Everything, Sexual.
by kthai
I knew of the Oedipus/Electra complexes before this and they’ve always made me uncomfortable, as well as the castration/penis envy. I don’t have memories of blaming anyone for my “castration” — would kids even think of this to begin with? I guess I wouldn’t remember, but, really? Freud would probably think my discomfort says something about me and what I repress.
I’m glad Christina mentioned that part about Dora’s disgust towards the kiss during lecture today. That part really got to me when I was reading, I mean, what if she really was disgusted? Does it really matter if Herr K had been kind, handsome, if he’d given her gifts? She can still be disgusted by his action even if she was attracted to him. It was a kiss seemingly out of nowhere, she’s fairly young, he’s married; her disgust is warranted I think.
Freud on p. 22:
“I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable; and I should do so whether or no the person were capable of producing somatic symptoms.”
Really? What if it isn’t consensual? Why is Freud so certain that this is a definite sign of hysteria? Is it really so ridiculous to think that some women are just not interested? This is so basic but, wouldn’t that be a great excuse for one’s failures? “She was disgusted by me, obviously she was hysterical.”
The dream interpretation is interesting. I’ve always thought most of my dreams don’t really mean anything because they’re almost always utterly ridiculous and I usually end up lucid dreaming so they end up meaning whatever I want them to. I think it’d be impossible for me to actually analyze a dream because with all these different methods of repression couldn’t one dream be interpreted a number of ways to come up with different results? Wait. How do the analysts decide what is a displacement or a projection or condensation, etc.? Could the result of a dream analysis also say something about the analyst?
Yeah, looking forward to hearing about this.
– Kathy
Good points here–I have similar questions! As for how analysts decide whether a piece of a dream is part of a condensation or displacement or what have you, I think it has to do with paying careful attention to a patient’s whole situation, their life history, their childhood, events that seem traumatic for them, what they bring up for discussion on a particular day in addition to the dream (because these things may then be related), and the like. The idea, I think, is to provide a story that makes sense within the context of all of this, because you have to try to read what the unconscious is saying such that it fits with the rest of the patient’s life as much as possible. It can’t be just completely disconnected from that. But still, several interpretations of the same thing could be possible.
Now that I think of it, though, Freud does give several interpretations of the same dream content and symptoms himself. I’m not sure, but perhaps he thinks that most symptoms and dream-parts are matters of condensation, so that they do relate to more than one thing and can be interpreted in more than one way, with all of these possibly being “right.”