Sunday, January 15, 2017

Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams - Summary and Review

The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) is one of Sigmund Freud's most notable works. Some of Freud's most important ideas such as the unconscious and the Oedipal complex are manifested in the book which makes it pivotal in any understanding of Sigmund Freud's theory or psychoanalysis in general.
As suggested by its title, The Interpretation of Dreams is primarily devoted to the study of dreams and their role in mental life and therapy. Freud argues that all dreams are subjected to the need for "wish fulfillment" (wunscherfüllung), a notion he will later renounce (see Beyond the Pleasure Principle) but at the time was fundamental to his theory. Dreams, Freud held, are an instrument to maintain sleep and in order to do so must cater for different needs arising in the body and psyche during sleep. In order to prevent these needs from waking us up the mind sets up imagined experiences that offer relief and satisfaction for these urges. Dreams can, for example, hold off the need for peeing by giving you a dream in which you are relived. In a more complex example the dream offers some resolve to a haunting inner conflict by enacting its desired outcomes.
The thing about wish fulfillment is that we don't always want to know what our true wishes are (especially if you take the Freudian view on humans and their objects of desire). This is where the "censor" comes in, blurring the content of the dream and rendering it incomprehensible so that we are not exposed to anything we don't want to acknowledge. In order for information to slip through the censor lines it must be coded. This means that dreams, much like in the biblical or mystic notion of them, have deep symbolic meaning to them.
In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud termed the concept of Dreamwork in order to refer to the mechanisms that take part in the symbolic formation of the dream. Dreamwork includes, as a start, symbolism and the fact the different psychic entities in our soul receive visual representation in the dream. Freud also notes two types of such symbolic mechanism such as displacement which combines two meanings into one object or displacement which moves feeling directed at one object to another. In the end comes what Freud calls secondary revision, the "editing" of the dream by the dreamer in order to apply logic and coherence to it.
In psychoanalysis the dream serves, according to Freud, as "the royal road to the unconscious". The dream provides the therapist with data which is usually not obtainable by the conscious awake self, and by deconstructing its coded meanings one can get a peak at what's happening deep down under.
Although Freud later retracted many of the ideas that appear in The Interpretation of Dreams, the book remains highly influential till this days, maybe because it contains some spectacular demonstrations of dream analysis conducted by Freud that are sure to leave you waiting for next morning.  



Other articles and summaries about Freud:

Sigmund Freud - summary of ideas and main concepts

Sigmund Freud – "The Uncanny"

Sigmund Freud - The Ego and the Id
Sigmund Freud - Mourning and Melancholia 
Sigmund Freud - The Future of an Illusion 
Sigmund Freud - Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Sigmund Freud - Civilization and Its Discontents
Sigmund Freud - Psychopathology of Everyday Life
Sigmund Freud - Totem and Taboo

Books of interest:

   
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Fredric Jameson / Postmodernism: high culture and popular culture – the case of Bonaventure hotel

Fredric Jameson - Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism - summary part
 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5


Depthlessness, pastiche, the fragmentation of the subject and other characteristics of postmodern culture introduced by Fredric Jameson (see previous parts of the summary) strongly question the notion of "high culture" as opposed to popular culture. Jameson notes how boundaries between high and low culture have been transgressed in postmodern times with kitsch and popular culture integrating with forms of high culture to produce one big varied consumer culture.

Jameson argues that not only is postmodernism a cultural dominant (i.e. the dominant form of cultural production) but that it has turned into a prime consumer product, with the aesthetic production being integrated into the general production of consumer goods. The growing need to produce ever newer products now allocates an essential structural position to aesthetic novelty.

Jameson notes to the aesthetic field which has the strongest ties with the economical system is that of architecture which has strong ties with real-estate and development which give rise to a tide of postmodern architecture, epitomized in the grandeur of shopping malls.   

Jameson famously analyzes the postmodern features of the L.A. Westin Bonaventure hotel. His main argument concerning the Bonaventure hotel is that this building, as other postmodern architecture, does not attempt to blend into its surroundings but to replace them. The Bonaventure hotel attempts to be a total space, a whole world which introduces a new form of collective behavior. Jameson sees the total space of the Bonaventure hotel as an allegory of the new hyper-space of global market which is dominated by the corporations of late capitalism.
It seems that in Postmodernism Jameson often laments the shortcomings of postmodern culture, though there is also a sense of inevitability in his writing. Postmodernism according to Jameson is an historical situation, and therefore it will be wrong to assess it in terms of moral judgments. Jameson proposes to treat postmodernism in line with Marx's thought which asks us to "do the impossible" of seeing something as negative and positive at the same time, accepting something without surrendering judgment and allowing ourselves to grasp this new historical form. 

Fredric Jameson - Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism - summary part
 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5


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Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents - short summary and review

Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) is one of Sigmund Freud's most notable and influential books. The book discusses the fundamental tension between the individual and civilization. The basic split between civilization and the individual results from the individual desire for freedom and satisfaction of instinctual needs which collides with society's need for conformity and obedience, manifested in repression. The tragic paradox of humanity, Freud holds, lies in the fact that many of our most basic needs and wants are harmful to our existence as a group if manifested completely. Man has a need to fulfill his sexual or violent drives (see "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" ) that must be contained of society is to function (we can't have people running around f**king and beating the crap out of everyone they want). That's why every civilization creates laws and regulations preventing murder and rape accompanied by severe punishments in order to deter offenders. That's all fine and nice but it also means that we are always left discontent, unsatisfied and repressed. Feeling frustrated isn't an anomaly, it's human nature in civilization.

Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents picks up from where his The Future of an Illusion  (1927) leaves off in exploring the nature of human religion. Chapter one of the book is devoted to what Freud calls the "Oceanic Feeling" of being boundless, an early pre-self sentiment associated with Religion. Chapter two of Civilization and Its Discontents expands on the religious theme and suggests that the ego is formed as a need to distance one from external reality, making the pleasure principle work in manners more complex. Chapter three discusses the paradox by which civilization which is designed to protect man from unhappiness is the predominant cause of this unhappiness. This tension if for Freud the cause of many neuroses. In chapter 4 Freud ties in his theory from Totem and Taboo which holds that the development of civilization is connected with a collective Oedipal complex resulting from brothers conspiring to kill their father. In chapters 5 and 6 Freud brings in the death drive as something that unlike the Eros or libido which tie people together is something that drives society apart and therefore needs to be repressed. In the seventh chapter of Civilization and Its Discontents Freud discusses the neurosis associated with the clash between death desires and civilization's repression. The internalized social moral demand in the super-ego which subordinates the ego into fending off its id by means of guilt. In other words, guilt in the prerequisite sentiment for belonging to society. 

Other articles and summaries about Freud:
Sigmund Freud - Totem and Taboo

Sigmund Freud - summary of ideas and main concepts



Books of interest:

         
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Freud - Beyond the Pleasure Principle - Summary and Review

The publication of "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" in 1920 marked a crucial turning point in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Up until then Freud infamously held that all human action is based on the sexual drives (the libido or Eros) and the pleasure principle of perusing pleasure while avoiding pain. In "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" Freud suggested that man is also governed by a competing instinctual drive: the death drive (or Thanatos, the Greek god of death).

It was the horrors of World War 1 which led Freud to hold that inside all of us lies a force which is aggressive, violent and (also self-) destructive. Life and death, Freud realized, are two sides of the same coin and therefore their mutual interaction is at the very core of human existence.      
  
Freud moves from clinical evidence to support his theory to speculation. in sections 1-3 of "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" Freud asks if we can find examples of incidents in which human action moves "beyond the Pleasure Principle", that is not abiding by it. He identifies four such cases: children's games, recurring dreams, self harming and the underlying principle of repetition compulsion (enacting unpleasant events over and over again). Freud could not account for repetition compulsion under the premise of the pleasure principle and he therefore concluded that it must be separate from it.

In sections 4-7 of "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" Freud speculates that repetition compulsion is a form or relieving pressure originating in trauma, granting relief to self destructive forces. He added the example of masochism which he claims precedes sadism, and not the other way around.

The most inspiring point in Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" is the suggestion that to the same extent we want live and love we also want to die and destroy. The dual nature of man was now brought to the forefront of psychoanalysis.
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Other articles and summaries about Freud:

Sigmund Freud - summary of ideas and main concepts



 Books of interest:

 
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Sigmund Freud - The Future of an Illusion - summary and review

The Future of an Illusion (1927) by Sigmund Freud deals with the question of religion's origins and its underlying psychological structure. Freud holds the religion is an illusion aimed at managing men's emotional needs going back to early childhood.

in Freud's eyes in "The Future of an Illusion" religion is an illusion built on "certain dogmas, assertions about facts and conditions of external and internal reality which tells one something that one has not oneself discovered, and which claim that one should give them credence". The adherence to religion first arises out of the inheritance received from previous generations and the continuity of faith (Marx had something else to say about this). Secondly, since we hold the faith to be true, we also believe that proofs to its veracity are true (yup, circular). Thirdly, if religion is true and so are the proofs attesting to its truthfulness you are forbidden to doubt any of it.

But for Freud there is something deeper about religion that has to do with wish fulfillment, which he holds is at the base of religion's illusion. Religion fulfills the "oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind". These deep wishes include, for example, clinging on to the father, prolonging life and attaining immortality.

Though built on wish fulifilment religion from Freud is in the end a system of repression designed to fend off an control wild indevidual desires and urges that threaten society. Since human nature, for post WWI Sigmund Freud, is animalistic and destructive in its core it is necessarily for societies to develop civilizing systems to prevent chaos.

In an important part of "The Future of an Illusion" Freud ties the development of religion with the Oedipal Complex. God, like the father, serves to salvage the child's sense of helplessness against nature and fear of death. The father/god offers the illusion of wish fulfillment in exchange to obedience and subjection.

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Freud - Mourning and Melancholia - Brief Summary and Review

In Sigmund Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917) he offers the notion that melancholy and mourning are two different responses to loss. For Freud, pathological melancholy, unlike normal mourning, is a process in which separation from an object of attachment remained incomplete for some reason. Instead of retracting the libido invested with the lost object and redirecting it to another object, the melancholic person directs its excess libido inwards. As a result a part of the person identifies with the lost person, resulting in a inner division. The internalization of the lost loved one forms a separate faculty in the psyche which is harsh, judgmental, angry and yet attracting. While mourning is associated with conscious thought, melancholia happens in the unconscious.    

In his famous and important article "The Ego and the Id" (1923) Freud expanded on "Mourning and Melancholia" arguing that the process is universal and normal and is in fact a part of the Oedipal Phase. The internalization of the parent is, according to Freud, the inner division that forms the "super-ego".  

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Sigmund Freud - The Ego and the Id - Summary and Review

Sigmund Freud's  "The Ego and the Id" (1923) formulates the structural personality model in which Freud offers a revised version of his earlier topographical model of the psyche. The model articulates a map of the different layers which comprise the human soul: the conscious ,unconscious and preconscious which correlate with the faculties of ego, id and super-ego.

The Id - the Id (German: Es) is the primordial part of the psyche, the mental agency which hold the core energy of urges, the libido. The Id is separate from the Ego and external to it. It lacks self awareness and it is in a sense a boiling pot of physical energies aimed at attaining pleasure and avoiding pain (Freud's "pleasure principle"). The Id does not abide by reason and is pure impulse and it is associated with the unconscious.

The Ego - the Ego in Freud's theory splits from the initial Id to from a separate agency associated with the conscious. The Ego is formed as a result of the Id's necessity to negotiate its urges with reality's constrictions ("the reality principle"). The Ego is our aware experience of ourselves and its perceptions are logical and realistic. The Ego has the task of managing the energy arising from the Id and find ways to satisfy its desires in accordance with reality.

The Super-Ego - the Super Ego is formed "on top" of the Ego during Freud's Oedipal Complex. The child's identification with his father includes the internalization of society's rules and proper manners of conduct. Thus a moral conscience develops and a sense of an "ideal" self that one needs to peruse. The super ego is strict and uncompromising and it engages the Ego with moral demands.
In Freud's model the Ego is "stuck" in the middle of three factors: the Id, the Super-Ego and reality. The Ego need to accommodate and balance all the different pressures and demands, a arduous task indeed.



Read more:

Sigmund Freud - summary of ideas and main concepts

Sigmund Freud – "The Uncanny"
 Mourning and Melancholia 
The Future of an Illusion 

      
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