1. What is psychoanalysis?  a medical practice: the “talking cure”  founded and developed by Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

2. Literary psychoanalysis  psychoanalysis or “psychoanalytic theory” is also an established interpretive approach to literature and film  a methodology for reading and interpreting texts and films  cultural texts are – like patients’ dream narratives – full of signs which we, the reader / interpreter – like the psychoanalyst – must decipher

3. Freud and literature  Freud often used literary ancestors to embellish his medical case studies  a reading of Oedipus The King (Athenian tragedy by Sophocles, 429 BC) underpins his theory of the Oedipus complex  his theory of das Unheimliche, “the uncanny” is based on his reading of the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann’s work Der Sandmann, 1816

4. What are the basic tenets of psychoanalysis?  events in early childhood determine our personality (e.g. the Oedipus Complex)  human behaviour and experience is often driven by irrational drives  these drives remain unconscious

5. Basic tenets of psychoanalysis  repression is the force that keeps the drives unconscious  nevertheless the drives exert influence on human experience and behaviour  this can make people “sick”: neurotic, psychotic, anxious, depressed

6. Cure?  the way to resolve the disturbance of the drives is to access the unconscious under the guidance of a psychoanalyst  psychoanalysis helps to bring the repressed into the conscious mind where it can be made sense of cognitively  in other words the repressed becomes “narrativized” in therapy

7. On the couch: a session with a psychoanalyst

8. Psychoanalysis and the modern self  an important development in Western concepts of the modern self  this self is divided between conscious and unconscious forces  the self is a battle ground for unresolved repressed drives

9. Freud’s timeliness  a timely theory for Freud’s era (late 19 th and early 20 th centuries)  Victorian era – known for sexual repression and strict moral codes  Freud’s theory comments on this and heralds a new era and a new subjectivity: the modern self

10. Anti-rational  Freud is also radical in that he restores the body to Western philosophy  modern Western philosophy since Descartes (Early Modern era) and the Enlightenment (Kant) based on reason and rationality

11. René Descartes 1596-1650  Je pense, ainsi je suis  Ich denke, also bin ich  I think, therefore I am

12. Mind/reason v body/unreason  precedence of mind (rationality and reason) over body (lower order)  body: secondary to reason, not the essential part of the individual’s identity

13. Return of the body  Freud restores the body to Western thought through his theory of the drives  central position of sexual desire which society compels us to repress from the earliest point  we are sexual physical beings; we can be aggressive and violent

14. Pyschoanalysis and secularisation  Freud’s view modifies the idea of man as a noble creature apart from the animal world  he thus undermines the Biblical idea of man being made in God’s likeness  “God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”. (Genesis 1:27)

15. Psychoanalysis and evolutionary biology  influence of Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859), foundational text of evolutionary biology  principle of natural selection (survival of the fittest)  “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” (full title)

16. Important points to note  the conscious and unconscious minds are not two separate halves of one mind  Freud does not mean to present us with an “upstairs / downstairs” model of the mind  it is more useful to think of the mind as a forcefield comprised of mutually co-determining conscious thoughts and unconscious drives

17.  in short, the mind is a battleground for these forces  sometimes the unconscious drives will have the upper hand….

18. Dream theory  one of Freud’s most famous examples of when the drives have the upper hand is in his theory of dreams  the mind is resting – in sleep mode – so repression and censorship relax….  repressed thoughts can thus rise to the surface – often referred to as “the return of the repressed”

19. A Freudian slip by President George H.W. Bush  "For seven and a half years I've worked alongside President Reagan. We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex... uh... setbacks."

20. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar