Fetishism of Other Kinds Colonial Fetish

• e.g.1. the image of the submissive and sweet
  Oriental woman (Madame Butterfly)
• 2. Jimmie Durham Self-Portrait (1986) Sexually
  powerful aborigine. -- sea shells for ears bits
  of animal hide hair one turquoise eye is just to
  show a little Indianness and the feathers
  revealed by an open chest cavity imply a certain
  light-heartedness.  and defiantly large and
  colorful genitals.

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Fetishism of Other Kinds Commodity Fetish

• The charming and enigmatic nature of commodity
• Exchange values added to it
• relations between the products // relations
  between men
• e.g. Cell phone Hello Kitty etc.
• More next time.

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Psychoanalysis

• continuation

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ego psychology object-relations theory

• Ego psychology deal with the management of
  fantasies for the maintenance of identity
• (id psychology instinctual drives and private
  fantasies)
• Object-relations
• feelings about the mother projected to an
  external object multiple interactions with the
  object establish ones relations with reality.

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Combined with Marxism

• The symbolic order filled with signs of
  ideologies
• Commodity as a sublime object of our desire (to
  hide the inner split in us).
• Analyzing cultural symptoms. e.g. the need for
  stigmatization when SARRS occurs.
• Treating Psychoanalysis as a discourse that gets
  form when traditional families are challenged.
  (e.g. Foucault)

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Reference

• Psychoanalytic Criticism A Reappraisal
  
  by Elizabeth
  Wright. Polity1998.\
• Elizabeth Grosz Jacque Lacan A Feminist
  Introduction

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Next Week

• Reader chap 5 to p. 214
• Snowed Up