Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature

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Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature

• Structure of the Mind, Child Development Love
• Dream and Sexual Symbols
• Lacans Views of Desire Split Identity
• Psychological Disorders

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Outline

• Q A on Family Relations
• Subjectivity, Repression and Sublimation
• Interpretation of Dreams
• Examples of Dreams
• Freuds, Language, Some Paintings
• from the textbook
• Other types of Dreams
• Sexual Symbols
• Literature and Psychoanalysis

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Q A more examples of family relationships

• How is the story of Peter Pan psychoanalyzed?
  Does that influence your appreciation of this
  fairy tale? (157-60)
  
• What does the excerpt from Sons and Lovers show
  about Paul? (156)
  
• Do you have stories of Electra complex (154-55)
• (hatred of the mother for the loss of penis and
  love for the father)
  
• ? Wish to imitate the mother to be given a child
  by her father, to bear him a child.

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Peter Pan

• Wendys last night at the female-dominated
  nursery (a space for play) before being
  socialized as a dominated woman
  
• Peter (the boy who refused to grow up, ) never
  grows up, recognizing sexual attraction only in
  the form of mothering
  
• Family drama in the childrens world
• Peter, mother and father to the lost boys
• Nana the dog as a mother
• Effacement of the real fathers
• Mr. Darling
• Captain Hook

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Peter Pan Context and Afterwards

• The deleted and ignored p. 160 Peters coming
  back to Ws daughter (Jane) with a dagger the
  Lost Boys its homosexual environment
  
• Finding Neverland and J.M. Barries relations
  with The Llewelyn Davies family (all boys)
  
• When copying the will informally for Sylvia's
  family, Barrie inserted himself in an additional
  paragraph Sylvia had written that she would like
  Mary Hodgson, the boys' nurse, to continue taking
  care of them, and that perhaps "Jenny" (Mary's
  sister) could come help Barrie wrote "Jimmy"
  (Sylvia's nickname for him) instead of "Jenny
• The boys One (George) was killed in action in
  World War I. Michael, with whom Barrie
  corresponded daily, drowned at a known
  danger-spot at Oxford, one month short of his
  21st birthday. possibly a suicide pact with his
  friend and possible lover Rupert Erroll Victor
  Buxton. ".(source)

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Subjectivity (Liberal) Humanism (since
Renaissance)

• Opposed religious dogmatism and scientism
• Affirms the human (but not the divine or the
  natural)
  
• The individual (over the social and its
  structure)
  
• Rational consciousness (over the unconscious)
• Freedom (over determinism)
• Self-knowledge (over knowledge of others or the
  world)
  
• Individual experience (over objective knowledge)
• ? Subjectivity human self

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Subjectivity Modern Viewssplit or conflictual
subjects

• I think, therefore I am (textbook p. 140)
• ? Freud I express and repress my desires,
  therefore I am.
  
• ? Lacan I am where I dont think I think where
  I am not.
  
• ? Marxism I work, therefore I am not
  (alienation) I shop, therefore I am?
  

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Subjectivity Modern Views (2)

• Subject as being
• subjected (p. 140)
• Located in time, space and structures of rights
  and obligations
  
• Constructed by culture, language and desire even
  desire is culturally instigated (e.g. Kaja
  Silverman)
  
• Constructed through language because language
  offers us subject positions (e.g. Chris Weedon)
  ??????? ? split between the speaking subject and
  spoken subject

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Repression and Sublimation

• Repression (Addition to textbook 147-48) (clip
  1600)
  
• Two kinds primal repression (which establishes
  the unconscious), secondary repression
  
• Separates ideas from energy
• ? with ideas banished to the unconscious (as
  codes),
  
• ? and energy repressed, converted into another
  affect, or into anxiety)
  
• ? The return of the repressed (as symptoms) when
  repression is not successful.
  
• examples of symptoms (also coded) Freudian
  slips, jokes, and dreams.
  
• Sublimation de-sexualizes the love-object,
  sublimate instincts into higher cultural
  pursuits

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The dream-work . . .

• Dreams-- the royal road to the unconscious.
• Transforms the 'latent' content of the dream,
  the. 'forbidden' dream-thoughts into the
  'manifest' dream stories.
  
• Such transformation (or disguise, i.e.
  condensation and displacement, secondary
  revision) allows the desires to be expressed
  without being stopped by the censor.

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3 kinds of Dream as wish fulfillment

• 1st wish fulfillments---the disguise is
  successful and the dream proceeds undisturbed,
  
• 2nd anxiety dreams --the disguise is absent
  or insufficient the forbidden wish emerges,
  causes anxiety, and the dreamer wakes up
  
• 3rd content is disturbing but the feeling is
  not -- the wish is particularly well disguised by
  a misalliance of content and feeling. (e.g.
  dreaming of a family members death)
• (later) nightmares the revisiting of our
  traumatic moments

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Dream Language

• Four elements (clip 1830)
• Condensation (of image, persons and words) --e.g.
  the joke Erring Dirty Laundry in our textbook
  (sordidsorted)
  
• displacement, --e.g. switches a person's hatred
  of Mr. Appleby to that of a rotting apple.
  
• Symbolization, or consideration of
  representibility,
  
• secondary revision

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Examples of Dreams (1) Freuds own dreamwish
fulfillment

• clip 11 30 Irmas dream (against Otto and
  Irma) ? dream as a wish fulfillment
  interpretation by free association (e.g. Irma,
  connected with his daughter and his other
  patient)

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Examples of Dreams (2) Language

• A Businessman dreamed that his alarm clock said
  6.30, but not 630? time is money
  
• A graduate students dream of overeating while
  outlining his PhD dissertation ? food for
  thought.
  

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Examples of Dreams (3)

• Henri Rousseau, The Dream (1910) Who is the
  dreamer and what is it about?

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Examples of Dreams (3)

• Dream by Henry Rousseau about the dream
  process
  
• Wish fulfillment of the woman reclining on a
  divan.
  
• Displacement from a French drawing room to a
  jungle
  
• Condensation day and night the piper (human and
  non-humanlike a satyr),
  
• Sexual symbols flowers, serpent, birds.
• The painting is an illustration, but not a
  replica of dream (Cf. Adams 133-34)

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Examples of Dreams (4)

• Dream by Henry Rousseau secondary revision
  (1914)
  
• Yadwigha, falling into sweet sleep, heard in a
  lovely dream the sounds of a musette played by
  a kind enchanter. While the moon shone on the
  flowers, the verdant trees, the wild snakes lent
  an ear to the instrument's gay airs.
• Yadwigha is no fantasy--she was a real friend of
  Rousseau's. To most male painters of his era,
  women were wives, lovers, prostitutes, models and
  muses, but rarely close friends. Rousseau,
  however, was known as an exception. (source)
• (? S. Plath Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among
  Lillies

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Examples of Dreams (5)

• Textbook excerpt from The Wanderground (pp.
  151)
  
• remember room ?
• Re-structuring the condensed but disparate
  images
  
• sandlewood and wine candle spilling over
  telephone bill, steak, car and heat
  
• Wires
• Man on the side , brassiere ?? Jim, Rosie,
  nursing home

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Other types of Dreams Interpretation

• Does every dream have its latent content?
• Foreboding dreams
• Dreams related ones physical condition
• Dreams as fulfillment of our conscious wishes
• Interpretation
• REM (3802) Rapid Eye movement (the more REM we
  have, the more dream we have, and the longer we
  sleep.)
  
• Ask the Dream Doctor http//www.dreamdoctor.com/in
  dex.shtml

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Sexual symbols

• Frued's notion of symbolism the whole world can
  be absorbed narcissistically, the sexual drives
  can attach themselves to anything the senses
  perceive.
• Examples Rene Margritte

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Sexual symbols examples

• Usually interpreted in their contexts (chap 3
  54)
  
• The hat as the symbol of a man (of the male
  genitals) a woman dreams of wearing such a hat
  (the middle piece of which is bent upwards, while
  the side pieces hang downwards here the
  description hesitates) and feeling cheerful and
  confident
• Representation of the genitals by buildings,
  stairs, and shafts. (He is taking a walk with his
  father in a place ... one can see the Rotunda
  (????? ), in front of which there is a small
  vestibule to which there is attached a captive
  balloon the balloon, however, seems rather limp.
  His father asks him what this is all for he is
  surprised at it, but he explains it to his
  father.
• The male organ symbolised by persons and the
  female by a landscape. (No Problem)

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Literature and Psychoanalysis

• Artist as daydreamer (chap 3 55)
• Is literary work like a patient in front of
  literary critics as analysts? (Cf. textbook
  144-46)
  
• Its hard to tell how much control an author
  has over his/her work whether it is
  manipulated dream or fantasy. (Cf. 153)
  
• The reader/critics themselves can be
  patient/texts.
  
• Psycho-analyzing a text or its author cannot
  exhaust their meanings or values.

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Next Week

• Jacque Lacan -- Identity as Split and in Lack,
  Desire as Displacement (Reader chap 3 pp.
  61-67 chap 4 pp. 161-76)
  
• Elizabeth Bishop's 3 poems
• Ref. at YouTube In the Village
  http//www.youtube.com/watch?v_SJEylT-4GI