No Country for Old Men

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1 No Country for Old Men Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) The Interpretation of Dreams The

2 Sigmund Freud ( ) The Interpretation of Dreams The Development of Psychoanalysis Beyond the Pleasure Principle Cultural Commentary

3 The Interpretation of Dreams there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams if this procedure is employed, every dream reveals itself as a psychical structure which Has a meaning and which Can be inserted at an assignable point in the mental activities of waking life.

4 Wish Fulfillment When the work of interpretation has been completed, we perceive that a dream is the fulfillment of a wish.

5 Wish Fulfillments? Freud offers many examples of dreams as wish fulfillments But there is an obvious objection:

6 Wish Fulfillments? Nightmares! Dreams involving fear or anxiety Dreams of unpleasant things or events Dreams repeating ordinary events

7 Freud s Response We must make a contrast between the manifest and the latent content of dreams. Manifest content: distressing Latent content: wish fulfillment

8 Manifest and latent content But in cases where the wish-fulfillment is unrecognizable, where it has been disguised, there must have existed some inclination to put up a defence against the wish; and owing to this defence the wish was unable to express itself except in a distorted shape.

9 Psychic Forces One constructs the wish expressed by the dream The other exercises censorship and forcibly brings about distortion in the expression of the wish It permits thoughts to enter consciousness

10 Repress Pass 1st Agency (Id) Constructs wish 2nd Agency (Superego) Censor Distort

11 Dreams First agency creative: Dreams express wishes on its part Second agency defensive: Wishes of the first may be approved for consciousness, but they may distress this agency, which distorts them

12 Dreams Sleep lowers resistance of the second agency Wishes emerge in dreams that could not emerge in conscious, waking life Dreams are thus a unique window into the unconscious

13 Consciousness The essential nature of consciousness: Admission to consciousness as separate psychic act Sense organ perceiving data arising elsewhere

14 Three Parts of the Self Ego: I, the self, the part that relates to external world, decides, and acts Superego: observes the self and makes judgments; conscience; internalization of parental authority via identification Id: It, alien to the ego, dark, inaccessible, instinctual needs and desires, energy, pleasure principle

17 Principles Id: pleasure principle seek pleasure Ego: reality principle adapt yourself to the external world and meet its demands Superego: morality Ego must strive to meet all three constraints Life is hard!

18 Problem: Trauma People who have suffered trauma often dream of their trauma But that doesn t seem to be a wish fulfillment Manifest: they don t want to experience it again Latent: there s no other explanation

19 Trauma Options:

20 Trauma Options: Normal function of dreaming is disrupted Among the dreamer s wishes are masochistic ones A dream is an attempt at the fulfillment of a wish. (New Introductory Lectures) the wish is to have things turn out differently (never mentioned by Freud) The theory is false! Dreams aren t wish fulfillments

21 Id as distinctively sexual The energy of the Id is sexual Many of the Id s desires involve infantile sexual fantasies Desire, in fact compulsion, to repeat experiences is a strong additional drive

22 Trauma Desire to repeat trauma explains dreams But Freud goes further: Desire to repeat is desire for the past Inorganic matter preceded organic Death wish: the aim of all life is death.

23 Civilization and its Discontents Freud applies his theories to culture and civilization Society faces the same conflict as the ego Must meet constraints of the id (desire), the superego (morality), and the external world (reality)

24 Desire and happiness Happiness requires satisfying desire Need for novelty But this leads to conflict with superego (morality) and with reality, including other people So, we must suppress or repress desires

25 Civilization Civilization introduces mechanisms for suppressing, repressing, and sublimating desires Civilization is thus at war with the id

26 Civilization...our so-called civilization itself is to blame for a great part of our misery, and we should be much happier if we were to give it up and go back to primitive conditions.

27 Civilization...it is impossible to ignore the extent to which civilization is built up on renunciation of instinctual gratifications, the degree to which the existence of civilization presupposes the nongratification (suppression, repression, or something else?) of powerful instinctual urgencies.

28 ...men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked... a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment. The result is that their neighbour is to them not only a possible helper or sexual object, but also a temptation to them to gratify their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without recompense, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and kill him. Homo homini lupus [Man is wolf to man]; who has the courage to dispute it in the face of all the evidence in his own life and in history?

Culture Culture has to call up every possible reinforcement in order to erect barriers against the aggressive instincts of men and hold their

29 Culture Culture has to call up every possible reinforcement in order to erect barriers against the aggressive instincts of men and hold their manifestations in check by reaction-formations in men s minds. Civilized man has exchanged some part of his chances of happiness for a measure of security.

30 Guilt Civilization s chief weapon is guilt Superego needs to convince the ego to restrain id Guilt is its primary tool

31 Guilt The price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through a heightening of the sense of guilt. Guilt = anxiety, fear of the superego Does civilization make us neurotic?

32 Freudian Suspicion Psychoanalysis is justly suspicious. One of its rules is that whatever interrupts the progress of analytic work is a resistance.

33 Made-up Social Science Freud s cultural commentary includes a lot of conjecture Origins of religion: sons overthrow, kill father Saving the fire sexual significance, distinguishing men from women

34 Popper s critique Karl Popper contrasted Freud s method with Einstein s Einstein s theory made risky predictions Freud s, like Marx s, didn t

35 Death Wish Problem is introducing death wish makes the theory useless It explains everything It predicts nothing So, Popper insists, it has no scientific content

Psychodynamic Approaches. What We Will Cover in This Section. Themes. Introduction. Freud. Jung.

Psychodynamic Approaches. What We Will Cover in This Section. Themes. Introduction. Freud. Jung. Psychodynamic Approaches 1/4/2005 PSY305 Psychoanalytic.ppt 1 What We Will Cover in This Section Introduction. Freud. Jung. 1/4/2005 PSY305 Psychoanalytic.ppt 2 Themes 1. PSYCHO (Mind) DYNAMIC (Moving)