Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature

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Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature

1. Structure of the Mind, Child Development Love
2. Dream and Sexual Symbols
3. Psychological Disorders

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Outline

• Q A
• Subjectivity, Repression and Sublimation
• Interpretation of Dreams
• Examples of Dreams
• Freuds
• from the textbook
• Other types of Dreams
• Sexual Symbols
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Literature and Psychoanalysis

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Q A examples of family relationships

• How can the story of Peter Pan be psychoanalyzed?
  Does that influence your appreciation of this
  fairy tale?
• What does the excerpt from Sons and Lovers show
  about Paul? (156)
• What do you think about the family conflicts
  shown in clip 1? (1849)
• Is repression, or sexual liberation, necessary
  for us and for our older generation?
• Is our consciousness still just the tip of an
  iceberg today?

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Peter Pan

• Wendys last night at the nursery (female
  dominated)
• Peter 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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Subjectivity 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)
• experience (over objective knowledge)

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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 even desire is culturally instigated
  (e.g. Kaja Silverman)
• Constructed through language because language
  offers us subject positions (e.g. Chris Weedon)

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Repression and Sublimation

• Repression (Addition to textbook 147-48)
• Two kinds primal repression (which establishes
  the unconscious), second 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' dreamstories -- what the
  dreamer remembers.

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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

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Dream Language

• Four elements
• condensation,
• displacement,
• Symbolization, or consideration of
  representibility,
• secondary revision
• Examples
• switches a person's hatred of Mr. Appleby to that
  of a rotting apple.

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Examples of Dreams (1) Freuds own dreams

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Examples of Dreams (2)

• Dream by Henry Rousseau
• Wish fulfillment of the woman reclining on a
  divan.
• Displacement from a French drawing room to a
  jungle
• Condensation day and night
• Sexual symbols flowers, serpent,
• The painting is an illustration, but not a
  replica of dream (Cf. Adams)
• Spellbound

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Examples of Dreams (2)

• Textbook excerpt from The Wanderground
• dream normally ?
• condensed images

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Other types of Dreams

• Does every dream have its latent content?
• Foreboding dreams
• Dreams related ones physical condition
• Dreams as fulfillment of our conscious wishes
• 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

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Edgar Allan Poe

• Bio born in 1809
• Father disappeared when he was 18 months old
• Pretty and childlike mother died of consumption a
  year later
• Married Virginia at the age of 26, when Virginia
  was 13 and already sickening.
• Virginia died of consumption 10 years later.

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Allan the Women in Poes Life

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Marie Bonarpartes work on Poe

• another example of psycho-biography
• Her basic point
• Fixated on his love for his mother? a
  necrophiliac
• Physically loyal to her, he married an ailing
  cousin and thus spares himself the need to
  consummate the marriage.

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Marie Bonarpartes work on Poe (2)

• Compulsion to repeat in Tales of the Mother and
  Tales of the father
• desire to be united with the dead mother
• Desire to kill the father figure
• Both desires are repressed and thus they cause
  anxiety.
• Bonarparte sees Poes tales as the manifest part
  of his dream/desire, through which she recovers
  the latent part.

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The City in the Sea

• Thesis Death, first as both the enthroned God
  and then the sunken city, is desired and held in
  awe by the speaker.
• Conflicts between height and lowness
• Deathenthroned, down within the West,
• Shrines vs. waters
• Light rising and encircling vs. waters
• Tower vs. graves pendulous vs. wide open
• Nothingness vs. movement (of the towers)
• Town going down vs. Hell rising.? Finally it is
  the City that is presented as more powerful than
  Death.

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The City in the Sea the paper (chap 3 pp.
164- )

• Thesis (p. 167) (conclusion) the poem is rich
  with sexual imagery and shows Poes id at work,
  striving to convey the deep passions and desires
  of his unconscious mind.
• Structure
• Freuds theory,
• Bonarpartes reading of Poes life--
• His art of sublimation of his sexual desires
• Phallic symbols in the poem Poes repression
• Symbols of vigina, quickening of his desire
• Climax and post-climax

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The City in the Sea the paper (chap 3 pp.
164- )

• Strengths
• Notices the pulsating activities of the city.
• Attentive to various images.

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the paper-- Problems?

• Thesis paragraph should be moved to the
  beginning.
• Introd. to Freudian theory Poes life is good
  but a bit too long
• Id as a conscious agent. (167)
• forgotten
• Missed the importance of death and the sea

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Literature and Psychoanalysis

• Are Bonarpartes and s readings of Poe reductive
  or not?
• 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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One evaluation

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Next Week

• Jacque Lacan -- Identity as Split and in Lack,
  Desire as Displacement (Reader chap 3 pp.
  156-163 chap 4 pp. 161-76)
• Elizabeth Bishop's 3 poems
• Ref.lt????????gt