What is psychoanalysis?  a medical practice: the “talking cure”  founded and developed by Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud ( )

Literary psychoanalysis  psychoanalysis or “psychoanalytic theory” is also an established interpretive approach to literature and film  a methodology for reading and interpreting texts and films  cultural texts are – like patients’ dream narratives – full of signs which we, the reader / interpreter – like the psychoanalyst – must decipher

Freud and literature  Freud often used literary ancestors to embellish his medical case studies  a reading of Oedipus The King (Athenian tragedy by Sophocles, 429 BC) underpins his theory of the Oedipus complex  his theory of das Unheimliche, “the uncanny” is based on his reading of the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann’s work Der Sandmann, 1816

What are the basic tenets of psychoanalysis?  events in early childhood determine our personality (e.g. the Oedipus Complex)  human behaviour and experience is often driven by irrational drives  these drives remain unconscious

Basic tenets of psychoanalysis  repression is the force that keeps the drives unconscious  nevertheless the drives exert influence on human experience and behaviour  this can make people “sick”: neurotic, psychotic, anxious, depressed

Cure?  the way to resolve the disturbance of the drives is to access the unconscious under the guidance of a psychoanalyst  psychoanalysis helps to bring the repressed into the conscious mind where it can be made sense of cognitively  in other words the repressed becomes “narrativized” in therapy

On the couch: a session with a psychoanalyst

Psychoanalysis and the modern self  an important development in Western concepts of the modern self  this self is divided between conscious and unconscious forces  the self is a battle ground for unresolved repressed drives

Freud’s timeliness  a timely theory for Freud’s era (late 19 th and early 20 th centuries)  Victorian era – known for sexual repression and strict moral codes  Freud’s theory comments on this and heralds a new era and a new subjectivity: the modern self

Anti-rational  Freud is also radical in that he restores the body to Western philosophy  modern Western philosophy since Descartes (Early Modern era) and the Enlightenment (Kant) based on reason and rationality

René Descartes  Je pense, ainsi je suis  Ich denke, also bin ich  I think, therefore I am

Mind/reason v body/unreason  precedence of mind (rationality and reason) over body (lower order)  body: secondary to reason, not the essential part of the individual’s identity

Return of the body  Freud restores the body to Western thought through his theory of the drives  central position of sexual desire which society compels us to repress from the earliest point  we are sexual physical beings; we can be aggressive and violent

Pyschoanalysis and secularisation  Freud’s view modifies the idea of man as a noble creature apart from the animal world  he thus undermines the Biblical idea of man being made in God’s likeness  “God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”. (Genesis 1:27)

Psychoanalysis and evolutionary biology  influence of Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859), foundational text of evolutionary biology  principle of natural selection (survival of the fittest)  “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” (full title)

Important points to note  the conscious and unconscious minds are not two separate halves of one mind  Freud does not mean to present us with an “upstairs / downstairs” model of the mind  it is more useful to think of the mind as a forcefield comprised of mutually co-determining conscious thoughts and unconscious drives

 in short, the mind is a battleground for these forces  sometimes the unconscious drives will have the upper hand….

Dream theory  one of Freud’s most famous examples of when the drives have the upper hand is in his theory of dreams  the mind is resting – in sleep mode – so repression and censorship relax….  repressed thoughts can thus rise to the surface – often referred to as “the return of the repressed”

A Freudian slip by President George H.W. Bush  "For seven and a half years I've worked alongside President Reagan. We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex... uh... setbacks."

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar