Seminar in Contemporary Critical Theory

Prof. Dr. Petruta Naidut

Maria-Cristina Stanciu
1-st Year, English Major
Group 5

19-th March 2009

PSYCHOANALYTICAL APPROACHES
SIGMUND FREUD

(1856-1939)

§ About Sigmund Freud

He was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud is
best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression and for
creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for curing psychopathology through dialogue between a
patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud is also renowned for his redefinition of sexual desire as the primary
motivational energy of human life, as well as his therapeutic techniques, including the use of free
association, his theory of transference in the therapeutic relationship, and the interpretation of dreams as
sources of insight into unconscious desires. He was also an early neurological researcher into cerebral
palsy. Freud's methods and ideas remain important in clinical psychodynamic approaches. In academia
his ideas continue to influence the humanities and some social sciences.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud)

§ From ‘On Dreams’- 1901 (The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis)

<*during sleep the unconscious is free to express itself, and it does so in our dreams>
In this article, S. Freud identifies and characterizes two processes of the dream-work:

1. the CONDENSATION, meaning that “each element in the content of a dream is ‘overdetermined’ by
material in the dream-thoughts”,
or
<*it occurs during a dream whenever we use a single dream image or event to represent more than one
unconscious wound or conflict>

2. the DREAM-DISPLACEMENT, meaning “a transvaluation of psychical values”

or
<* it occurs whenever we use a “safe” person, event, or object as a “stand-in” to represent a more
threatening person, event, or object>

CONDENSATION + DREAM-DISPLACEMENT ↔ PRIMARY REVISION (because these processes

occur while we dream)

1
<*SECONDARY REVISION= the process of forgetting certain parts of the dream or remembering those
parts somewhat differently from how they actually occurred>

§ From ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ -1920 (The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis)

MAIN IDEAS:
→the mind has a strong tendency towards the pleasure principle

→under the influence of the ego’s instincts of self-preservation, the pleasure principle is replaced by
the reality principle, which carries into effect the postponement of satisfaction, the abandonment of a
number of possibilities of gaining satisfaction

→the pleasure principle long persists as a matter of working employed by the sexual instincts,
which are hard to ‘educate’

→the life instincts have much more contact with our internal perception- emerging as breakers of
the peace and constantly producing tensions whose release is felt as pleasure.

§ From ‘The Ego and the Id’ -1923 (The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis)

The OEDIPUS COMPLEX: for a boy ┤ ~ at a very early age the little boy develops an object-
cathexis for his mother (the origin↔ the mother’s breast which used to nurture him; it is a prototype of an
object-choice on the anaclitic model)
~ the boy deals with his father by identifying himself
with him
~ when the boy’s sexual wishes in regard to his mother
become more intense, he perceives his father as an obstacle to them
~ his identification with the father changes into a wish
to get rid of his father in order to take his place with his mother ↔ the relation with his father is
ambivalent: first he identifies himself with him, then he wants him out of the presence of his mother
~ when the complex does no longer exist, the boy’s
object-cathexis is filled by one or two things: either with an identification with his mother or an
intensification of his identification with his father
for a girl ┤ ~ the same steps, but this time the object-cathexis is
developed for her father and the mother is the one which is perceived as an obstacle
~ the outcome of the Oedipus complex in a little girl may
be an intensification of her identification with her mother → this will fix the child’s feminine character;
or
~´ will bring her masculinity into prominence and identify herself
with her father, the love-object that she lost.

§ From ‘The Dissection of the Psychical Personality’ ( The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis)

An individual’s mental apparatus is divided in three realms, regions:

the CONSCIENCE / SUPER-EGO = the agency in the ego that implies three psychological
phenomena: observing, judging and punishing (distressing reproaches → remorse)
characteristics:~ enjoys a certain degree of autonomy
~ follows its own intentions
~ is independent of the ego for its supply of energy

2
 ~ ‘severe’, ‘cruel’ ↔ are ‘applied’ in the melancholic attacks (periodic
phenomena), when the super-ego abuses the ego by reproaching it past actions.

the EGO – characteristics: ~it observes the external world and lays down an accurate picture of it in
the memory-traces of its perceptions
~controls the approaches to motility under the id’s orders
~it is weak, it has borrowed its energies from the id
~carries out the id’s intentions, it fulfills its task by finding out the
circumstances in which these intentions can best be achieved
~has to satisfy his three ‘masters’ simultaneously (the external world, the
super-ego, and the id); but when it is threatened by three kinds of danger, and feels hard pressed, it reacts
by generating anxiety.

the UNCONSCIOUS / ID - characteristics: ~it is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality
~ it is opposed to the Ego
~it is approached with analogies: it is called chaos, a
cauldron full of seething excitations
~ it is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts
~ it has no organization
~produces no collective will
~it strives to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual
needs
~ does not apply logical laws of thought
~it does not recognize the passage of time (the impulses
behave as though they had just occurred).