Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud is the main founder of psychoanalysis
...
The first one is Breastfeeding stage in which the human
lives in pre-ego state
...


 Human Psyche
According to Freud's psychoanalytic theory, there are three agents which
describes human psyche
...
Superego
represents the conscience mind
...
It is the
part which gives the judgement while Ego represents the human self and the
social self
...
It includes instincts, repression,
desire, sexuality, passion, etc
...

Then, Freud powerfully developed an old idea that the human mind is essentially
dual in nature
...
The ego or I, was his term for the
predominantly rational, logical, orderly, conscious part
...
The superego almost seems to be outside of the self, making moral judgments, telling us to
make sacrifices for good causes even though self-sacrifice may not be quite logical
or rational
...

The function of our ego is to protect our unconscious mind from destruction
...


 Dreams
Freud wrote a book called "The Interpretation of Dreams"
...
A dream
takes place when two similar constructs match with each other
...
A nightmare takes place when two different constructs
clash
...
Like dreams, novels are
fictions, inventions of the mind that, although based on reality, are, by definition,
not literally true
...

Freud is one of the reasons it seems "natural" to think of literary works in terms
of dreams
...
At one time or another, most of us have referred to ego, libido, complexes,
unconscious desires, and sexual repression
...


 Repression
According to Freud, all of us have repressed wishes and fears; we all have dreams
in which repressed feelings and memories emerge disguised, and thus we are all
potential candidates for dream analysis
...
For example,
when the child finds out that his father shares him with the mother, an Oedipus
complex starts to form inside him with hatred towards the father
...
This causes a
psychological disorder while growing up turns into illness
...
One of Freud's most important contributions to the study of
the psyche, the theory of repression, goes something like this: much of what lies
in the unconscious mind has been put there by consciousness, which acts as a
censor, driving underground unconscious or conscious thoughts or instincts that it
deems unacceptable
...
When we have repressed

desires or emotions, this causes the Id to switch off the ego and consciousness
...
When this happens, it
cancels out our existence (the ego) and the Id becomes our number one
existence
...

Many of the elements of psychology Freud sought to describe and explain are
present in the literary works of various ages and cultures, such as from Sophocles'
Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
...
Then, ego asks superego forbids kind advice and if this is allowed
or not
...
This is the first circle
...
After the second circle, a guilt takes place causing pain
...

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet suffers from an Oedipus complex
...
But he is not able to fulfil this
desire because of some psychological disorders emanating from the struggle
between his Id and his superhero
...
He remains under this inner conflict throughout the play
...

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Frankenstein is a scientist who develops a
technique to impart life to non-living matter
...
Frankenstein's ego is ruled by his Id,
which is haunted by a desire to discover the origin of life
...
After the creation of the monster,
Frankenstein has a very deep sense of guilt, because the monster has committed
endless crimes
...


 Libido and Desire
Desire minus Guilt equal Man
...
The function of our ego is
to protect our conscious mind from destruction
...
Libido is responsible for sexuality
...

Libido is a part of our unconscious mind which is responsible for evoking sexual
desire
...
The sense of pain we feel after sexual intercourse is a form of guilt
...
During sexual intercourse, the man cannot entry see the
woman and the woman cannot entry see the man
...


 Author psychoanalysis
Freud's characterization of the creative mind as "clamorous" if not ill,
psychoanalytic criticism written before 1950 tended to psychoanalyze the
individual author
...
A
perfect example of author analysis would be Marie Bonaparte's 1933 study of
Edgar Allan Poe
...

Through analysing Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, we can conclude that he is a
traumatized poet
...
All of these are called the
symptoms of trauma
...
The narrator seems to suffer from psychological disorders
such as, hallucinations and delusions
...

On the other hand, while Holland began to focus more on the ways in which
authors create works that appeal to our repressed wishes and fancies
...
This helped to establish another critical school: readerresponse criticism (Reception Theory)
...
(Everyone receives the same thing or idea differently)

 Jacques Lacan divided the psyche into three stages
1
...
Mirror Stage or Imaginary Stage
3
...
The unity between the
child and its mother (breastfeeding) is strong
...
It has no recognition of
the external world and no identification of the self
...
During this stage, the child comes to recognize itself and its mother
...
All these
factors help to from the ego
...
For Lacan, the linguistic order is a symbolic order, which
means that words are not the things they stand for but are, rather, substitutions
for those things

---