Freudian Psychoanalysis

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Freudian Psychoanalysis

• Interpretation of Dreams,
• the Uncanny and Fetishism

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Freuds Major Concepts

• The Unconscious Structure of the psyche
• the child's sexual development-- a.
  polymorphous sexuality, three stages, fixation
• b. Oedipal stage--gendering process, Oedipus
  complex, castration  fear
• dream analysis--condensation, substitution,
  symbolization
• repression and pyschological diseases
  psychological or physical abnormalities as
  symptoms  (or covert expressions of desire)
•  Art as Daydreaming ? Psychobiography

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Freuds Major Concepts

• The Unconscious ? can only be "diagnosed through
  analyzing unintended lapses in memory, slips of
  tongue, puns and dreams.
• the child's sexual development
• Oedipus complex, castration  fear ? the uncanny
  (return of the repressed)
• Repression pyschological diseases
  psychological or physical abnormalities as
  symptoms? fetishism

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The Uncanny

• Definition p.
• heimlich-- "familiar," "homely," to "secret and
  hidden" to "dangerous and dreaded"
• ? unheimlich (p. 934)
• What are the two kinds of of the uncanny
  according to Freud? The examples of each?

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Two kinds of the Uncanny

• Cessation of a belief and then the return of the
  old, discarded beliefs Many people experience
  the feeling of the uncanny in the highest
  degree in relation to death and dead bodies, to
  the return of the dead, and to spirits and
  ghosts.... --animism, magic and sorcery, the
  omnipotence of thoughts, man's attitude to death
• Return of the repressed p. 950-- involuntary
  repetition and the castration complex comprise

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The Uncanny

• Examples on two levels of child development
• oedipal-level castration fear.
• the pre-oedipal stage of primary narcissism
• (1) castration fear-- the example of Offenbach's
  Tales of Hoffmann. "The Sandman" tear the kids'
  eyes out to induce sleep. ? the castrating
  oedipal father
• This story is "uncanny" because Nathaniel's fear
  of the "sandman" is at once incomprehensible and
  strangely familiar it partakes of the
  unconscious.

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The Sandman structuralist psycho. analysis

• What are repeated in Ns childhood and adult
  life?
• Freuds interpretation and clues 938

Childhood scene traumatic but repressed both fantasy and real "the Sandman" of nurses's tale Adult life there is a sense of fatality...of being haunted The spy glass
The lawyer Coppelius as the sandman / the good, mild father Coppola the optician/ Professor Spalanzin
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Ns resistance-- hiding in closet to see the Sandman frightend by C The love of Olympia and Olympias bleeding eyes Clare?
punishment arrival of the Coppelius as castrating threat of blinding, death of father Olympia as automoton dismembered....when Coppelius reappears, he hurls himself off tower
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The Uncanny

• the pre-oedipal stage of primary narcissism
• -- double as (1) reflection, (2) superego and (3)
  shadow
• double an insurance against destruction of ego
• An agency of self-observation
• A creation dating back to a very early mental
  stage
• Repetition compulsion 941 -

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Repetition

• Compulsive repetition of traumatized patient
• Vs. Fort-da game (Beyond the Pleasure Principle)
• (the motive of this repetition remains to master
  the unpleasant situation. The boy compensates his
  powerlessness by placing himself in the position
  as agent.)
• Death drive ? stasis repetition return to a
  prior state and re-finding of the lost wholeness.
  
• Vs. sexual drive ?disruption and transformation
  repetition detour and deferring finality

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The Uncanny

• the pre-oedipal stage of primary narcissism
• Primary narcissism the infants libido is
  focused on itself an investment in the self as
  an ideal ego (vs. ego-ideals, the objects of
  libidinal energy in the outside world).
• Secondary narcissism libido is withdrawn from
  the persons it invested in and returned again to
  its own ego.
• Lacan primary the creation of a corporeal image
  (mirror stage) vs. fragmented body
• Secondary dialectic of love and aggression

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The role of literature

• Pp. 950
• The uncanny as it is depicted in literature
  more fertile province than the uncanny in real
  life, for it contains the whole of the latter and
  something more besides, something that cannot be
  found in real life.
• profound modification ? the uncanny in fiction
• ? (1) a great deal that is not uncanny in fiction
  would be so if it happened in real life
• (2) there are many more means of creating uncanny
  effects in fiction than there are in real life.

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Example SALVADOR DALI

• His stylistic concerns eroticize reality
  Trompe-l'oeil
• 'After Freud it is the outer world, the world of
  physics, which will have to be eroticized and
  quantified. Dali, IN 'THE WORLD OF SALVADOR
  DALI,' MACMILLAN 1962 (source SALVADOR DALI
  http//www.mmlab.ktu.lt/Dali/index.html )
• "My whole ambition in the pictorial domain is to
  materialize the images of concrete irrationality
  with the most imperialist fury of precision."
• "to systematize confusion and contribute to the
  total discrediting of the world of reality"

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Example SALVADOR DALI

• His Life
• Gala and Dali met in the summer of 1929. In that
  year, Dali's paintings were full of flourishing
  sexual symbols. "This historic meeting was
  accompanied by a fit of extreme madness. Dali was
  in such a state of constant exaltation that every
  time he started to speak to Gala he burst into
  insane laughter" (Neret, 22).
• The Great Masturbator bears witness to Dali's
  first encounter with Gala and the state in which
  she left him-midway between 'hard' and 'soft'"
  (Neret, 28).

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The Great Masturbator

• A large, soft, terrorized head, livid and
  waxlike, with pink cheeks the closed eyes
  (embellished by very long eyelashes) suggest the
  state of sleeping or dreaming.

A tremendous nose -- leaning on the ground
Metamorphosis at the neck region
The mouth, replaced by a decaying grasshopper
crawling with ants.
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The Great Masturbator

• "The Great Masturbator" is one of Dali's
  classic surreal images of sexual persecution and
  an obsession with castration, impotence, and
  masturbation. It is also an image that plays off
  of psychic automatism and Freudian dream logic
  displacement, condensation, and fetish. (source)
• Where do we see displacement, condensation and
  fetish?

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Example 2 Spellbound
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Freud in Context critique and continuation

• The American-- move toward "ego psychology" the
  French -- a "return to the real Freud"
• What do you think about Freuds major concepts?

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References

• Salvador Dali 1904-1989by Gilles Neret, Giles
  Neret
• 20th Century Art History Tutorials
  http//www.csulb.edu/karenk/index.html