Lit Theory - Freud - Psychoanalytic

Sigmund Freud

1.     From Interpretation of Dreams

a.     Falling in love with one parent and hating the other is a significant cause of neurosis in kids.  814.

b.     This notion is affirmed by the power of Oedipus Rex.

                                               i.     Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and impregnates his mother.

                                             ii.     People respond to the play as strongly today as when it was first performed.

                                            iii.     The potency of Oedipus Rex is the desire to:

1.     Kill one parent and mate the other, or

2.     Suppress the desire to do so.

                                            iv.     Freud speculates the theme for Oedipus Rex generated from the dream material of a child approaching adolescence.

c.     Hamlet has similar, but altered theme.

                                               i.     The wish is repressed in Hamlet, and brought to action in Oedipus Rex.

                                             ii.     Hamlet is unable to take vengeance on the man who killed his father and took his mom’s place.

1.     It shows repressed wishes from his childhood.

2.     Hamlets self-loathing becomes self-reproach.

3.     This is a transition from unconscious thoughts to conscious thoughts.

d.     The major point is that creative writings are more than what they seem and open to more than one interpretation.

2.     The Dream Work

a.     Attempts at dream interpretation occur in the context of the waking or conscious mind.

b.     The focus should be on how the content relates to latent dream thought.

c.     Dream thought and dream content tell the same stories, just in different presentations.

d.     It can be thought of:

                                               i.     Dream content is the transcript.

                                             ii.     Dream thought is the expression.

                                            iii.     More specifically, dream content is a transcript of dream thought.

e.     Dreams need to be interpreted through symbols of the dream images.

f.      Dreams are puzzles of images.

3.      Dreams are immensely compressed.

4.     The process of dream-work creation is the fusion of:

a.     Stripping high value elements of significance,

b.     Over exaggerating lower values, that

c.     Create new values.

d.     Effectively transferring physical intensities that is known as dream displacement.

5.     Dream displacement and dream condensing are the governing factors of dreams.

6.     Dreams are unable to express conjunctions or causal relationships.

a.     Dreams function like a photograph.

                                               i.     Elements displayed together form a relationship between the objects and in time.

                                             ii.     Causal relationships are achieved through sequencing of the images.

1.     The primary message is first with meaning added on through more images.

b.     Dreams are unable to express no or either.

c.     Dreams are free to do as they wish.

7.     From “Fetishism”

a.     Fetishes are not normally associated as a symptom of other conditions.

b.     Fetishes are the substitute for the mother’s penis that the little boy wanted to believe in, and they serve as a form of protection from casteration.

c.     Normally the substitute is given up, but for some it continues.

d.     Freud suggested that the fetish is associated with something near the boy when he discovered his mom had no penis.  Feet, legs, underwear, and hosiery are examples.

          

  Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism.”  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 841-845. Print.

---, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams.  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 814-824. Print.