DOCSLIB.ORG

Art and Psychoanalysis : a Topographical, Structural, and Object- Relational Analysis Illustrated by a Study of Shakespeare's Hamlet

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2000 Art and psychoanalysis : a topographical, structural, and object- relational analysis illustrated by a study of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Patricia E. Scarbrough University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Scarbrough, Patricia E., "Art and psychoanalysis : a topographical, structural, and object-relational analysis illustrated by a study of Shakespeare's Hamlet." (2000). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2332. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2332 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ART AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: A TOPOGRAPHICAL, STRUCTURAL, AND OBJECT-RELATIONAL ANALYSIS ILLUSTRATED BY A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET A Dissertation Presented by PATRICIA E. SCARBROUGH Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2000 Department of Philosophy © Copyright by Patricia E. Scarbrough 2000 All Rights Reserved ART AND PSYCHOANALYSIS; A TOPOGRAPHICAL, STRUCTURAL, AND OBJECT-RELATIONAL ANALYSIS ILLUSTRATED BY A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET A Dissertation Presented PATRICIA E. SCARBROUGH Approved as to style and content by: — Robert Jokn Ackermann, Member ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, especially my chair, Bob Wolff, without whose unwavering support 1 would not have been able to complete this project. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Murray Schwartz whose guidance through the intricacies of psychoanalysis was a necessary prerequisite to my own explorations. Bob Ackermann and Bruce Aune have each, in their own way, provided examples of the philosophic ideal. All four have been generous, inspiring teachers, and their voices are now a permanent part of my inner landscape. I would also like to thank my fellow students and friends who have also been my teachers. Those of us in the “Alternate Track” of the Philosophy Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst brought varied backgrounds to the discipline of Philosophy, and we were well aware of our status as a unique learning community. The opportunity to share our individual interests in the rigorous atmosphere provided by the AT professors has been a treasured experience. The Amherst Circle, a support group of Philosophy dissertation writers, provided a wonderful forum for friendship and learning, and I thank Alison, Tammy, Nancy, Cheryl, Cindy, and Maryann-all doctors now!-for their support and inspiration. Maryann Sushinsky, my fellow “womi of the dust” in this dissertation-writing adventure, was there from starting point to finish line, and I would not have made it without her many contributions as a sympathetic but critical reader. I about the unconscious I am grateful to Dr. Stephen Dashef, from whom learned through first-hand; to Mary Schultz, who provided the financial assistance that got me some very lean years; to Sally Donelson, who offered encouragement and IV practical advice; and to Jim Bleech, who provided me with “a room of my own” when I desperately needed a place to work. And, to my sons Bradley and Mark, who grew up watehing Mom read Plato and Kant and Freud, thank you for the intellectual enthusiasm and love that prevented me from giving up when it seemed that this adventure, like some analyses, had become interminable. V ABSTRACT ART AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: A TOPOGRAPHICAL STRUCTURAL, AND OBJECT-RELATIONAL ANALYSIS ILLUSTRATED BY A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET FEBRUARY 2000 PATRICIA E. SCARBROUGH B.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Robert Paul Wolff In this paper I examine the nature of the relationship between art and reality, arguing for the centrality of the role of art in the creation and cognition of the shared reality which is the human world. 1 support this argument through reference to the developing discipline of psychoanalysis, specifically considering three “stages” of psychoanalysis: classic Freudian psychoanalysis, ego psychology, and object relations theory. I take the position that if we are to reap the full benefit of the explanatory power of psychoanalysis as it may be applied to an understanding of aesthetics, we must treat psychoanalysis as we do any other growing body of theory, recognizing that initial formulations may be transformed, superceded, or restricted to a circumscribed area of applicability by advances based on new evidence. To this end, I examine classic Freudian psychoanalysis in terms of concepts such as conscious/unconscious, repression, instinctual derivatives, primary and secondary process functioning, condensation and displacement, phantasy, symptom, and dream. I also consider the development of the psychoanalytic techniques of free association, the transference analysis, and interpretation. I look at ego psychology in terms of VI mechanisms of defense, the fomiation of the superego, adaptation, the “conflict free sphere of ego functioning,” and “regression in service of the ego.” And I examine object relations theory in terms of Melanie Klein’s inner and outer reality, D.W. Winnicott’s transitional space, and the elaboration of world and self through mechanisms of identification, introjection, projection, and regression to dependence. I tie each of the psychoanalytic theories to a theory of aesthetics developed from the psychoanalytic premises, and I provide concrete examples through interpretations of Hamlet based on each of the three aesthetic theories. I conclude that Winnicott’s object relations theory grounds the most robust theory of aesthetics, one which supports the centrality of the role of art in our constitution of our selves and our world. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABSTRACT CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1 1 . ART AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 11 2. ART AND THE STRUCTURAL THEORY 76 3. OBJECT RELATIONS: D.W. WINNICOTT 126 4. TOWARD A WINNICOTTIAN THEORY OF AESTHETICS 157 5. POTENTIAL SPACE AND SHAKESPEARE’S 168 BIBLIOGRAPHY 222 viii INTRODUCTION In the Republic, Plato raises some interesting and complex issues about the nature of the relationship between art and the individual personality and its grasp of reality. He argues that art appeals to the appetitive and emotional aspects of the personality at the expense of the rational, and that art, as imitative of the objects of appearance in the natural world, is at three’ removes from the reality represented by the fomis of the intelligible world. is Art thus doubly dangerous, in the first place because it promotes an incorrect balance among the parts of the soul, and in the second because it acts as a decoy and prevents the intellect from focusing on the true objects of cognition which are attainable only through reason. Though we have since Plato’s time developed a more sophisticated understanding of both the nature of reality and the nature of human psychology, we are still influenced by a number of his assumptions about the nature of art. The perpetually recumng issue of censorship attests to a lingering fear that art, through a tendency to circumvent critical thought, may be subversive of individual or social stability; simultaneously, the tendency to view art as less than essential is reflected not only in the popular educational slogan, “Back to the Basics,” but also in the secondary role of aesthetics in departments of philosophy where metaphysics and epistemology have traditionally held pride of place. What is the nature of the relationship between art and reality? Can objects of art be objects of cognition appealing to our rational selves at the same time that they appeal 'Three removes because the Greeks counted the first as well as the last term ol a series. to our aesthetic and desiring selves? In my dissertation I will look at the developing discipline of psychoanalysis as it has reflected a number of positions regarding the nature of the relationship between art and the human personality and its grasp of reality, and 1 will argue for the centrality of the role of art in the creation and cognition of the shared reality which is the intersubjective world. Freud analyzed the symptoms presented by his neurotic patients and developed an interpretive theory which made sense of their illness as the expression of repressed desire. The obsession or hysteria which manifested itself in a bewildering array of incomprehensible behavior yielded to a complex process of translation which read backwards from the surface presentation to the hidden wish. Freud argued that the same process which provided the key to understanding the hysteric’s symptoms and the obsessive’s compulsions could be applied to dreams, to slips of the tongue and pen, to jokes, even to works of art. He saw the language of rational discourse as constantly disrupted by an archaic “primary” thought process which was driven by desire, found identity in similarity, substituted part for whole, operated in an eternal present, and spoke in symbols. For Freud, the great foundational event in the constitution of the self was the successful resolution of the
Recommended publications
  • Sublimation in the Atheist Sigmund Freud: Religion and Sublimation in Carl G

    Sublimation in the Atheist Sigmund Freud: Religion and Sublimation in Carl G

    CHAPTER FOUR SUBLIMATION IN THE ATHEIST SIGMUND FREUD: RELIGION AND SUBLIMATION IN CARL G. JUNG AND OTTO RANK Freud’s two main additions to the theory of man—the primacy of the unconscious and the centrality of sexuality, were set forth by him early in his career. His masterwork Th e Interpretation of Dreams (1900), with its all-important early section “Th e Project,”148 aimed to put the theory of the unconscious on a scientifi c footing once and for all, or at the very least, on a fi rmer scientifi c footing than anyone had placed it hitherto. Ernest Jones in the fi rst volume of his biography of Freud emphasizes that medical psychology had been groping towards the theory of the unconscious—the idea “that all one’s mental capacities could be in full usage without consciousness being called up” (words of British psy- chologist Sir Samuel Wilkes)—for at least two decades before Freud’s epoch-making book appeared.149 Th ough Freud cites a host of psychol- ogists who wrote on the unconscious, Berlin psychologist Th eodor Lipps was one of his most important predecessors. As early as 1883 Lipps had written the following: “We not only assert the existence of unconscious mental processes alongside the conscious ones. We fur- ther postulate that the unconscious processes are the basis of the con- scious ones. [italics mine—ALC] In the proper conditions unconscious processes rise to consciousness and then return to the unconscious.”150 Freud underlined this passage in his copy of Lipps’ article which is in his personal library and this is what Freud went on to prove scientifi - cally in his 600+-page work.
  • Émile Coué and His Method (I): the Chemist of Thought and Human Action 1

    Émile Coué and His Method (I): the Chemist of Thought and Human Action 1

    Émile Coué and his Method (I): The Chemist of Thought and Human Action 1 Émile Coué and his Method (I): The Chemist of Thought and Human Action Lindsay B. Yeates, PhD School of Humanities & Languages, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW Australia Australian Journal of Clinical Hypnotherapy & Hypnosis, Volume 38, No.1, (Autumn 2016), pp.3-27. Abstract The talented scientist, structured thinker, and successful apothecary, Émile Coué (1857-1926), transformed what he had learned of suggestion in the 1880s and scientific hypnotism in the 1900s into the Coué method of the 1920s. His method was an ordered sequence of rational, systematic, intricately constructed, subject-centred hypnotherapeutic interactions that stressed the significance of both unconscious and conscious autosuggestion, delivered a collection of well-polished common-sense explanations, a persuasive set of experiential exercises, a powerfully efficacious hypnotism-centred ego-strengthening intervention and, finally, detailed instruction in the specific ritual through which his empirically determined formula “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better” was to be self-administered twice daily. This paper examines Coué’s work, the history and evolution of his method, the phenomenon of its wide-ranging impact during the 1920s in Europe, Britain, and the USA, and reflects upon aspects of its long-term influence on the domain of hypnotherapy and hypnotic suggestion. KEY WORDS: autosuggestion, conscious autosuggestion, ego-strengthening, hypnotherapy, hypnotic suggestion, self-hypnosis NOTE to the Reader A small number of textual errors and omissions in the final published version of this paper have been corrected. Otherwise, the original paper’s content remains unchanged.
  • Voice, Superego and Violence

    Voice, Superego and Violence

    European Scientific Journal December 2013 /SPECIAL/ edition vol.2 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 VOICE, SUPEREGO AND VIOLENCE Dra. Araceli Colin232 Autonomous University of Queretaro Abstract The ideology is constructed with a social discourse interweaved with the unconscious desire of the parents to the child, registered through signifiers. The plot that organizes all these modes of transmission and the way to incorporate and subjectivizate them is the voice. The voices of the parents take place in the superego. The superego is a foundation for subsequent voices of authority, whether educational or political. The voices of the superego are fierce and imperative and does not admite doubt. From this basis we are going to do a critical reading to the governmental dispositive to attend intra-family violence in Mexico. Keywords: Superego, Voice, Unconscious, Subjectivization Introduction Marx, in his Preface to A Contribution to The Critique of Political Economy, formulated one of his principal aphorisms and the foundation of a materialist psychology: "It is not the consciousness of the man that determines their being social, but their social being that determines consciousness"(1978:518) (1859). The analytic practice confirms this Marxist postulate. Although they have had reciprocal influences, the differences between Psychology and Psychoanalysis are well known. The object of study of Psychoanalysis is the unconscious. Departing from the Marxist aphorism and adding this unconscious dimension, the same phrase could be restated as: “it is not the unconscious part of humans which determines their social being, but it is rather their social being that determines the unconscious.” Freud demonstrated that consciousness is a mere surface where thoughts and associations appear, but having an evanescent character.
  • Dissociative Tendencies and Individual Differences in High Hypnotic Suggestibility

    Dissociative Tendencies and Individual Differences in High Hypnotic Suggestibility

    COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHIATRY 2011, 16 (2), 113Á135 Dissociative tendencies and individual differences in high hypnotic suggestibility Devin Blair Terhune, Etzel Carden˜a, and Magnus Lindgren Department of Psychology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden Introduction. Inconsistencies in the relationship between dissociation and hypnosis may result from heterogeneity among highly suggestible individuals, in particular the existence of distinct highly suggestible subtypes that are of relevance to models of psychopathology and the consequences of trauma. This study contrasted highly suggestible subtypes high or low in dissociation on measures of hypnotic responding, cognitive functioning, and psychopathology. Methods. Twenty-one low suggestible (LS), 19 low dissociative highly suggestible (LDHS), and 11 high dissociative highly suggestible (HDHS) participants were administered hypnotic suggestibility scales and completed measures of free recall, working memory capacity, imagery, fantasy-proneness, psychopathology, and exposure to stressful life events. Results. HDHS participants were more responsive to positive and negative hallucination suggestions and experienced greater involuntariness during hypnotic responding. They also exhibited impaired working memory capacity, elevated pathological fantasy and dissociative symptomatology, and a greater incidence of exposure to stressful life events. In contrast, LDHS participants displayed superior object visual imagery. Conclusions. These results provide further evidence for two highly suggestible subtypes:
  • Suggestion and Autosuggestion

    Suggestion and Autosuggestion

    SUGGESTION AND AUTOSUGGESTION A Psychological and Pedagogical Study Based upon the Investigations Made by the New Nancy School By - CHARLES BAUDOUIN Professor at the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute and Occasional Professor at the University of Geneva Author of "Culture de la Force Morale," "Symbolisme ct Psychoanalyse," etc., etc. Translated from the French by EDEN and CEDAR PAUL NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1921 Copyright, 1921 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Imo. Dedicated with grateful acknowledgments to EMILE COUE the steadfast Worker and Pioneer TRANSLATORS' PREFACE The dissociation of hypnotism, from mysticism and super stition was efficiently begun by two investigators, Alex andre Bertrand and James Braid. Bertrand (Traite du somnambtdisme, Paris, 1823 ; Du magnetisme animal en France, Paris, 1826) insisted especially upon the psychological determinants of the phenomena in ques tion. He maintained that what we now call the hypnotic state was brought about through the influence of the imagination of the patients acting upon themselves. Herein we have the germ of Cone's theory of autosug gestion as expounded in the following pages. Braid, on the other hand (various writings, from 1841 to his death in 1860), inclined at the outset rather to the physi ological explanation of what he was the first to term "hypnotism." It is interesting to note that Braid was a pioneer in the therapeutic use of reflective autosugges tion. He describes his own sufferings, in September, 1844, from a severe attack of muscular rheumatism, which had made it impossible for him to sleep for three successive nights. He then hypnotized himself in the presence of two friends.
  • 1 Evolution of Psychoanalytic Concepts I: Introduction to Freud D

    1 Evolution of Psychoanalytic Concepts I: Introduction to Freud D

    Evolution of Psychoanalytic Concepts I: Introduction to Freud D. Thurn / Fall 2016 Syllabus Course Description This course will trace the movement of Freud's thinking as he struggles to address theoretical and clinical problems that arise within several broad areas of inquiry, including trauma, dreams, sexuality, object relations, and culture. We will explore Freud's contributions in three major phases of his career, each organized around a specific model of the mind, and consider their implications for psychoanalysis as a theory of the de-centered subject. We will treat psychoanalysis as both a theoretical discourse and a reflexive clinical procedure which assumes a radical alterity at the heart of human subjectivity and relationship. As such, the course will provide an opportunity to examine what we might call "the vicissitudes of the other" in Freud's thought as it unfolds in the space marked out by the conflicting claims of mind and body, inside and outside, imagination and reality, determinism and chance, singularity and universality, and self and other. Each of the three phases in Freud's thinking as it appears in our readings will feature a significant intellectual and clinical encounter: with cases of hysteria, which will lead Freud, under the influence of Charcot, to break with the assumptions of German materialist physiology, to propose a bold new notion of psychic causality, and to lay the groundwork for a radical theory of sexuality; with the mystery of dreams, which will produce not only an interpretive discipline for addressing the productions of the unconscious, but an entire theory of psychic structure and activity; and with melancholia, which will instigate the creation of a new theory of the divided mind, and the (re-)emergence of a theory of object relations based more fully on the claims of external reality.
  • Jones Robert W

    Jones Robert W

    ‘Lain Beside Gold’ Narrative, Metaphor, and Energy in Freud and Conan Doyle Robert W. Jones PhD Candidate Aberystwyth University Contents Chapter 1 Introduction and Methodology ............................................................................. 3 1.1 Overview .......................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Secondary Material: Literature Review ........................................................................... 8 1.2.1 Critiques of Freud’s Narrativity ................................................................................ 8 1.2.2 Other Critiques ........................................................................................................ 11 1.2.3 Royle and the Uncanny Text ................................................................................... 14 1.2.4 Holland and the Practical Text ................................................................................ 17 1.3 Approaches ..................................................................................................................... 20 1.3.1 Metaphor .................................................................................................................. 23 1.3.2 The Text World ....................................................................................................... 30 1.3.3 Text as Performative Space ..................................................................................... 36 Chapter 2 Freud, Narrative, and the
  • THE PRACTICE of AUTOSUGGESTION by the METHOD of EMILE Couit

    THE PRACTICE of AUTOSUGGESTION by the METHOD of EMILE Couit

    THE PRACTICE OF AUTOSUGGESTION BY THE METHOD of EMILE COUIt BY C. HARRY BROOKS WITH A FOREWORD BY EMILE COUE " For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of the man which is in him ? " I CORINTHIANS ii. II. LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 4o MUSEUM STREET, W.C. I WOOD LW~u 10 1 Accession no. TO ALL IN CONFLICT WITH THEIR OWN IMPERFECTIONS THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED Fifty-seventh Thousand First published March 1922 Reprinted. .. April 1922 Reprinted . April 1922 Revised Edition. May 1922 Reprinted . ulIy 1922 Reprinted jSeptember 1922 Reprinted November 1922 Reprinted january' 1923 Third Edition March 1923 Reprinted October 1923 (All rights reserved) Printed in Great Britain by UN BOTRs,1RWIIln THE GRESHAM PRESS LONDON AND WOKING FOREWORD THE materials for this little book were collected by Mr. Brooks during a visit he paid me in the summer of 1921. He was, I think, the first Englishman to come to Nancy with the express purpose of studying my method of conscious autosuggestion. In the course of daily visits extending over some weeks, by attending my consultations, and by private con- versations with myself, he obtained a full mastery of the method, and we threshed out a good deal of the theory on which it rests. The results of this study are contained in the following pages. Mr. Brooks has skilfully seized on the essentials and put them forward in a manner that seems to me both simple and clear. The in- structions given are amply sufficient to enable anyone to practise autosuggestion for him or herself, without seeking the help of any other person.
  • 5. James Braid

    5. James Braid

    James Braid (I): Natural Philosopher, Structured Thinker, Gentleman Scientist, and Innovative Surgeon 1 Yeates, Lindsay B., James Braid (I): Natural Philosopher, Structured Thinker, Gentleman Scientist, and Innovative Surgeon, Australian Journal of Clinical Hypnotherapy & Hypnosis, Volume 40, No.1, (Autumn 2018), pp.3-39. NOTE to the Reader (1) This is the first of two articles published in the “Autumn 2018” issue of the Journal (released in February 2019). Due to the material involved, the proposed set of four articles were subsequently expanded to six, and the remaining four articles were published in the “Spring 2018” issue of the Journal (released in December 2019). (2) The original paper’s content remains unchanged; and, for the reader’s convenience, the original paper’s pagination is indicated as {1}, etc. James Braid (I): Natural Philosopher, Structured Thinker, Gentleman Scientist, and Innovative Surgeon 2 {3} James Braid (I): Natural Philosopher, Structured Thinker, Gentleman Scientist, and Innovative Surgeon Lindsay B Yeates, PhD School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia Abstract James Braid (1795-1860), the natural philosopher, gentleman scientist, the inquisitive and sagacious, structured thinker, the safe, innovative, and efficacious surgeon—renowned for his personal character, range of surgical skills, and overall clinical excellence (especially in the treatment of dangerous and difficult forms of disease, and the correction of deformities such as club- foot, spinal curvature, knock knees, bandy legs, squint, etc.)—the early adopter (and advocate) of ether anaesthesia and, significantly, the originator of scientific hypnotism and the intentional use of structured suggestion has, to a large extent, been written out of history.
  • Transference

    Transference

    Transference Transference (German: Übertragung) is a theoretical phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection (projection) of the feelings a person has about their parents, as one example, on to the therapist. It usually concerns feelings from a primary relationship during childhood. At times, this projection can be considered inappropriate.[1][2][3] Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, who considered it an important part of psychoanalytic treatment. Occurrence It is common for people to transfer feelings about their parents to their partners or children (that is, cross-generational entanglements). For instance, one could mistrust somebody who resembles an ex-spouse in manners, voice, or external appearance, or be overly compliant to someone who resembles a childhood friend. In The Psychology of the Transference, Carl Jung states that within the transference dyad both participants typically experience a variety of opposites, that in love and in psychological growth, the key to success is the ability to endure the tension of the opposites without abandoning the process, and that this tension allows one to grow and to transform.[4] Only in a personally or socially harmful context can transference be described as a pathological issue. A modern, social-cognitive perspective on transference explains how it can occur in everyday life. When people meet a new person who reminds them of someone else, they unconsciously infer that the new person has traits similar to the person previously known.[5] This perspective has generated a wealth of research that illuminated how people tend to repeat relationship patterns from the past in the present.
  • 246 Ogden, TH

    246 Ogden, TH

    246 Book Reviews / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 43 (2012) 239–264 Ogden, T. H. (2012). Creative Readings: Essays on Seminal Analytic Works. London and New York: Routledge, 201 pages, ISBN 978-0-415-69833-7 (Paper). Reviewed by Mufijid James Hannush, author of Becoming Good Parents: An Existen- tial Journey, Rosemont College This wonderful book could have been entitled, The (Incipient) Phenomenology of Creatively Reading (Analytic) Texts or The (Incipient) Phenomenology of Reading (Analytic) Texts Creatively. In this text, Ogden throws a refreshingly new light on pivotal articles by key contributors to contemporary psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud, Susan Isaacs, W. R. D. Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, Hans Loewald, and Harold Searles. Here is how the book is introduced by the publisher: This book is not simply a book of readings, it is a book about reading, about how read in a way that reader actively rewrite what they are reading, and in so doing make the ideas truly their own. The concepts that Ogden develops in his readings provide a signifijicant step in the reader’s expansion of his or her understanding of many of the ideas that lie at the cutting edge of contempo- rary psychoanalysis. Ogden truly delivers on this promissory note. He writes in his introduction to the book that he will try not to write “about” his experience of reading these seminal works, but “to write my experience of reading them: to write what I have let these papers and books do to me. This volume is ‘a reading book’—a book about read- ing, about how to read—not simply a book about readings” (p.
  • SIGMOND FREUD • Freud Was the Founding Father of Psychoanalysis, a Method for Treating Mental Illness and Also a Theory Which Explains Human Behavior

    SIGMOND FREUD • Freud Was the Founding Father of Psychoanalysis, a Method for Treating Mental Illness and Also a Theory Which Explains Human Behavior

    SIGMOND FREUD • Freud was the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and also a theory which explains human behavior. • Psychoanalysis is often known as the talking cure. Typically Freud would encourage his patients to talk freely (on his famous couch) regarding their symptoms and to describe exactly what was on their mind. Unconscious mind • Freud (1900, 1905) developed a topographical model of the mind, whereby he described the features of mind’s structure and function. Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind. • On the surface is consciousness, which consists of those thoughts that are the focus of our attention now, and this is seen as the tip of the iceberg. • The preconscious consists of all which can be retrieved from memory. The third and most significant region is the unconscious. Here lie the processes that are the real cause of most behaviour. • Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part you cannot see. • The unconscious mind acts as a repository, a ‘cauldron’ of primitive wishes and impulse kept at bay and mediated by the preconscious area. For example, Freud (1915) found that some events and desires were often too frightening or painful for his patients to acknowledge, and believed such information was locked away in the unconscious mind. This happens through the process of repression. • Freud (1923) later developed a more structural model of the mind comprising the entities id, ego and superego (what Freud called “the psychic apparatus”). These are not physical areas within the brain, but rather hypothetical conceptualizations of important mental functions.