Chapter 5: Psychoanalysis
Tue, 5 Jan, 2016
Real-life situation ice cream:
id: Grab it
ego: No man, we'll get in trouble
superego: How about you ask first? Coz that's the right thing to do
- read texts for covert desires and drives that motivate characters
- his psychological works "inaugurated" psychoanalytic criticism since, creativity and meaning, many artists realized, could be deeply embedded within the psyche, and, say, a painting
- unsuccessful repression - which means that repressed desires and memories found expression - through dreams, habits etc
- Freudian slips suggest that the unconscious also requires language - dreams, then, are basically metaphors
Real-life situation ice cream:
id: Grab it
ego: No man, we'll get in trouble
superego: How about you ask first? Coz that's the right thing to do
- contribution of Freud was dream analysis (condensation, displacement are tools) - "psychoanalysis is a talking cure"
28 JAN 2016
pg 104 onward
Freud believed that ego was challenged by id - thoughts from the unconscious, if brought to the surface and resolved, would help give agency to the conscious, and control over one's self through unification of id and ego.
Lacan was influenced by structural linguistics and post-structuralism. He argues that there is no stable position of ego or unification of self that can be reached. He proposes that (1) the uncnscious is structured like a language - through language is the sense of self articulated (or not) and through language is the psyche understood. (2) He had a linguistic understanding of condensation as metaphors and displacement as metonymy. (3) The unconscious is where the kernel of our being lies'. He reversed 'I think, therefore I am' to ['I think where I am not'] -> 'I am where, I think not' whereby we operate under the illusion that we have a unified self - we actually don't, it's just an illusion. The unconscious, by being structured like language, is a decentred realm. Where Freud understood that the unconscious is unknowable, Lacan explained that it is so because there is no stable way of attaching signifiers to one final signified. There is a free play of signifiers. There is no stable meaning. We must believe in this imaginary sense of unity, in this illusion - that "I" means only one thing.
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The human is a subject subject to outside forces - connects with the idea of the author being dead. The author's identity derives from his texts - he is subject to language, to his genre etc.
The 'self' is the notion that you existed before language - the implicaation that you are at the center of everything you do.
Mirror Stage: imaginary
Language: symbolic
Mirror Stage:
Child recognizes his self as distinct and whole
Recognizes self in mirror for the first time - "This is me"
Must develop a sense of "me/I/mine" - done through acquittal of language
Language:
>child acquires language
learns to associate a pronoun to himself/herself
>law of the father/patriarchal authority
child acquires language to express lack of mother / desire for mother in her absence
Argument:
In the realm of the imaginary, child acquires sense of self. Upon entry into symbolic realm, learns difference between "I" and "me" and learns other pronouns.
This is only a linguistic sense of "I", and if meaning is always deferred, you will never arrive at a true/unified sense of self
pg 104 onward
Freud believed that ego was challenged by id - thoughts from the unconscious, if brought to the surface and resolved, would help give agency to the conscious, and control over one's self through unification of id and ego.
Lacan was influenced by structural linguistics and post-structuralism. He argues that there is no stable position of ego or unification of self that can be reached. He proposes that (1) the uncnscious is structured like a language - through language is the sense of self articulated (or not) and through language is the psyche understood. (2) He had a linguistic understanding of condensation as metaphors and displacement as metonymy. (3) The unconscious is where the kernel of our being lies'. He reversed 'I think, therefore I am' to ['I think where I am not'] -> 'I am where, I think not' whereby we operate under the illusion that we have a unified self - we actually don't, it's just an illusion. The unconscious, by being structured like language, is a decentred realm. Where Freud understood that the unconscious is unknowable, Lacan explained that it is so because there is no stable way of attaching signifiers to one final signified. There is a free play of signifiers. There is no stable meaning. We must believe in this imaginary sense of unity, in this illusion - that "I" means only one thing.
------
The human is a subject subject to outside forces - connects with the idea of the author being dead. The author's identity derives from his texts - he is subject to language, to his genre etc.
The 'self' is the notion that you existed before language - the implicaation that you are at the center of everything you do.
Mirror Stage: imaginary
Language: symbolic
Mirror Stage:
Child recognizes his self as distinct and whole
Recognizes self in mirror for the first time - "This is me"
Must develop a sense of "me/I/mine" - done through acquittal of language
Language:
>child acquires language
learns to associate a pronoun to himself/herself
>law of the father/patriarchal authority
child acquires language to express lack of mother / desire for mother in her absence
Argument:
In the realm of the imaginary, child acquires sense of self. Upon entry into symbolic realm, learns difference between "I" and "me" and learns other pronouns.
This is only a linguistic sense of "I", and if meaning is always deferred, you will never arrive at a true/unified sense of self
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