Freud Presentation GenLec204

8/9/2019 Freud Presentation GenLec204

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Peter Bornedal, General Lecture 204


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Important Works:

Project for a Scientific Psychology

Studies on Hysteria (w Josef Breuer)

The Interpretations of Dreams

Three Theories of Sexuality

Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

Totem and TabooMeta-Psychoanalytical Writings

Civilization and its Discontents

Scientific & Philosophical Discoveries and Themes:

Early Neuroscientific Theory;

Therapeutic Technique called Psychoanalysis; Explanation

and Interpretation of Dreams;

Theory of Childhood Sexuality;Theory of Personality Structure;

Arts and Literary Criticism;

Cultural and Religious Criticism;

Psychoanalytic Anthropology;

Theory of Drives.


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Salvador Dali: A sleeping woman in all her naked

vulnerability is attacked by ferocious tigers and

spiked weapons. Remember that the dream is

always wishfulfilment; meaning that the dream

fulfills a wish, but in disguise, and sometimes

turned into its opposite. The wish is sex, but sinceforbidden, disguised as aggression.

The Dream: Dream-Thought

and Dream-Content

The first general law of dreams: a dream is a (disguised) fulfillment ofa (suppressed or repressed) wish. The Interpretation of Dreams p. 194.

If dreams do not appear as wish-fulfillments, it is because they have a

compromising and embarrassing content, which the dream distorts

and represses. Thus, dreams carry out a struggle between two levels.

At the first level the dream represents a wish or a desire. This level

Freud calls the dream-thought or latent dream. It is the meaning of

the dream. It indicates what kind of forbidden pleasure or aggressionthe patient dreams about. Dreams are wish-fulfillments; they think

about pleasure; but dreams repress this thinking by distorting the

dream thought, and present it as unrecognizable to the dreamer.

This represented dream is the so-called dream-content or manifest

dream. As such, the dream appears incomprehensible, confused,

illogical, nonsensical, etc. , as we wake up and remember it

In Freuds words, this is how the two levels are related: The dream-

thoughts and the dream-content are presented to us like two versions

of the same subject-matter in two different languages. [ . . . ] the

dream-content seems like a transcript of the dream-thoughts into

another mode of expression, whose syntactic laws it is our business to

discover by comparing the original and the translation. The

Interpretation of Dream p. 312.


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The dream is like a rebus, on appearance it is a confused and non-sensical

mixture of images, words, and letters (dream-content), but each of the

elements in the puzzle can be translated to a letter, a syllable, or a word,

and when solved, the rebus appears as an intelligible and logical sentence

(dream-thought).

Dream-thoughts become distorted and disguised as an effect of a so-

called dream-work. The dream-work transforms dream-thoughts into

dream-content.

The dream-work distorts the dream. Two mechanisms of distortion:condensation and displacement. Condensation implies that several latent

elements are compressed into one single element in the manifest dream.

Element A, B, C, and D is compressed into a single figure. Displacement

implies that emotion (or cathexis) is moved from one figure to another

figure in the dream. One shifts psychical emphasis from an important

figure to an unimportant one in the dream, in order to hide ones secret

emotion about the important figure.

The language of the dream is irrational because it derives from a primitive

state of the psyche in early childhood. The dream regresses to a situation

before the introduction to logical and rational thinking. It represents the

want of immediate fulfillment of needs (pleasure-principle), without the

postponement of desire that the adult person later learns to implement in

order to obtain a goal (reality-principle).

The mechanism of the dream-work: we

have a latent dream containing thoughtelements, for example, the forbidden

thought, I hate my mother, I wish she

would die. This thought undergoes

distortion thanks to the dream-work,

and manifests itself as the manifest

dream of ones mother having had a

horrific accident. The dreamer is now

no longer guilty in this accident. She has

disguised the original forbidden dream-

thought.

The Dream: the Dream-Work


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In Freuds early model of the psyche, the two most important agencies are

the Id and the Ego. The Id is the seat for instincts and repressed desires (it

functions according to the so-called pleasure-principle). The Ego is the

seat for a sense of realty, sense of self, perception, memory, and language(it functions according to the so-called reality-principle).

The oldest of these agencies is the Id. The infant is not born with an ego,

but it is born with an Id. Like any other animal, we are born with certain

instincts or drives: for example, an instinct for survival or a sexual drive. If

humans did not have intrinsic sexual drives, they would have become

extinct before they could evolve.

At birth we are still only Id. This condition does not last, however. If the

human only had a Id, it would self-destroy quickly. Then it could only act

according to the pleasure principle; it could only want immediate

fulfillment of desires. The infant has to learn the reality-principle; that

there is an external world, and that this external world is an obstacle for

immediate fulfillment of wants.

Therefore, from what was from the beginning only Id, a new split-out

formation is formed, namely the Ego.

The ego accounts of our sense of self (self-consciousness). It restrains the

drives of the Id. It distinguishes between external and internal world. It

takes care of self-preservation. It stores up experiences in memory. It

allows language-acquisition. The ego is the most important agency in the

psyche. A poorly developed ego results in extreme mental illness, best

known as psychosis or schizophrenia.

Freuds Early Model of the Psychical Apparatus

Freuds early model of the psyche.

There is a perceptive-conscioussystem (at the top), a location for

the Ego with memory-traces (the

vertical punctuated lines), and a

location for the Id, including

repressed material.


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Freuds Late Model of the Psychical ApparatusIn his late writings, Freud arrives to the conclusion that a third agency plays an important

role in the human psyche, the so-called super-ego. It is the latest development in the

psyche; it develops around the age of four, and in relation to the solution of the so-called

Oedipus Complex.

The super-ego is the seat for internalization of social and moral values in the individual.

We inherit these value systems from, first, our parents; later from school, church,

university, military, media. etc. When these values has been repeatedly impressed upon

us, they become internalized, that is, taken over by the individual as his private system.

The formation of the super-ego is unconscious, because it starts too early in childhood to

be recalled in later life. The child internalizes demands and ideals of its parents: preceptslike, that is what you ought to do, or prohibitions like, this is what you must not do. As

internalized, they come to control first the child, later the adult, from within. Early

imprints of precepts and prohibitions will continue to produce unconscious self-criticism

and feeling of guilt. The child will become the father of the adult.

Therefore, in the new model of the psyche, (1) the id is the oldest formation of the

psyche; the id can only want; it can only act toward fulfillment of impulsive drives. (2) The

Ego is a later development; the ego takes care of self-preservation, conscious perception,

sense of self, memory and language; if there were no Ego to regulate the ID, we would

very quickly self-destroy. (3) The super-ego is the latest development; it imposes social

and moral imperatives on the individual; it is aggressively turned against the desires of the

individual.

We might say that if the ego gives us a method by which to obtain satisfaction, while the

ID gives us no method whatsoever, the super-ego, by contrast, impresses upon us a

method by which to avoid satisfaction.

Freuds late model: A

perceptive-conscious system

at the top interacting with

preconscious material,especially memories. The

EGO is a large area with no

distinct boundaries; spanning

both conscious, preconscious,

and unconscious. The SUPER-

EGO is both preconscious and

unconscious. The ID,

accounting for drives, is at thebottom of the system.


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In early psychoanalysis, it is the prevailing idea that the

individual essentially pursues sexual pleasure. There is one

essential drive, the sexual.

Around 1920 Freud starts to question this idea. Freud had

noticed that war veterans had an inexplicable compulsion to

repeat traumatizing situations (today called post-traumatic-

stress syndrome). In a model of the psyche where

everything strives for pleasure, such a compulsion is

puzzling. Other incidents convinced Freud that repetition-

compulsion regarding painful incidents seemed to

constitute a paradoxical remedy by which the neurotic triedto heal himself.

Up to now the sexual drive, striving for pleasure, had been

the unchallenged ruler in the psyche. Now Freud revises

himself, and suggests that there is an equally original drive

striving towards displeasure. He suggested that the

repetition compulsion had to spring from an drive

independent of the appetite for pleasure, and in conflict

with it.

There seemed to be an original drive to destruction and

self-destruction. Freud has arrived at the theoretical concept

of a death-drive. The human being harbored deep-seated

drives of aggression, this drive was understood as an

original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man. (C&D,

p. 81).

In the Shadow of the First World War: The Death-Drive

The First World War was the most ferocious and

brutal war the world had ever seen. Several millions

of soldiers died in protracted trench-wars. Mass-

killing weapons like poison gas and the machine gun

had been introduced. The war was a shock to the

sense of civilization and progress that had started to

build around the turn of the century, in the wake of

scientific, social, and political progress.


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As a shadow behind of the conventional image of

life, a mother with her child, lurks Death.

Eros and Thanatos

After the introduction of the death-drive, there is now two drives in

the psyche; Death Drive and Sexual Drive, or Thanatos and Eros.

Thanatos explains the human inclinations to destroy others as well as

self. Eros explains the instincts for self-preservation and reproduction.

Eros translates into life and love. Love is both love of somebody else

(as in romantic love), and love of oneself. Love of oneself is necessary

in order to function; love of oneself is among else self-protection.

Thanatos translates into death and destruction. Destruction is both

destruction of the other (in prehistory our ancestors would evolveaggression toward intruding tribes, for the sake of survival), and

destruction of oneself. In the last case, Thanatos hooks up with the

strict Super-Ego, bent on self-punishment, self-destruction, self-

criticism, etc. Thanatos gives the Super Ego instinctual/libidinal

energy.

Man is naturally aggressive toward the other, but civilization inhibits

this aggressiveness by forming a Super-Ego, by then transformingaggression toward the other to aggression toward self.

The libidinal energy of the aggressive drive helps form the super-ego.

Natural aggression turned outwards, is turned inwards (Internalized)

as self-aggression. Aggressive feelings are turned around and forced

back into the mind, from where they originated in the first place.


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Who Wins the Battle? Death or Life!

The strict Super-Ego is on

appearances in the service of life;but it is beneath appearance in the

service of Death. It restricts

aggressive behavior towards others,

but it introduces self-aggression;

and restricts sexuality as well.

Life had become too hard on the

human being, in Freuds view:

Life, as it is imposed upon us, is too

hard for us; it brings us too many

pains, disappointments, insoluble

tasks. [ . . . ] the intention that man

should be 'happy' is not contained

in the plan of Creation."

In Civilization and its Discontents, the existence of a death-drive is taken for granted as what makes civilization necessary.

Civilization cultivates a Super-Ego; it makes us moral and responsible; as such it puts a rein on man's unbridled

destructiveness; it restricts the work of the death-drive. In this sense, civilization is seen as in service of life, that is, Eros (it

urges humans to unite, to join into families, and to propagate).

However, civilization is at the same time the cause of the discontent of modern man. Exactly in controlling mans inherent

aggressiveness, in producing a strict Super-Ego, it controls Eros as well. From the Super-Egos point of view, an unbridled

Eros is as much a danger to society as is an unbridled Thanatos.


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A contemporary reconstruction of Freuds psychical apparatus. Notice that the superego is mostlyunconscious (it is seat for social components like morality). Notice that the ego extends both the conscious , the

preconscious, and parts of the unconscious self. Notice that the Id consists of both repressed material (difficult to retrieve),

and biological components like instincts. Finally at the bottom of it all, we have Freuds two drives from his late theory,

Thanatos and Eros; Death and Life.


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From societys point of view, an

unrestricted Eros constitutes as much adanger as an unrestricted Thanatos.

Societys formation of a strict Super-Ego is

meant to restrict as well aggressive as

sexual behavior.

What can the human being finally do in

order to cope in this situation. What does

civilization offer the socialized human

being. In the late Freuds pessimistic and

austere view, only Necessity and Work, or

in his Greek terms, Ananke.

Ananke is now set up against Eros and

Thanatos, the tamed against the untamed,

necessity against freedom.

Thanks to society, man achieves order, but

for the price of happiness.

Freuds Solution to the Conflict: Ananke

The old Freud in his Study. Productive and prolific to

the end. Death is everywhere around him, and

sexuality has left him. What to do? Work!


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Freud Presentation GenLec204

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