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Psychoanalysis Key Concepts Examples for Practice  Issues & Discussion Relevant Links Bibliographies Dame vor dem Spiegel (um 1905) by Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) Under Construction

Three premises in Freudian psychoanalysis:

1.  most of the individual's mental processes are unconscious.
2.  all human behavior is motivated ultimately by what we would call sexuality.  The prime psychic force--libido, or sexual energy.
3.  because of the powerful social taboos attached to certain sexual impulses, many of our desires and memories are repressed. (from A Reader's Guide)

    A.  Freud--1. Structure of the psyche--superego, ego, id, perceptual-conscious, pre-conscious, unconscious
        1.  the child's sexual development--
             a. polymorphous sexuality, three stages, fixation,
             b. Oedipal stage--gendering process, Oedipus complex, castration  fear

        2.  dream analysis--condensation, substitution, symbolization

        3.  pyschological diseases: neurosis, etc.--internal battle between ego and id, with psychological or physical abnormalities as symptoms  (or covert expressions of desire)

        4.  literature-- Psychobiography 作家的心理分析

  B.  Jung and archetypal criticism--archetype (universal symbols);
         archetypal motif or pattern; (e.g. hero--quest, initiation, scapegoat--Oedipus and Hamlet)
         archetype--not inherited ideas or patterns of thought, but they are predispositions to respond in similar ways to certain stimuli

  C.  Frye's monomyth-- archetype as genres

  D.  Lacan--lack, mirror stage, the unconscious as structured by language

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Limitations--Do you agree?
 

• Oedipus Complex Theory:

a. the total ignorance and suppression of the mother, who is accused of either promoting incestuous desire or encouraging regression.
b. the acceptance of the father's right over the mother, and the erection of patriarchal law as a universal and normative principle that determines psycho-sexual development.
c. the phallogocentric government of all psycho-sexual relationships excludes anything specifically feminine.
d. its lack of cultural universality
 
• In General

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