(A lecture delivered a week earlier to Ms. Monroe's Psychology class, with a different approach and different information on Freud, including a number of useful internet links, is located here .)
1. Disclaimers
a. I've come today to discuss Sigmund Freud and his theories. To do so
effectively, we will have to discuss sex explicitly. This means we will be
talking about sexual pleasure as it orients itself around the mouth, the anus,
and the genitals. Although you have all been exposed to the pornographically
explicit descriptions of human sexuality put forth by such cultural icons as
Hugh Heffner, Larry Flint, and Kenneth Starr, I understand that you are not
desensitized to the offensive nature of this type of discussion. If anyone at
any time is made uncomfortable by the discussion, please feel free to leave the
room or simply tune me out (just pretend it's another one of my esoteric
lectures, the ones you've all tuned out so many times before); do not be
embarrassed to let your discomfort be known (or you'll just end up all the less
comfortable).
b. As you should already know, you should feel free to interrupt me at any
given time to clarify a point, ask the meaning of one of my 50 cent words, or
bring up an interesting question when I've become unbearably dull. This will
probably be the last time I have you all as a captive audience, and I have a
program that I'd like to instruct you by (if you think I've been
incomprehensible in the past, hold on to your hats today!); but that's all in
my head, directed towards my purposes and desires. For Freud, nothing can do a
person good until he understands it; take this opportunity to learn something,
especially if it's something I don't intend to teach you.
2. Free Association on Freud
I'd like to start today by engaging in a task that Freud used in his office to
help patience, one called "free-association." Ms. Self has already taught you
how, and called it "clustering." [Write "Freud" on the board.] What are some of
the things you think of when you see the word "Freud"? [Record students'
responses...try to complicate these associations during the lecture.]
Great job, guys. Now to the meat of the lecture. But first:
3. Ground Rules for dealing with Freud's thought
Ground Rule One with Freud: Freudian theory acts in a lot of ways like its own
religion. A lot of it sounds absolutely whack, the same way the story of a god
getting nailed to a tree sounds whack to a Hindu. Freud himself recognized the
religious nature of his work, and thought that Psychology was a grand
alternative for organized religion in the heart of the modern man. (Psychology
has in fact replaced religion for many Americans--how many priests can save an
admitted murderer from death row by appealing to the court the way they could
during the Inquisition?) Psychoanalysis, like other religions, is essentially a
code of ethics which rise out of a certain (illogical/magical) view of what
humans are, what souls are. Psychoanalysis proposes its own forms of sin and
redemption. Psychoanalysis also has a tendency to refer to itself for proof of
its truth; Freud wrote that the actual experiences of childhood weren't really
important--what matters is how we fantasize about them and the psychoanalytic
interpretations of these fantasies. And all of it is beautiful in the way that
Plato and the Christian Gospels and Revelations are all beautiful. You can
listen to me today with the distance you listen to Greek Mythology, but for a
better understanding of Freud, treat these bizarre parables the way a Christian
would treat the mystery of the Trinity--accept them on Faith, but only after
giving some meditation to the problem and developing your own interpretation.
Ground Rule Two: In addition to SEX, interpretation is the name of the game in
orthodox psychoanalysis (the way "love thy nieghbor" is the name of the game in
Christianity). Please, run with it, make Freud's ideas your own. Warp them as
you please.
4. Why study Freud?
-IT'S FUNNY! Absolutely hilarious. You think the thought of an 800 year old man
stuffing two of every animal into a dinghy for a two hour Mediterranean tour
deserves a chuckle? How about this: Freud postulates that civilization began
when one man was able to fight the urge (an urge that all us boys can identify
with) to pee on a fire he stumbled across, and instead harness it for good. And
then women got in on the act and became the real protectors of society, keepers
of the hearth and home, because their equipment gave them such terrible aim.
It's also funny 'cause it's all about sex. And sex makes us giggle. If you
don't want to laugh at some of the stuff I'll tell you about today, then it's
time to lock yourself in the old folks' home.
-It's a huge part of our culture. It changed, in certain ways, the ways we
interact with one another ("Freud" belongs in a list with "Darwin" and "Marx").
We easily talk about the "unconscious," "Freudian slips," [take items from the
cluster exercise]. Freud is where this stuff came from.
-All 20th century Western literature has been influenced by Herr Doktor Freud's
polymorphous perversity. And if a work of literature claims it has nothing to
do with the man's ideas, I'm sure any trained psychoanalyst can dig through the
text and bring to light the way Freud influenced the work (remember:
Interpretation! We can do it on anything! Freud himself tells us that we must
overinterpret dreams and works of creative writing in order to fully understand
them).
5. Assumptions in Freud's work:
1. Development is driven by biology - we inherit drives and instincts that
propel us to be who we are; human beings are hardwired to live and seek
pleasure.
2. Early experiences engender adult psychology; the events of the first 5-6
years determine psychological development.
3. Early social life - how mom and dad responded to our desire toward pleasure
- is also crucially important.
4. (The one you've been waiting for) ALL PLEASURE IS ULTIMATELY SEXUAL
PLEASURE. From birth, infants seek sexual pleasure.
6. Freud's Psychosexual Stages of Development
Our at-birth hardware:
We are born with two essential drives: eros and thanatos, Love and Aggression.
Square One of human existence.
Psychological development is the history of our erotogenic zones (areas of the
body capable of producing sexual pleasure when stimulated). On the broadest
level, Freud thought of the whole body as one large erotogenic zone... but some
areas, as we all know, are more sensitive than others. The stages of
psychosexual development are each centered around the recognition and
experience of the pleasure (and conflicts) that these zones generate.
The conflicts arise because we, unlike our primate cousins who can freely
express their innate sexual and aggressive drives, live in societies. Love and
Aggression are both directly contrary to the goals of society--Agression,
obviously, b/c if we let it loose, we'd have nothing but a bunch of murder
victims (and murder victims make for uninteresting citizens); Love b/c loving
relationships are hardwired in us to be exclusive, between two and only two
people, which is a problem when the biological effect of love (i.e., children)
come into the picture--without the ability to open up the loving relationship,
there are no families, and no families=no society. So society uses are
hardwiring to its own advantage, molding us by presenting obstacles that block
our immediate gratification in lust and violent anger.
THE ORAL STAGE
In the first year of life, the baby is pretty much a slave to its digestive
system. The baby wants food, and the mouth, as the gateway to the stomach,
becomes the primary focus of the experience of pleasure. (Otherwise, the baby
is "polymorphosely perverse": baby gets sexual pleasure through any bodily
sensation). Naturally, the first object of baby's erotic drive is mommy and
that marvelous nipple of hers. (All love relationships in later life will be
measured against this one.) Once pleasure organizes itself around the mouth, it
doesn't really matter whether its stimulation actually involves nutrition (as
with nipples) or not (as with fingers, car keys, and the host of other things
that find their way into infants' mouths).
The only component of personality at this point is the id.
Id--Latin for "it," the id is little more than inherited biological drives, the
ones that control many of our actions. There are two of these drives: Eros, the
sex drive, and Thanatos, the death instinct.
-The id operates under the Pleasure Principle: "I want what I want and I want
it now!" The id demands immediate gratification, and will settle for nothing
less.
-And because the world doesn't always meet the desires of the infant, the id
comes prepackaged with an operative process, the Primary Process. If the
thirsty infant doesn't get mother's milk, he creates a fantasy in which he does
receive it (an act of wish-fulfillment). Because the id is entirely irrational,
there is no difference between the fantasy version and the "real" version.
-The id, in conventional morality, is immoral.
THE ANAL STAGE
Over the next couple of years, the baby finally gets the upper hand on its
digestive system with the development and practice of control over its bowels.
Holding in and expelling feces at will, the infant organizes its pleasure
around the anus. This newfound internal control also has a social dimension:
Mom (the one that has to wash the diapers) gets really excited about potty
training, and pleasing Mom has definite rewards. Then again, if the baby gets
angy with Mommy, it can always choose to not exercise its new technology, and
punish her with the results...
The infant in the anal stage, in addition to having moderate control over its
internal states, gains control over basic motor functions. The body, for the
first time, begins effectively responding to the mind and its desires;
toddlers, able to move around, can alter their own states by moving away from
things they don't like and toward things they do.
Now that we have two points which define the incoming and outgoing borders
between the toddler and the outside world, the psyche forms a new component,
Ego--Latin for "I", the ego develops as the buffer between the Id and reality,
often supressing the id's urges until an appropriate situation arises. This
repression of inappropriate desires and urges represents the greatest strain
on, and the most important function of, the mind. The ego often utilizes
defense mechanisms to achieve and aid this repression. Where the id may have an
urge and form a picture which satisfies this urge, the ego engages in a
strategy to actually fulfill the urge. The thirsty five-year-old now not only
identifies water as the satisfaction of his urge, but forms a plan to obtain
water, perhaps by finding a drinking fountain. While the ego is still in the
service of the id, it borrows some of its psychic energy in an effort to
control the urge until it is feasibly satisfied. The ego's efforts at pragmatic
satisfaction of urges eventually builds a great number of skills and memories
and becomes aware of itself as an entity. With the formation of the ego, the
individual becomes a self, instead of an amalgamation of urges and needs.
-The ego operates under the Reality Principle, seeing the outside world as it
actually is.
-The ego operates with the Secondary Process, the use of reason in an attempt
to obtain pleasure.
-The ego, in conventional morality, is amoral (like a good businessman, the ego
performs cost-benefit analyses, and thereby profits in pleasures).
THE PHALLIC STAGE
After potty training is over, erotic pleasure moves a couple of inches forward
to the genitals. Little boys discover that they have a new toy, and they figure
out how to make it work pretty quickly using only trial-and-error
experimentation. His newfound technological skill brings him in direct conflict
with society now in the most important struggle of his life:
The Oedipal Conflict.
Little boys undergo the Oedipus drama. [Ask students to describe this drama.]
Remember how attached baby was to Mommy? Now, the little boy starts to wonder
if he can get her to play with his great new discovery. He seeks the love of
his mother, but he perceives that Mom is already taken by his father. Deep
down, he wants to kill his father and have sexual relations with his mother.
Why is this absurd Oedipus story so important to Freudian psychology? Think
about it. Here, for the fist time in junior's life, we have the Sex and
Agression Drives conspiring together to reach the same goal. And, if junior
succeeds, society can't. Here's why:
Freud, in addition to the crazy
don't-pee-on-the-fire-and-we-can-live-in-harmony creation-of-society myth,
wrote that, at the beginning of human civilization, there was a 'primal horde'
dominated by a powerful father who possessed all available women (much like
present-day gorilla troops). We became "human" (i.e., "not-gorilla") at the
moment when, in rage and frustration, his sons banded together to kill and
devour the harem-master. But because of the ambivalent structure of the
instincts the brothers not only felt hatred towards their father, but also
love; this returned to haunt them in post murder guilt and encouraged them to
set the father up as a totem and to incorporate his terror with in them. This
parallels the development of the superego. Freud notes, however, that in an
attempt to prevent a repetition of the primal situation, the brothers, under
the shadow of the totem, imposed certain ruling structures upon themselves, to
regulate the beginnings of culture by regulating their passions and
relationships.
Out of this prehistoric act, the two pillar taboos of society were generated:
Incest (why they had to kill Daddy) and Patricide (killing Daddy). Violate
these taboos and you violate the basic structure of society. Bad news for you:
the people who've not gotten what they really wanted (fuck-Mommy/kill-Daddy),
but instead found substitute pleasures (wives and jobs), will hunt you down and
kill you without mercy.
Enough about the guys and their widdler problems. On to little girls.
The Electra Conflict
is the female version of the little boys' Oedipal conflict. In it, just like
for little boys, girls are doomed to fail in the Daddy-daughter-Mommy love
triangle. And, under ideal circumstances, the conflict terminates with the
little girl's identification with Mommy and the development of a conscience
based on her internalization.
Unfortunately, there are some differences. Little girls, for obvious reasons,
don't develop a castration anxiety (they get penis envy instead), and thus
there isn't a strong motivation to identify with Mommy. Hence women develop
weaker consciences than men; they are more immoral and more likely to give into
their emotions.
LATENCY
As the conscience (superego) develops out of the Oedipal/Electra conflicts,
sexual desires are repressed and lie dormant (hence "latency"). Children pour
their repressed libidinal energy into non-sexual pursuits like sports, school,
and same-sex friendships. And the repression works just fine... until the
libidinal dynamo of puberty rears its ugly head.
THE GENITAL STAGE
With the onset of puberty, pleasure once again organizes itself around the
genitals, and sexual desire becomes directed toward heterosexual relationships.
Puberty, as much as it is a transformation in body, is also a transformation of
psychology: adolescents start THINKING about SEX.
If all the conflicts of the earlier stages were resolved appropriately, the
adolescent will develop a Genital (read "healthy") Personality, one capable of
Love and Work. Work? Work is the societally acceptable expression of, you
guessed it, Aggression. So, people with particularly strong Aggressive drives,
if they're healthy, get used by society in good ways, like as surgeons.
7. Fixation
So now Freud would have us ask the question: How many people do we know that
are both Lovers and Workers?
Answer: not many.
Psychosexual Development is usually halted at one of the first three stages
when a child becomes fixated, gets stuck in one of the developmental conflicts.
We become fixated when we receive too little or too much pleasure in any given
stage. If we look at pleasure as psychological sustenance, fixations are either
starvations or gluttonies. When these frustrations and overindulgences happen
in early life, they lock away a certain amount of the libido in the stage in
which they occur. When fixated people encounter stress in their adult lives,
they regress to the stage that they didn't resolve properly and respond to the
stressor immaturely.
For example, let's discuss the Phallic fixation. Boys who did not properly
resolve the Oedipal conflict develop certain characteristics that become
integral to their adult personalities. Some become chronic masturbators, both
physically and mentally. Others become homosexual. Both of these types are
incapable of maintaining an adult sexual relationship with a woman, 'cause, no
matter how good she may be, she's no substitute for Mommy.
8. Anxiety
The healthy ego rationally meets the needs and constraints of the id, superego,
and reality (the "three tyrants," Freud calls them). Most of us (we with
unhealthy egos) can't do this, and therefor exist in a state of psychological
dis-ease: Anxiety.
Three types of anxiety (each caused by one of the three tyrants):
-Reality anxiety: the dis-ease we experience in response to the challenges we
face in the real world.
-Moral anxiety: guilt, delivered to the ego by an offended superego.
-Neurotic anxiety: what happens when the ego holds too tight leash on the id
and the id (powerful and irrational) threatens to overwhelm the ego.
9.Defense Mechanisms
Since the ego is trapped between numerous anxieties which threaten its
stability at any given moment, it utilizes defense mechanisms to overcome the
sense of dread and get on with life.
The most common defense mechanism: repression, in which the ego sweeps anxiety
under the rug of the id, forgets about the problem at hand. Repression plays
some part in all of the other separate defense mechanisms.
In short, when we can't ratioinally handle the truth, we lie to ourselves about
reality.
The method we'll be most interested in for looking at Olivier's Hamlet: letting the id have its way in its bizarre fantasy world, but in a way in which objects of desire are encoded (in dream and fantasy symbols) in such a manner that the ego can't understand without work.
10. Olivier's Hamlet.
Why is Hamlet so perfectly suited for psychoanalytic treatment? Certainly Freud's initial interest in the play would have been its depiction of madness (in both Hamlet and Ophelia). Furthermore, Freud used Shakespeare's Hamlet to formulate his idea of the Oedipus complex. He wrote (quote pp. 264, 265, vol 4 of the Standard Edition).
Olivier decided to refashion Hamlet into a psychoanalytic case study. He enlisted the aid of Ernest Jones, who worked with Freud himself in the production of several articles fleshing out the mechanics of the Oedipal conflict in Hamlet.
Now that you've got some of the basic psychoanalytic hermeneutic principles "under your belts," let's let 'em loose on the playground of the movie, see if we can decode some of Olivier's "essay on Hamlet ."
Let's start with the basics: visuals. (Arches, pillars, swords; and stairs?)
Now "psychoanalyze" these scenes:
0:39:25, the ghost confronts Hamlet
1:29:41, Hamlet in mommy's boudoir
2:32:45, Hamlet's funeral procession
the final fight scene...
Now, psychoanalyze entire characters and their progression through the play:
1. Claudius
2. Ophelia
3. Hamlet
11. My Last Word: On Interpretation
Olivier inserted a couple of scenes into the movie that tell us something about
his commitment to the psychoanalytic process:
1:22:43, Hamlet and Polonius describing clouds that aren't there
1:58:30, gravedigger's description of Hamlet's madness and the cure
So, maybe we're being told not to trust the psychoanalytic process to unarchive
actual events of our pasts that we have supposedly repressed. But, as I noted
earlier, interpretation is the thing wherein we'll catch...something.
Relabling the Oedipal triangle. The model drawn earlier may not be an accurate
description of the relationships in a family, but it is useful in describing
the relationships which occur in the act of interpretation!
X=life/action/loving, "reality"
Y=Text
y=Interpretation
x=the new reality created by y, a substitute for X
Copyright ©NOW James E. Staub, Jr. All rights reserved.
Please send your questions, comments, concerns to
James Staub
.