Psychoanalytic/Freudian Theory

Psychoanalysis/Freudian Theory Sigmund Freud’s radical idea: Human beings are motivated, even driven, by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware (i.e. unconscious)

What’s “The Unconscious”? The unconscious is the storehouse of painful experiences and emotions (wounds, fears, guilty desires, unresolved conflict). Repression: pushing these events down from our consciousness. But they don’t go away – we just keep trying to replay similar scenarios later in life.

The Three Parts of the Psyche

Key Psychological Defenses Selective Perception – hearing/seeing only what we feel we can handle

Selective memory – modifying our memories so that we don’t feel overwhelmed or forgetting painful experiences entirely

Denial – believing problem doesn’t exist/never happened

Avoidance – staying away from people/situations that stir up unconscious anxieties

Displacement – “taking it out” on someone less threatening

Projection – putting our fear/problem on someone else, and then condemning them in order to deny we have this ourselves

How we handle conflict Regression – temporary return to a former psychological state (not good unless we move into: Active reversal – acknowledging and working through repressed experiences

Core Issues Fear of intimacy – The chronic feeling that emotional closeness will seriously hurt or destroy us. Safety comes only from keeping emotional distance.   Fear of abandonment – the belief that our friends/loved ones are going to desert us (physical abandonment) or don’t really care about us (emotional abandonment) Fear of betrayal – the nagging feeling that our friends/loved ones can’t be trusted (laughing at you behind your back, cheating on you) Low self-esteem - belief that you are less worthy than other people; you don’t deserve attention, love, etc  Insecure/Unstable Sense of Self - inability to sustain a feeling of identity (feeling of knowing ourselves) Oedipal complex - dysfunctional bond with opposite-sex parent that hinders our adult relationships

Two Competing Drives Death drive (thanatos); A primitive instinct for death and destruction (a return to our original state) – explains why we engage in self-destructive behaviour Eros – the tendency towards life-affirming behaviour (sex, reproduction)

The Importance of Dreams Subconscious desires are revealed. Social rules do not exist in dreams; id runs rampant Symbols are important

Improv Time! In a group of 4-5 people, put together a skit (basically, a dialogue scene) of about 90 seconds-2 minutes that includes at least three of the psychoanalytic concepts we’ve discussed here. Your classmates’ task is to watch the skit and try to guess which concepts you’ve incorporated!

Psychoanalytic Questions What unconscious motivations are operating in the character? How are the core fears and defenses structure or inform the story? Are there Oedipal patterns at work? Do adult behaviour patterns reflect childhood issues? How do characters’ behaviour reflect their psychological identity (e.g. balance of id-ego-superego?) Are there any dream symbols in the text? In what ways do the dreams show the character projecting? What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author? What might a psychological interpretation say about the reader?

Psychoanalysis of Jay Gatsby: http://youtu.be/mId34ZoOilA