Freudian Imagery In Art

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Freudian Imagery In Art Film

• A Tour of the Unconscious Made Manifest

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Psychoanalytic Criticism

• A twentieth-century school of thought.
• Consider literature and art analogous to dreams.
• Like dreams and folklore, literature and art
  uses images and symbols to make unconscious
  psychological conflicts and feelings manifest.
• Early art, mythology and folklore contained
  these images unconsciously. In the post-Freud
  years, artists and writers chose to include
  images which would recall the unconscious.

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Sexual Imagery

• Phallic Symbols
• Any image recalling the male reproductive organs.
• Some emphasize the generative or creative power.
• Others emphasize the penetrating, invasive or
  destructive power

• Feminine Symbols
• Any image recalling the female reproductive
  organs.
• Some emphasize the warm, nurturing maternal side
  of women.
• Other depict the Freudian idea of the
  nightmarish, monstrous feminine.

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Dream Imagery and Interpretation

• Freud believed that dreams operated on two
  levels.
• The manifest content was the imagery of the
  dream which the dreamer could sometimes remember.
• The latent content was the hidden significance
  of the dream, which could be interpreted through
  the dreams symbolic language.
• Freud believed that all dreams were significant
  and revealed something about the unconscious.

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Unconscious Desires and Fears are Symbolically
Represented

• Id impulses--which the conscious mind perceives
  only dimly as hunger, thirst, sexual
  desire--are often symbolically represented.
• Fears which cannot be held in the conscious
  mind--such as the fear of castration, or loss of
  the parents--can be represented symbolically.

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The Phallic Symbol

• Achievement of Man
• The phallic image is rooted in architectural
  history.

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The Phallic Symbol

• Achievement of Man
• The phallic image is rooted in architectural
  history.

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The Phallic Symbol

• Achievement of Man
• The phallic image is rooted in architectural
  history.

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The Phallic Symbol

• Achievement of Man
• The phallic image is rooted in architectural
  history.
• Skyscrapers symbolize dominance of the natural
  world.

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The Phallic Symbol

• Achievement of Man
• The phallic image is rooted in architectural
  history.
• Skyscrapers symbolize dominance of the natural
  world.
• Worlds tallest building

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The Phallic Symbol

• Destructive Power
• Most weapons of war have a phallic nature

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The Phallic Symbol

• Destructive Power
• Most weapons of war have a phallic nature
• Masculinity and the ability to destroy are
  closely linked.

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The Phallic Symbol

• Destructive Power
• Most weapons of war have a phallic nature
• Masculinity and the ability to destroy are
  closely linked.

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The Phallic Symbol
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The Phallic Symbol
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The Phallic Symbol

• Nightmarish Visions
• Castration complex phallic anxiety.
• In Freudian dream analysis, walking into a
  room is thought to represent sexual intercourse

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The Phallic Symbol

• Nightmarish Visions
• Castration complex phallic anxiety.
• In Freudian dream analysis, walking into a
  room is thought to represent sexual intercourse

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The Phallic Symbol

• Nightmarish Visions
• Castration complex phallic anxiety.
• In Freudian dream analysis, walking into a
  room is thought to represent sexual intercourse

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The Feminine Symbol
Like the phallic symbol, the feminine symbol
appears in two variations.
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The Feminine Symbol

• Nurturing Woman
• These images recall the warm, maternal aspect of
  woman, and the safety and security of hearth and
  home.

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The Feminine Symbol

• Nurturing Woman
• These images recall the warm, maternal aspect of
  woman, and the safety and security of hearth and
  home.
• Flowers and other plants often represent the
  feminine, as in the work of Georgia OKeefe.

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The Feminine Symbol

• Nurturing Woman
• These images recall the warm, maternal aspect of
  woman, and the safety and security of hearth and
  home.
• Flowers and other plants often represent the
  feminine, as in the work of Georgia OKeefe.

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The Feminine Symbol

• The recognition that boys and girls have
  biological differences, and the beginnings of
  the castration complex, lead to a fear of women
  by boys.
• This fear of women and their power becomes
  manifest in a nightmarish image called the vagina
  dentata, or devouring woman.

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The Feminine Symbol

• Devouring Woman
• The Gorgon Medusa is one of the earliest
  mythological representations of this monstrous
  feminine figure.

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The Feminine Symbol

• Devouring Woman
• The Gorgon Medusa is one of the earliest
  mythological representations of the monstrous
  feminine.
• The female vampire is another symbolic
  representation which has its origin in antiquity
  but has persisted in modern culture.

Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger
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The Feminine Symbol
The Vampire Philip Burne-Jones
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The Feminine Symbol

• Devouring Woman
• The Gorgon Medusa is one of the earliest
  mythological representations of the monstrous
  feminine.
• The female vampire is another symbolic
  representation which has its origin in antiquity
  but has persisted in modern culture.
• Science fiction has also drawn on this image, as
  in this still from Aliens.

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The Feminine Symbol

• Devouring Woman
• James Camerons film, in fact, climaxes with a
  striking confrontation between the dichotomous
  mother-images.

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The Feminine Symbol

• Devouring Woman
• The image of the mythological earth-mother as
  voracious devourer can be found throughout hero
  fiction from Beowulf. . .

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The Feminine Symbol

• Devouring Woman
• The image of the mythological earth-mother as
  voracious devourer can be found throughout hero
  fiction from Beowulf to Return of the Jedi.

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Unconscious Desires and Fears

• Ideas which are difficult to express consciously
  often manifest themselves in art, folklore and
  literature.

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Fear of the Feminine

• Traditional or enforced standards of dress one
  way to control.

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Fear of the Feminine

• Traditional or enforced standards of dress one
  way to control.

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Fear of the Feminine

• Traditional or enforced standards of dress one
  way to control.
• real live women replaced by perfect
  re-creations.
• real women often depicted as helpless or
  trapped.

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Unconscious Desires and Fears

• Animals, such as wolves and apes, often
  symbolize aggressive, id-driven impulses,
  combining hunger and sex.
• Fairy-tales become warnings about the dangers of
  premature or illicit sexuality.
• Straying off the path leads to danger for both
  Red Riding Hood and her grandmother.

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Unconscious Desires and Fears

• Of course, children love their mothers, but
  theres often a fair amount of anger and
  resentment towards the parents, too. Since this
  cannot be safely psychologically expressed
  towards the real parents, wicked witches and
  evil stepmothers provide convenient substitutes.
• doppelganger a psychological double-or stand-in
  onto which anxiety or aggression can be safely
  projected.

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Unconscious Desires and Fears
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Castration Complex

• Boy realizes physical differences between boys
  and girls.
• Boy theorizes that maybe, just maybe, girls and
  boys originally had penises, but lost them.
• Since the power in the household lies mostly with
  the father, the boy assumes that the father can
  and possibly will castrate him for misbehaving.
• Fear of castration is also related to the
  terrifying image of the vagina dentata--or woman
  as castrator.
• Fear of castration cannot be consciously
  expressed.

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Castration Complex

• Common Castration Images Include
• Injuries to, or severing of hands or other limbs.

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Castration Complex

• Common Castration Images Include
• Injuries to, or severing of hands or other limbs.

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Castration Complex

• Common Castration Images Include
• Injuries to, or severing of hands or other limbs.
• Blinding--as in the original myth of Oedipus who
  blinds himself in guilt.

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Castration Complex

• Common Castration Images Include
• Injuries to, or severing of hands or other limbs.
• Blinding--as in the original myth of Oedipus who
  blinds himself in horror.

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Castration Complex

• Common Castration Images Include
• Injuries to, or severing of hands or other limbs.
• Blinding.
• A small or diminished man.

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Dont Worry Women Get a Complex, too.
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Penis Envy

• In Freuds view, when girls noticed the basic
  differences between the sexes, they would feel
  cheated, and want what the boys had.
• Eventually, they would identify with their
  mothers and accept their role as women.
• If unable to resolve this problem, they would
  continue to seek to develop masculine
  characteristics.

This idea has been discredited
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