Tallant 1

Leslie Tallant

Humanities 1301

Chapter 14 Essay

Influence of Freud and Society

It is sad that through all this history I can’t tell you any of it from a woman’s

perspective throughout the chapters. The fact that Sigmund Freud was a theorist from

Viennese and a neurologist doesn’t help the fascination I have with the male mind and

theories. I think Mr. Freud should have had his own head examined by a female

physician because I see where he lacked attention. I have noticed with the gentlemen

scholars of past time were curious to the desire that men have but were reformed into

belief that it is a sinful desire. Non acceptance into a society. The desire was then

hushed and they weren’t able to focus on their truest feelings but years later I see it all

the same so many words but to hide their truest of thoughts. The Church in past

centuries was the center of society so to be accepted into society you must be

accepted into the church, which required reformation to Christianity. “It’s debatable

whether the Reformation would have occurred without the invention, a half-century

earlier, of the printing press,” which distributed the bible. “The bible was the

Continents best seller.” (p267) “In the Americas 900CE but after contact, it seemed

paramount to the Spanish crown to begin to raise the native population from its

barbarous condition by bringing Christianity to it.” (p283) “The Council of Trent and

Catholic Reform of the Arts, insisted on using religious imagery, concentrated on

restoring church discipline, out with the lascivious and impure.”(p316)

“The id is the seat of all instinctive, physical desire-from the need for

nourishment to sexual gratification. Its goal is immediate gratification, and it acts in

accord with the pleasure principle. The ego manages the id. It mediates between the
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id’s potentially destructive impulses and the requirements of social life, seeking to

satisfy the needs of the id in socially acceptable ways. For Freud, civilization itself is

the product of the ego’s endless effort to control and modify the id. The superego is

crucial and the seat of your “conscience” what they call it, the psyche’s moral base.

The conscience comes from the psyche’s consideration of criticism or disapproval

leveled at it by family, where “family” can be understood broadly as parents, clan,

and culture. But since the superego does not distinguish between thing a deed and

doing it, it can also instill in the id enormous sub sub conscience guilt.” (p474) Which

acceptance in the formal church which was society throughout history doesn’t accept

what real men desire.

It’s perversion to nature the reformation throughout history. One cannot profess

true feelings when consumed with guilt. It is visible in the art that Freud questioned

the natural feelings of man and his guilt for nature and has caused much punishment

to nature in consequence that I would say is the sub conscience of guilt for many

centuries since the reformation to Christianity. “Credit for this must go to Freud.”

(p474)

Giorgio de Chirico. The Child's Brain. 1914.

Oil on canvas. 31-1/8" × 25-5/8".
Moderna Museet, Stockholm. © 2014 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. ©
Cameraphoto Arte, Venice. [Fig. 14.24]

The surrealist movement began a self discovery advocate group. Evidently from their

point of view it was expressed in the painting of Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) The

Child’s Brain. It’s sad and like the man is aching inside. Much different from the

earlier art of Michelangelo that boy was on fire painting all those nude masculine
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figures in the Sistine chapel. History has taught me facts and art has taught me

feelings. The reformation damaged the male’s id that Freud suggested was the seat of

all sexual desire which in later art there is not sexual desire only the desire of death

and that’s what church and God did.

Michelangelo, Last Judgment. 1534–41. Detail.

Fresco. 48’ × 44’.
Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome. Foto Musei Vaticani.
Photograph: A. Braccetti/P. Zigrossi. [Fig. 10.4]

I am convinced even furthermore that I am on the right track evidently hitherto

has convinced me in my dream that I know more than that of any man. “French writer,

poet, and theorist Andre Barton (1896-1966) credited his own creative endeavors to

Freud.” (p474) He was a Freud advocate no doubt. But it concludes that an argument

because Breton believed that Picasso led the way to Surrealism art in his Le

Demoiselles D.Avignon, which Jettisoned art’s dependence on external reality. The

founder of cubism, Breton said, possessed “the facility to give materiality to what had

hitherto remained in the domain of pure fantasy.”(p475)

Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. May–July 1907.

Oil on canvas. 95-1/8" × 91-1/8".
Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. The Museum
of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, New
York. © 2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York/Scala, Florence. [Fig. 14.9]

Hitherto need I say more. But the style seems reformed to me. Earlier works of Art

are much more sexual than this confused thoughts of a man. As Freud pointed out his

id was his sexual desire but his acceptance into society damaged that id with his ego,
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thoughts of what they would think about his desire. And he still couldn’t grasp it and

added the super ego. The art added to the feeling of what they were truly thinking at

that time period and it was the desire to express the natural feelings that were hidden

in the literature but pronounced in the art in every time period. It’s what artists and

poets do for one another because they are portraying the hidden pains but what is real

in life that no one else knows but a true artist and poet see the true meaning of what’s

hidden in the details and that’s usually kept secret by the artist or poet unless God

gifted you with the wisdom to see what is the reality of his gift which is nature and is

often expressed in art. Mark Rothko committed suicide.

Mark Rothko. Green on Blue. 1956.

Oil on canvas. 89-3/4" × 63-1/4".
Collection of the University of Arizona Museum of Art,
Tucson, Gift of E. Gallagher, Jr. Acc. 64.1.1. © 1998 Kate
Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York. [Fig. 15.1]
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Works Cited

Sayre, Henry M. Discovering the Humanities 3rd Ed. Boston: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

2016. Print.