Thursday, 11 October 2012

Lecture 1: Psycoanalysis

- It was developed as a type of therapy 
The development and role of the unconscious in our everyday lives
The development of gender identity (psyco-sexual identity) 
The understanding of the complexities of human subjectivity

Not only a form of therapy, the talking cure - a theory of the mind and a model based theory of the mind and a model baseed theory that can be applied to other objects and processes

Sigmund Freud:

he conceived the idea in the late 1890's
he treated hysteria patients using psychoanalysis by guiding them to discover and accept repressed thoughts and events.

Dreams: Analysed his own and others dreams in terms of their hidden associations and wish fulfilment

Observation of infants in their habits and associations  with parental figures.

They dynamic unconscious:

this was created throughout infancy to protect our conscious selves from events, ideas and thoughts that are not acceptable to consciousness

it continues to affect our conscious selves in some ways - 

the unconscious is chaotic and is without order and language 
Makes itself present through ticks 

Stages of development: 

Our development into wilful, conscious beings is full of confusing contradictory and mis apprehended thoughts and ideas, It is and attempt to make sense of both our biological and instinctual self and logical thinking. We create association and assumptions through sense of data which is commonly mis interpreted.

Psycho-sexual Identity:
Not who we are biologically but who we perceive ourselves to be:

Oedipus complex - sexual love feelings towards the mother and resentment of the farther, through childhood dependance and self centred world view.

Oedipus complex - Feelings of love, rivalry jealousy all fixed confusing feelings to want vs to be wanted.

Development of both masculine and feminine identities in relation to the penis and Phallus

Castration complex - a boy in fear of castration while the girl accepts that she has already been castrated the phallus is a symbol of power

Penis envy - The girl experiences the s when she begins to realise she does not have a penis not as  a sexual organ but way of relating to the farther figure.

Presence and absence - both require possible negative feelings

The child must experience and overcome these mixed feelings abd mis conceptions in order to gain a sexual identity and a speaking position with int the order of language and society

The uncanny: 
Relates to aesthetics and the visual way things are:

"Unhomely"

something that is simultaneously unfamiliar and foreign but at the same time is familiar

it is something that was supposed to remain hidden which has come to the open

the boundary between fantasy and reality break down.


Freudian Models

Id, ego and super ego

Unconscious, Preconscious and Conscious - 



Id - Unconscious represents the biological instinctional part of ourselves

Ego - represents personality and individuality

Super ego - Nice people don't do that


Jacques Lacan: 

In the 1960's and 70's Lacan presented his own brand of psychoanalysis claiming a return to Freud

He reconceptuialised frauds findins and through the theoretical model of structural linguistics. Signification.

Lacan posited that the development of the psyche is entwined within the structures of language. Language molds us as much as we mold it.


The mirror stage:
The child's recognition of its self in reflection in objects or other people - the signifies the split of alienation it is seen as both subject and other.

Rivalry - While the child may recognise its own image it is still limited in movement and dexterity 

Thus resulting in the formation of ego which then aids the reconciliation of the body and image 

Captation - the process in which the child is at once absorb and repelled by the image of itself this is the specular image.

The Lacabian Unconscious:

The unconscious is structured like a language
That is not to say that unconscious has a language but its structure is like a language
The unconscious is the discourse of the Other

Highlighting the ways in which meaning is encoded within the linguistic signs - written or spoken words.

Symptom:

Metaphor - a word is used to represent something else which possess similar characteristics

Symptoms are translated elements of unconscious material that adopts methor-style coding

Desire:

Metonym - A par t of something used to represent whole or the whole to represent a small part.

Lacanian Phallus:

Not the biological penis but a symbol of power and order attained through its associated LACK - the potential of lack - male and the actual lack feminine

Masculinity and Femininity are not biological definitions but symbolic positions 

Our interactions and relations to the symbolic Phallus 

The orders of reality- 

THE REAL 
that which cannot be symbolised/signified
where our most basic, animalistic selfs

THE IMAGINARY 
the order which exists before symbols and signification 
where the ego is born and continues to develop
No clear distinction between itself and subject

THE SYMBOLIC
exists outside of us

Art criticism and theory  

Subjectivity what it is to be human - desires 

Model based theory - Models provide a tool for categorising or braking down

Edward Bernays: 
The godfather or PR the nephew of Freud

applied knowledge of psychoanalyse 
Not selling the product selling the lifestyle

Revolutionised advertising by applying manipulation techniques. 

EDWARD BERNAYS: research further for advertising - Case study torches or freedom

Conclusion:

Psychoanalysis - provided us with the definition of the unconscious

a definition of subject hood outside of the social order and logic rationality

 tool to help understand the motivations and meanings of art works 

 A tool to help us understand how art and design effects us and why


'Freud's parents were poor, but they ensured his education. Interested in law as a student, he moved instead into medicine, undertaking research into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy. He went on to develop theories about the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and created psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst. Though psychoanalysis has declined as a therapeutic practice, it has helped inspire the development of many other forms of psychotherapy, some diverging from Freud's original ideas and approach.

Freud postulated the existence of libido (an energy with which mental process and structures are invested), developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and make no attempt to concentrate while doing so), discovered transference (the process by which patients displace on to their analysts feelings based on their experience of earlier figures in their lives) and established its central role in the analytic process, and proposed that dreams help to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awake the dreamer. He was also a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the interpretation and critique of culture.
Psychoanalysis remains influential within psychiatry and across the humanities, though some critics see it as pseudo-scientific and sexist, and a study in 2008 suggested it had been marginalized within university psychology departments.Regardless of the scientific content of his theories, Freud's work has suffused intellectual thought and popular culture to the extent that in 1939 W. H. Auden wrote, in a poem dedicated to him: "to us he is no more a person / now but a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives ..." - wikipedia

'Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Lacan's post-structuralist theory rejected the belief that reality can be captured in language. Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-structuralist philosophers. His interdisciplinary work was as a "self-proclaimed Freudian....'It is up to you to be Lacanians if you wish. I am a Freudian'"; and featured the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, identification, and language as subjective perception. His ideas have had a significant impact on critical theory, literary theory, 20th-century French philosophy, sociology, feminist theory, film theory and clinical psychoanalysis.' - wiki






No comments:

Post a Comment