The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions. (Freud)

Transcription

1 Week 10: 13 November Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious Reading: John Storey, Chapter 5: Psychoanalysis John Hartley, Symbol Society believes that no greater threat to it civilization could arise than if the sexual instincts were to be liberated and returned to their original aims. (Freud) The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions. (Freud) The artist is an introvert not far removed from neurosis. He is oppressed by excessively powerful instinctual needs. (Freud) Key Themes and Concepts 1) Freudian psychoanalysis 2) Freudian psychoanalytic textual analysis 3) Contextualizing Lacan 4) Lacanian psychoanalysis key concepts Some psychoanalytic terms you need to know psyche/psychoanalysis symbol conscious/unconscious Id/Ego/Super Ego latent/manifest repression/sublimation What is a Symbol Many definitions for symbol, the most general being a non-verbal sign something visual standing for something other than itself This week we will examine the symbol in relationship to Cultural Studies That is, via psychoanalysis, we will study how symbols are used as a method for studying cultural texts and practices Here is a concise definition of the symbol w/n psychoanalysis a representation of something repressed by the unconscious for Freudian analysis, this includes matters of sexuality, birth, maternal r/ns

2 Psychoanalysis has a theory of the return of the repressed these matters which have been repressed have a way of unconsciously returning as symbols in popular culture Psychoanalysis is a broad set of theory and practice; our focus will be limited to its application to cultural analysis 1) Freudian psychoanalysis Civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. (Freud) Our biological being is made up of instincts that society prevents us from fulfilling Freud asserts that there is a sacrifice of instinctual satisfaction for the benefit of the whole community Thus the very existence of civilization demands unconscious process of sublimation (instinctual impulse modified into something socially acceptable) This is an unconscious process To understand this we must understand the Freudian psyche (a cornerstone of psychoanalysis). 1) The key components of that model: Conscious relates to the external world Unconscious the site of instinct and repressed wishes exists because of censorship and repression thus only expressed in distorted form Id Ego the site of passion the source of psychic energy the most primitive part of the psyche dark and inaccessible and a seething cauldron unorganized; strives to fulfill the pleasure principle centre of unknown pleasures and desires the site of reason/common sense the source of direction when the id is modified by the external world, it becomes the

3 ego thus the ego is representative of the external world (reality) Super Ego represents the id to the ego thus the super ego is further from consciousness it reaches down into the id thus is influenced more by unconscious processes than the ego representative of the internal world 2) How does Freud relate these elements of the psyche? A) Culture is a key factor: i) we are born with an Id ii) the Ego (and later the Super Ego) develops thru. cultural contact iii) thus, our human nature is governed by culture Thus, human nature is neither innate nor unchangeable. If culture is historical, so is human nature. B) Psyche as a site of struggle i) there is a perpetual struggle b/n instinct and civilization ii) thus a perpetual struggle b/n the ego and id iii) thus a perpetual struggle b/n the pleasure principle and reality principle The id wants desires satisfied regardless of the restrictions of culture The ego is obliged to meet the claims and conventions of society C) Repression/Sublimation a core dynamic i) repression we are always turning things away form the conscious things we cannot deal with (instinctual urges) But we never give anything up; we only exchange one thing or another ii) sublimation: we are always substituting the things we want for things that are acceptable to have But these urges and desires which are sublimated cannot always be contained. Thus there is always the possibility of the return of the repressed

4 This happens most commonly in dreams (but also in cultural text, as we shall see) The symbolic is the key to understanding the meaning of the return of the repressed 3) Understanding dreams and symbolic representation The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to the unconscious. (Freud) There are four processes involved in what Freud calls dream-work 1) Condensation 2) Displacement 3) Symbolization 4) Secondary revision But first we need to think about some of the basic functions of dreams Dreams guard sleep by incorporating various threats i) external stimulus noise that gets incorporated into the dream s narrative ii) recent events what Freud calls the day s residue But these first two elements only provide the basic material for the surface of the dream s narrative The more profound content, and the deeper meaning of the dream comes from: iii) repressed instinctual impulses Freud calls this the true creator of the dream or their psychic energy Freud asserts that dreams are always a compromise structure a compromise resolution of the struggle b/n the id (wishes) and ego (censorship) The meaning of dreams remain obscure because we are ashamed of their meaning, and thus conceal it from ourselves A dream is a [disguised] fulfillment of a [suppressed or repressed] wish. (Freud)

5 Dreams are comprised of a) latent dream-thoughts; and b) manifest content Latent dream thoughts (the real content; unconscious urges or wishes) are expressed in manifest dream content (what we can remember) The manifest content is only ever a smaller proportion of the latent content the result of condensation 3A) Condensation It works in three ways: i) latent elements are omitted ii) only a part of latent thoughts make it to manifest content iii) related latent elements are fused (or condensed) into composite structures Thus any given element of manifest content may correspond to numerous elements in latent dream-thoughts Conversely, one element of dream-thought may correspond to many elements of the manifest content 3B) Displacement Displacement is the principal means of dream distortion (censorship) It is the process whereby latent dream-thoughts submit to censorship Thus, latent dream-thoughts appear in manifest content thru. a chain of association Displacement works in two ways: i) latent element replaced by allusion (something called to mind w/o direct reference) e.g. fellow student represented by a knapsack ii) a decentring of the latent system of meaning this is a kind of dream censorship the psychical accent shifted form important to unimportant element a substitute structure of meaning in which the allusions are not easily recognizable The interpretation of dreams require the tracing back of manifest content with has been displaced from the latent dream-thoughts How is this done? Symbolization is the key.

6 3C) Symbolization Freud posits symbolization as a primitive mode of expression In dreams, latent content gets transformed primarily into visual images While this is not a totalizing process, symbols comprise the essence of the formation of dreams The majority of dream symbols are sexual symbols (male and female genitals) the knowledge of symbolism is unconscious to the dreamer. (Freud) Symbolization is always relate to culture as they are ever-changing Language plays a smaller role in symbolization but is limited to language the dreamer understands (N.B. visual symbolization is unconscious) Thus, symbols are key to the process of interpreting dreams The dreamer s associations of those symbols must be drawn out (in the actual practice of psychoanalysis i.e. on the analyst s couch) 3D) Secondary Revision This is the narrative placed on the dream by the dreamer the narrative account of the symbolism This process has two parts: i) the actual verbal translation of the dream s symbolism ii) but this is also the final policing and containment of the dream by the ego Remember that we never remember our dreams in their entirety. The act of remembrance proceeds in struggle (id and ego; instincts and civilization; deepest desires and acceptable fulfillments) The process of ascribing a narrative of giving it coherence and meaning is also an act of unconscious censorship 4) Oedipus Complex From Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles in Ancient Greece (427 BCE)

7 The narrative of the actual play: Unbeknownst to him, Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother. Upon realizing this, he rips his eyes out and goes into exile. The Freudian interpretation the mother becomes an object of desire for the son b/n the age of 3-5 the father is then seen as a rival for the mother s love and affection thus the boy wishes for the father s death but the boy still fears the father s power the power to castrate thus the boy abandons his desire for the mother instead, he begins to identify with the father, knowing he will one day have a wife Freud does not know exactly how the O.C. applies to women, calling his insight there unsatisfactory, incomplete, and vague This is where the Freudian notion of penis-envy comes in Whereas in boys the Oedipus complex is destroyed by the castration complex, in girls, it is made possible and led up to by he castration complex. (Freud) What is most striking here is how the biological condition of women is presented as a lack Does this analysis not reinscribe patriarchy as an unavoidable baseline of the collective unconscious? Or does it describe how patriarchy has already been inscribed on the collective unconscious remember that culture is always influencing and altering the symbolic structure of the unconscious? 2) Freudian psychoanalytic textual analysis 1) Author-centred The text as the author s dream Freud calls them dreams never dreamt at all textual surface as the manifest content the latent content is the author s hidden desires the wishful construction of the author s life of phantasy the sublimation of the author s desire into art

8 2) Reader-centred How readers symbolically play out unconscious wishes in texts they read text a substitute dream texts stage fantasies texts offer possible unconscious pleasure Freud calls this fore-pleasure aesthetic qualities are merely a mechanism for releasing the more profound pleasure of the unconscious Theoretical implication: while there is a profoundly unconscious aspect to meaning, the meaning of a text is also actively produced by the reader, thru. the discourses s/he brings to it Does this have a disabling effect on the psychoanalytic interpretation of culture so much of meaning depend upon each reader? 3) Contextualizing Lacan History and context born in Paris to a middle class family studied medicine and was drawn to psychiatry his early work on the unconscious was of little interest to other psychiatrist; however, it was great interest to famous surrealist artists like George Breton, Salvador Dali who focused on the irrational His work would always be more influential outside of psychiatry among artists, cultural and social theorists he applied structuralist methodology to Freud emphasized culture over nature as the basis of the psyche

9 To recap, Lacan is deeply rooted in Freudian notions of the Oedipal phase, infantile sexuality, and the project of uncovering unconscious processes through language and associations However, Lacan gives the psyche a cultural basis, as opposed to Freud s biological basis One of Lacan s most basic ideas is that we are born into a condition of lack which we spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome This fundamental orientation of Lacanian theory has profound philosophical implications It points to a fundamental philosophical divide: Are we born onto a condition of lack or plenitude? 4) Lacanian psychoanalysis key concepts To understand this Lacanian notion of lack let us consider it in r/n to how he orders human existence, and how we develop Thus let s consider the key Lacanian concepts a) Lack b) the three orders : The Symbolic, The Real, The Imaginary c) The Mirror-Phase a) Lack non-representable expression of the fundamental human condition we spend our lives in search of plenitude (being whole) Lacan theorizes this search thru. what he calls l object petit a a lost object symbolic of this search in short, it symbolizes how this plenitude is forever out of our reach b) Three orders structure human existence i) The Real ii) The Symbolic iii) The Imaginary The crux of Lacanian psychoanalysis is trying to understand the subject s r/nship w/ the Symbolic which in turn relates to the other two orders (The Real and The Imaginary)

10 The three orders situate subjectivity within a system of perception and a dialogue with the external world i) The Real our lives begin in the realm of the Real like nature before symbolization (before cultural classification) that is, nature is only ever an articulation of culture Remember that we can only make sense of things thru. meaning systems (language, symbolization) The Real is everything before it became mediated by the Symbolic. (Storey) if we could reach the Real, we would not know where we begin and everything else ends everything merges into an undifferentiated mass but we cannot because we are made up by language and systems of meaning thus the Real only exists when constituted by the Symbolic We only distinguish ourselves thru. language and the Symbolic ii) The Symbolic The Symbolic order is closely related to the Mirror Phase the symbolic and the subject/psyche The Symbolic (which includes the formation of signifiers and language) is the determining order of the subject conscious/unconscious is formed thru. the Symbolic order Symbolic order as a complex network of signifiers, signifieds, and associations Lacan wrote that we are totally enveloped in the Symbolic order before we come into the world proper thus, we, as subjects, are spoken by structures the symbolic and culture/society Beyond the way it organizes the subject and makes the psyche accessible, societies are also governed by Symbolic structures agency is enabled and constrained by such symbolic structures It is thru. this emphasis on the Symbolic that Lacan remakes Freudian psychoanalysis on a foundation of culture

11 That is because the Symbolic is always a cultural construct Lacan borrows heavily from Claude Levi-Strauss, a cultural anthropologist who used structuralist methodology that is, a structuralist analysis of culture (taken from semiotics) The Symbolic is what takes us from nature to culture (or society) the Symbolic structures human r/ns but not in a complete or unproblematic manner This is, in part, because of our fundamental condition of lack i.e. the totality of our reality can never be fully structured by the symbolic the Other; Oedipus Complex; the big Other these are all intervening factors which complicate the Symbolic order iii) The Imaginary the realm of the ego (same function as Freudian ego) thus reflects the external world in the psyche during the mirror phase, the imaginary order (the ego) is formed when a baby first notices his/her reflection in the mirror this imaginary order is formed thru. identification with the mirror image in turn, the imaginary is the internalization of this ideal mirror (or specular) image this formation is characterized by alienation and narcissism The Imaginary is related to Saussurean semiotics (structuralism): the imaginary is like the signified that which is symbolized arbitrarily by a sign c) The Mirror Phase A key moment that begins the process whereby the infant enters into the world of meaning (the Symbolic order)

12 The infant notices itself in the mirror (before it has full motor control and coordination) Before noticing the mirror image, the infant had a fragmented body image (a collection of libidinal impulses and needs) In the mirror image, it sees the promise of a more complete self (remember the notion of lack ) It is in this promise that the ego forms Two key dynamics to this process a) this initiates a never-ending drama or struggle b/n lack and plenitude b) also a process of misrecognition (of the image of the self) With this (mis)recognition, the infant begins to see itself as: i) a separate individual ii) as subject (self that looks) and object (self that is looked at) Thus the infant enters into subjectivity (and the Imaginary order) Subjectivity (and the Imaginary order) is a place of lack and misrecognition For Lacan, the ego is just this narcissistic process whereby we bolster up a fictive sense of unitary selfhood by finding something in the world with which we can identify. Desire plays out here as the continuous attempt to find what we lack, hat we were before our encounter with the Imaginary and Symbolic d) Fort-da game Describes the child s entry into the Symbolic, particularly language Modeled by Freud after a childhood game: disappear (fort) and reappear (da) Freud describes a process of compensation for the mother s absence by false sense of mastery and control But for Lacan, it describes how our entry into language leaves the plenitude of the Real gone forever before language, we had only being: our urges and needs after language, we face the inability of the Symbolic order to fully represent the Real after language, we also are split into subject and object

13 Clarification of this latter complicated point: I think (subject), therefore I am (object) Lacan rewrites the famous Cartesian dictum as: I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not speak Remember language can never capture the plenitude of the Real thinking is always thru. language a site of lack (the Imaginary/Symbolic subject) our being ( I am ) is in the Real a site of plenitude (the Real subject) Thus there is always a gap b/n what we say and what we are Yet the only way we experience reality is thru. language (the Real experienced via the Symbolic) The Symbolic is another structure which enables and constrains our agency e) Oedipus complex Lacan transposes Freud s sexual foundation to culture/language it enforces the transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic thus compounding our sense of lack We are now firmly in the realm of language (the Symbolic) we begin a hopeless pursuit of the fixed signifier (the mother, the Real, plenitude) the incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier We long for a time hen we existed in nature (inseparable from the mother s body), where everything was simply itself, before the mediations of language and the Symbolic. (Storey) This initiates our pursuit of substitute objects compensating for our loss of the pure (if fictive self-identity and self-completion