Sigmund Freud
Hi everyone I know this is late but here my reading on Freud!
When I first saw that we had to read Freud I thought that it was Ironic that after 4 years of psychology I never really read something written by Freud. As I started to read I had a hard removing myself from the negative view of Freud that comes from psychology. I thought it was funny that is psyc. You always joke that Freud was high on cocaine when he came up with so many theories, and in the text he talks about his contribution to the study of cocaine and its pain numbing properties. In general what stood out to me the most from his dream interpretation is the idea of condensation. He believes that there is a big difference from the “manifest content” of a dream and the “dream thought” and this difference is due to condensation. I believe this idea is interesting in literature because there is a big difference in what we read and what the author is trying to say. For example in the story we read in class MAUPASSANT, you might just see it as simple story but as you look into the context and the background of the writer you do move into deeper and more profound interpretation. I do think though that Freud takes it to far, the problem with this is that you will start to make connections that are not really there. When Freud talks about the woman who dreams with beetles and concludes that it all has to do with her sexual desires towards her husband he leaves out the part of the daughter who use to kill beetles when she was little. So he really only looks at what supports his own theses and ignores all the rest. This can also happen to us when reading we might just look for an interpretation we like but not necessarily what the author is trying to interpret.
In conclusion I think that we should not have such a negative view of Fred because he was a thinker and his ideas have helped many fields come up with legitimate theories especially in psychology.
Lacan
Jacques Lacan
“Thus the subject, too, if he can appear to be the slave of language, is all the more so of a discourse in the universal movement in which his place is already inscribed at birth, if only by virtue of his proper name.”
The term ‘liberty’ comes to mind as I read this. This implies that if language, or better yet of the ‘discourse in the universal movement,’ is our (humans) master, as we are a subject by virtue of our ‘proper name’ giving us our place in the community, then the concept of liberty is ever more empty. We tend to think, or at least this is the general conception of liberty in our day, that liberty is being able to do or think as I please. This is the most common way of conceptualizing ‘liberty’. When I think of this I always think of the example of me, or a subject, being in front of 30 different television sets, with different brands and sizes and other specifications, and thinking that that, my being able to choose from 30 different television sets, is an expression of my liberty. The problem here is that the option of not buying, just out right living without a television set, never crossed my mind. In this example there are obviously many other forces at work limiting the full scope of my understanding of liberty. The freedom of being able to do perhaps is easier to pinpoint: this can be seen as the removal of restrictions upon the body, matter, itself; not being confined unjustly, being able to move as I please. The other one, the cognitive element is much more difficult to grasp. Lacan goes on to say that language is what distinguishes human society from natural society. So language is what makes us human and it enslaves us. This tells me that liberty doesn’t exist. We may think we have the freedom of ‘thought’, but in that case what doesn’t cross our minds is that when we think a certain way, we are subjected to that discourse and that there was manipulation in getting us to join that discourse. Pinpointing how we are not at liberty to think what we want to think is something that must be rejected if one is within the parameters of the general concept of liberty that I mentioned above. Lacan (and Freud) talks about the unconscious mind. One of Lacan’s theses’ is that the unconscious mind is made up of language. Therefore, in my observation, we are slaves to our unconsciousness. I am inclined to think that a psychotic person, maybe really be free when language doesn’t make us human or our unconscious, language, is unlocked.
Lacan
Jacques Lacan
“Thus the subject, too, if he can appear to be the slave of language, is all the more so of a discourse in the universal movement in which his place is already inscribed at birth, if only by virtue of his proper name.”
The term ‘liberty’ comes to mind as I read this. This implies that if language, or better yet of the ‘discourse in the universal movement,’ is our (humans) master, as we are a subject by virtue of our ‘proper name’ giving us our place in the community, then the concept of liberty is ever more empty. We tend to think, or at least this is the general conception of liberty in our day, that liberty is being able to do or think as I please. This is the most common way of conceptualizing ‘liberty’. When I think of this I always think of the example of me, or a subject, being in front of 30 different television sets, with different brands and sizes and other specifications, and thinking that that, my being able to choose from 30 different television sets, is an expression of my liberty. The problem here is that the option of not buying, just out right living without a television set, never crossed my mind. In this example there are obviously many other forces at work limiting the full scope of my understanding of liberty. The freedom of being able to do perhaps is easier to pinpoint: this can be seen as the removal of restrictions upon the body, matter, itself; not being confined unjustly, being able to move as I please. The other one, the cognitive element is much more difficult to grasp. Lacan goes on to say that language is what distinguishes human society from natural society. So language is what makes us human and it enslaves us. This tells me that liberty doesn’t exist. We may think we have the freedom of ‘thought’, but in that case what doesn’t cross our minds is that when we think a certain way, we are subjected to that discourse and that there was manipulation in getting us to join that discourse. Pinpointing how we are not at liberty to think what we want to think is something that must be rejected if one is within the parameters of the general concept of liberty that I mentioned above. Lacan (and Freud) talks about the unconscious mind. One of Lacan’s theses’ is that the unconscious mind is made up of language. Therefore, in my observation, we are slaves to our unconsciousness. I am inclined to think that a psychotic person, maybe really be free when language doesn’t make us human or our unconscious, language, is unlocked.
Lacan: still beastly
I tried to reread Lacan… and I got most of it done, but it is still a mystery. Or rather there is nothing in the text that would allow me to confirm that my reading is accurate, and especially that what he is saying makes sense.
I do like Lacan, more than the Sunday Times crossword puzzle, but is it serious? There is one passage, that I read in French, which is like a Burroughs cut-up — as if bits of newspaper were thrown into a bowl, stirred and then read at random — une salade de mots. I noticed that all the translations I have seen so far do not translate that section (ours doesn’t). There is usually a “[…]” in place of it:
Given the act that these phantasies may remain unconscious, their distinctive feature is in this case their signification. Now, concerning these phantasies, Freud tells us that [………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….]
Ellipsis… fragmentation… gaps… dot dot dot… Morse code. Actually that’s the sound of me banging my head against the text. Short short short long long long short short short. It is a rhythm familiar to any reader of Lacan — a drumbeat of misunderstanding, or is it Miss Understanding?
It is very easy to start talking like Lacan. I don’t think that is a good thing, but again it is as fun as a crossword puzzle. I re-read what I wrote a couple of years ago (LacanBeest), and I don’t think I have made any progress on re-reading the text. (The hyphen in “re-reading” symbolizes the bar that cannot be crossed over….)
I do come away from the text with a few ideas that make it all worth the trouble.
The first is an interest in understanding why and how language crystallizes behavior. I can see how neurotic behavior (twitch twitch) is language that insists. But why would the symbolic take the form of a symptom? What kind of sign is a symptom? Why does language get us tangled up into a destructive knot?
The other thing is the appreciation that there is so much more in Freud that needs to be tidied up and made explicit (for me). Freud is at times deceptively simple, because he talks about the quotidian, but from Lacan I get a glimmer of how interesting it would be read all of Freud.
Lacan makes me want to read Freud cover to cover, with a dash of Lacan thrown in. (I think that is called displacement.)
Impressions on “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” by Louis Althusser
I have to admit I sometimes – often – have a hard time to see the connection between the text we have to read and the question that, I think, is supposed to guide our reading : How can this text help to read a piece of literature ?
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards and Investigation) by Louis Althusser is not different. While I find the text rich under many aspects, I have difficulty connecting it to literature. I’ll present anyway my general impressions.
Of the whole discussion on Ideological State Apparatuses, the argument made on the School being the number one ISA in our society is certainly the one that reached me the most. From my understanding of the text, an ISA is a social structure in which a given ideology is embedded and transferred ; for Althusser, the prominent ideology is that of the reproduction of the means of bourgeois production. It the way school is designed, young influencable brains quickly learn – explicitely and implicitely – their role in place and the society : the labour will get out of school at age 16 with a specific set of skills while the leading class will end up years later ready to reproduce the capitalist behaviour of their parents.
The concept of ISAs is a general one and is not limited to describe the bourgeois society. School is embedded with hidden curricula that promote given values. To many, absence of women or non caucasian people in school resources have created a bias in the conception that students have of their society. Today, this debate turns to the presence of gay people in resources. Teachers have huge privileges and responsabilities when they choose the resources they present to the students as these will shape the young minds. But teachers cannot escape the fact that, ultimately, they are unconsciously a product of the society in which they were fabricated and, to some extent, they are reproducing a given model ; model that can be close to the one described by Althusser.
To me, an important ISA that is not mentioned by Althusser is social conventions and stereotypes. While one can argue this ISA I’m proposing is part of School, Family or Work, the subtle ramifications of social conventions and sterotypes go beyond these somewhat independant ISAs. I will offer an example.
My sister has two daughters, 4 months and 3 years old. It is a given fact that the baby girl will be taken as a boy whenever she is wearing a blue outfit. What is more troubling is that the girl (3y.o.), with highly feminine physical traits, will be too mistaken for a boy because she has short hair and a blue shirt ! These social signs that were built in our western society (blue=boy ; pink=girl) are so anchored that they overtake simple common sense. Therefore, ideologies cannot be restricted to a given area. While they can be transmitted in specific ISAs, they circulate and grow at a supralevel ; the whole society one.
Impressions on “L’instance de la lettre dans l’inconscient” by Jacques Lacan
What does not help to understand the text « L’instance de la lettre dans l’inconscient » by Jacques Lacan is that his examples or analogies rarely serve to simplify the text. That a boy and girl arrive by train in the HOMMES or DAMES city or that hot or cold air is blowing under some obscur concept do not help me to understand Lacan’s arguments or ideas. Therefore, I decided to listen to the professors and to limit myself to a 25-minute period of response. Let’s see if I can reach 400 words – are they relevant or not.
I like how Lacan uses Saussure’s terminology to discuss figures of speech such as metonymies and metaphors. Let’s analyse a common French metonymie : « Prendre un verre » (literaly « Take a glass »). In this figure of speech, the container represents its content. The meaning of the signifier has then shifted to represent something else. It reminded me of Barthe’s concept of Language level and Myth level in which the former is the first order and the latter is the second order. I shall borrow this terminoly in the rest of my comment.
What we can see here in figures of speech – and not fully developped by Lacan – is that the second-order signifier (that is, glass for beverage) is specific to a given language, just like the first-order one is (that is, the French verre is different in form than the English glass ; but they both are associated to the signified). Hence, just like in various languages first-order signifiers are different to represent a given signified, second-order signifiers are as well. By example, while « il pleut des cordes » en français (literaly, « it’s raining ropes »), for some English speakers « it’s raining cats and dogs » ! Such idioms were not invented at a given time by a single author, but have been developed over time in specific linguistic communities through explicit or implicit historical, social, cultural experiences. I shal call this the collective unconscious.
Such realities make the study of a language particularly interesting, but very difficult for second language learners : it is not enough to know the first-order signs, to master a language there are complexities and subtleties that belong at a higher order.
( 25 minutes – 384 words. I should always write under pressure…)
Literature can’t be dead because it is always in a process of becoming.
I haven’t slept much this week because first I learned that literature is dead, and then I read that ideology/consciousness is determined by material circumstances. Let me deal with the first nightmare.
Literature is dead! In another words, because we all act out of radical evil, literature along with its writers and readers no longer have anything honest (for lack of a better word) to say about being human. This claim, I feel, is itself an act of radical evil, for it silences the multitude of voices that continue to express themselves through the writing and reading of literature. I mean, how can anyone claim that the stories, testimonials, reflections of those whose discourse runs contrary to hegemonic discourse do not constitute literature? Who are we to silence them? Perhaps those in mourning are thinking of themselves as authors and readers who have lost interest in contributing to the conversation still generated by literature. Actually, I think people who lament the death of literature are deceiving themselves (dishonestly). Literature as language is a manifestation of the unconscious, so if it were dead we would be mute. However, we continue to speak honestly about what it means to be human, and the conversation continues.
Also, I would like to add that Kant did suggest that a conversion from radical evil acts to moral acts that coincide with our moral thoughts (moral as in for the greater good) is possible. There is redemption, not in the religious sense from a God or Being outside the self but through the individual’s effort. This is as far as I got, but it seems to me that we are not doomed to a permanent state of radical evil, and there is literature out there that is ALIVE and KICKING!
Now to Althusser:
1. “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” We rely on language to establish our reality so we are always victims of ideology: in other words, material conditions, or things, first and consciousness second.
Those who listened to the language of Gandhi, King or Sui Kyi were the victims of certain ideologies and found agency with another.
What about art? Surely there are works of art that reflect a myriad of hybrid thought systems that successfully challenge state ideologies.Where does individual human creativity fit? Are we creative because we are victims of ideology? What about the middle-class writer whose act of writing subverts dominant discourse?
What about the wealthy citizen giving up all vast wealth to work as a volunteer? Aren’t his or her actions a reflection of individual agency?
2. “Ideology has material existence.” Ideology manifests itself through actions that become practices.
What about all the actions that manifest numerous ideologies? In a pluralistic environment of competing ideologies there must arise vast grey areas where actions (of resistance) reflect an ever-evolving patchwork of consciousnesses!
3. “All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects.” 4. “Individuals are always already subjects.”
What about refugees born in a refugee camp and arriving in Victoria on a boat? What is their ideology? Who hails them and will they respond? Whose subjects are they?
LACAN
The id is the signifier that emerges as language. So Lacan does not agree that things come before consciousness, or that things come first and language exists to name them.
No, “consciousness begins with the letter”. This means language is the signifier, which is always displaced from the object of desire. Like Saussure, Lacan believes that the bar between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary and cannot be crossed. We are forever barred from what we desire and language can only function metonymically (Freud’s displacement) with an occasional wondrous metaphor (Freud’s condensation) popping up once in a while.
The object of desire can only be sensed as a lack that is occasionally manifested through metaphor. For example, a dove might mean peace. We desire peace, or we sense that it is something desirable, but we don’t know what it is. The image of the dove only offers a fleeting glimpse of what we think we lack.
(The paradox is that these metaphors revel a momentary glimmer of what we desire when there is a certain amount of distance between the object of desire and the signifier)
So it seems that we can never be present to ourselves. We can never satisfy our desires because the signified, the object of desire is perpetually deferred.
Meaning is always out of reach, but that is how language creates the subject. Without the desire for the ever-elusive object, language would be unnecessary. If we could know the unconscious, language would never be needed. Language is necessary because only through conversation can we engage the unconscious and develop as human beings.
The conversation continues…
Literature can’t be dead because it is always in a process of becoming.
I haven’t slept much this week because first I learned that literature is dead, and then I read that ideology/consciousness is determined by material circumstances. Let me deal with the first nightmare.
Literature is dead! In another words, because we all act out of radical evil, literature along with its writers and readers no longer have anything honest (for lack of a better word) to say about being human. This claim, I feel, is itself an act of radical evil, for it silences the multitude of voices that continue to express themselves through the writing and reading of literature. I mean, how can anyone claim that the stories, testimonials, reflections of those whose discourse runs contrary to hegemonic discourse do not constitute literature? Who are we to silence them? Perhaps those in mourning are thinking of themselves as authors and readers who have lost interest in contributing to the conversation still generated by literature. Actually, I think people who lament the death of literature are deceiving themselves (dishonestly). Literature as language is a manifestation of the unconscious, so if it were dead we would be mute. However, we continue to speak honestly about what it means to be human, and the conversation continues.
Also, I would like to add that Kant did suggest that a conversion from radical evil acts to moral acts that coincide with our moral thoughts (moral as in for the greater good) is possible. There is redemption, not in the religious sense from a God or Being outside the self but through the individual’s effort. This is as far as I got, but it seems to me that we are not doomed to a permanent state of radical evil, and there is literature out there that is ALIVE and KICKING!
Now to Althusser:
1. “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” We rely on language to establish our reality so we are always victims of ideology: in other words, material conditions, or things, first and consciousness second.
Those who listened to the language of Gandhi, King or Sui Kyi were the victims of certain ideologies and found agency with another.
What about art? Surely there are works of art that reflect a myriad of hybrid thought systems that successfully challenge state ideologies.Where does individual human creativity fit? Are we creative because we are victims of ideology? What about the middle-class writer whose act of writing subverts dominant discourse?
What about the wealthy citizen giving up all vast wealth to work as a volunteer? Aren’t his or her actions a reflection of individual agency?
2. “Ideology has material existence.” Ideology manifests itself through actions that become practices.
What about all the actions that manifest numerous ideologies? In a pluralistic environment of competing ideologies there must arise vast grey areas where actions (of resistance) reflect an ever-evolving patchwork of consciousnesses!
3. “All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects.” 4. “Individuals are always already subjects.”
What about refugees born in a refugee camp and arriving in Victoria on a boat? What is their ideology? Who hails them and will they respond? Whose subjects are they?
LACAN
The id is the signifier that emerges as language. So Lacan does not agree that things come before consciousness, or that things come first and language exists to name them.
No, “consciousness begins with the letter”. This means language is the signifier, which is always displaced from the object of desire. Like Saussure, Lacan believes that the bar between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary and cannot be crossed. We are forever barred from what we desire and language can only function metonymically (Freud’s displacement) with an occasional wondrous metaphor (Freud’s condensation) popping up once in a while.
The object of desire can only be sensed as a lack that is occasionally manifested through metaphor. For example, a dove might mean peace. We desire peace, or we sense that it is something desirable, but we don’t know what it is. The image of the dove only offers a fleeting glimpse of what we think we lack.
(The paradox is that these metaphors revel a momentary glimmer of what we desire when there is a certain amount of distance between the object of desire and the signifier)
So it seems that we can never be present to ourselves. We can never satisfy our desires because the signified, the object of desire is perpetually deferred.
Meaning is always out of reach, but that is how language creates the subject. Without the desire for the ever-elusive object, language would be unnecessary. If we could know the unconscious, language would never be needed. Language is necessary because only through conversation can we engage the unconscious and develop as human beings.
The conversation continues…
Ideology and Ideological State Apparathusses
In Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Althusser recovers Marx idea of the reproduction of the conditions of production in order to maintain these conditions of production. This reproduction is achieved by the reproduction of labor power which is ensured by giving labor power the material to reproduce itself, in other words by wages; and the reproduction of the existing relations of production carried out through the Ideological State Apparatuses. These new apparatuses go hand in hand with the State Apparatus but work in a very different way. While the State Apparatus functions through repressive force i.e. government, administration, army, the police, courts, prisons, etc. the Ideological State Apparatuses are represented by distinct and specialized institutions, such as religion, education, family, media, culture, political parties, etc. and have as a goal to ensure society’s assimilation of the ruling power’s ideology.
Personally, I couldn’t agree more with the idea introduced by Althusser, there are so many other gears inside the State’s machine working in other to assure its prevalence. I couldn’t help but think about what happened in Mexico a couple of months ago during the presidential elections. Enrique Peña Nieto the PRI’s candidate, the now president elect, was the chosen candidate by the State to protect the interests of the ruling power. What happened next was incredible, every major TV network, radio station, newspaper (except for the left wing one), many actors, actresses, soccer players, writers, academics, etc. started openly reinforcing the dominant ideology in order to guarantee the electoral triumph of Peña Nieto and in the end succeeded (with a little extra help from some other friends, of course but succeeded). To me election time is one of the best circumstances where one could appreciate the Ideological State Apparatus working at full steam.
What I find most compelling about the ISA is the fact that it is not as impermeable as the SA, so the classes that are not in power are often able to sneak in and raise their voices. I really like Althusser’s idea of the ISAs being the place where the class struggle happens because we have seen it happen in history through music, literature, religion, etc. We have seen books being burnt, artists banned and religions turned into paganism and we have also seen many of these examples survive the persecution. Ideology is stronger than any army or repressive state, it is very hard to change but if and when it does it is also very hard to contain. Could we say that perhaps ideology is at the same time what oppresses and what liberates us?
Lacan
Understanding linguistics and psychoanalysis all in one text is not something that comes naturally to me, so I’m going to use this space to go ahead and try to make some sense of what I just read and, to the best of my ability, throw in a comment or two.
What I understand as the premise of Lacan’s text is that the unconscious is structured in the same way as language. However, according to Lacan, language does not work in the way good old Saussure made us believe. What we had learnt was that signifier and signified worked hand in hand, like two sides of one page in the creation of the sign but the signifier always above the signified: S/s. Here, Lacan says “not really” signifier and signified actually work independently they are separated by a bar and the two sides of a page are more like to stages of a process in which the signifier relates to other signifiers in the system, in order to cross over the bar to reach the signified and create signification, a signification that can be “something quite otherthan what it says”. This notion emphasizes the importance of metaphor and metonymy because they work precisely by signifying something other than what they claim: part of a whole in the case of metonymy and substitution of two different things for metaphor. Metaphor and metonymy are at the core of the structure of language and their functioning depends not on likeness but on difference and word-to-word relations.
Then Lacan says that that’s exactly how the unconscious works. He takes as basis Freud’s ideas that what the unconscious transmits through dreams is a coded meaning for something else and makes a parallelism between condensation and metaphor and displacement and metonymy.
This reminded me of last class’ discussion when the idea of “textualizing” (I hope it’s ok to invent words) the imagery of dreams came to the table but in this case dreams are already “textualized” in the sense that they’re structured just like our language so there’s actually no translation taking place but a transcription.
I can’t help but think that through this view people are to some extent slaves of language because it “writes” its letter on the unconscious and we have the need to decipher it for our conscious sake. Furthermore deciphering represents a very difficult task since the method of interpretation seems to lack rigorous accuracy. At least the unconscious is not anymore a place of no law, of the primitive, the instincts and the irrational but it is now subjected to the symbolic rulings of language. If only language weren’t an arbitrary mess…
