Arthur Asa Berger Encyclopedia article: psychoanalytic theory 1
Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychoanalytic theory starts with Freud’s notion that the psyche has a number of different levels, one of which, the unconscious, is not accessible to us. As he wrote in his essay “Psychoanalysis” (1963:235-236):
It was a triumph for the interpretative art of psychoanalysis when it succeeded in demonstrating that certain mental acts of normal people, for which no one had hitherto attempted to put forward a psychological explanation, were to be regarded in the same light as the symptoms of neurotics: that is to say that had a meaning, which was unknown to the subject but which could easily be discovered by analytic means…A class of material was brought to light which is calculated better than any other to stimulate a belief in the existence of unconscious mental acts even in people to whom the hypothesis of something at once mental and unconscious seems strange and even absurd.
Although we may think we are aware of everything that is going on in our minds, we are mistaken, for, as Freud explained, there are “unconscious mental acts” that we do not recognize.
A convenient way to understand the human psyche is to imagine it as being like an iceberg. The part of the iceberg that floats above the water is what we call consciousness. Just below the water line, there are a few feet of the iceberg we can dimly make out—that is what we call the pre-conscious. We do not ordinarily think about the contents of the pre-conscious but if we want to, we can become aware of what is in our preconscious. Then there is the part of the iceberg that we cannot see, which is most of the iceberg, that is masked in darkness, which is what Freud called the unconscious.
The iceberg analogy suggests that most of what is in our minds in not accessible to us, but this unconscious is important because in many ways it shapes our behavior. We are not in complete control of our behavior and are vulnerable to various emotional and irrational appeals that often shape our actions. Freud called this approach to the human psyche histopographic hypothesis.
He later elaborated another hypothesis about the human mind, his structural hypothesis. In this hypothesis, there is a continual battle going on in our minds between its three elements—the id, the ego, and the superego. Freud described the id in his New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis as follows (quoted in Hinsie & Campbell, 1970:372):
We can come nearer to the id with images, and call it chaos, a cauldron of seething excitement. We suppose that is somewhere in direct contact with somatic processes, and takes over from them instinctual needs and gives them mental expression…These instincts fill it with energy but is has no organization and no unified will, only an impulsion to obtain satisfaction for the instinctual needs, in accordance with the pleasure-principle.
If this “cauldron of seething of seething excitement” dominates us, we have a great deal of energy but cannot use it effectively because we are always being drawn by a desire to take care of our instinctual needs.
Opposing the id is the superego, which can be described as conscience and the way our personality functions morally. In An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis, Charles Brenner describes the superego as follows (1974: 111-112):
1. the approval or disapproval of actions and wishes on the grounds of rectitude. 2. critical self-observation. 3. self-punishment. 4. the demand for reparation or repentance of wrong-doing. 5. self-praise or self-love as a reward for virtuous or desirable thoughts and actions. Contrary to the ordinary meaning of “conscience,” however, we understand that the functions of the superego are often largely or completely unconscious.
Thus we find two elements in the human psyche opposed to one another. The id seeks gratification and has great energy, but it cannot be allowed to dominate our behavior because we are social animals and must submit to the demands of civilization upon us—demands which often cause us considerable mental anguish. On the other hand, if the super-ego dominates, we are so full of doubt and guilt that we are paralyzed by guilt and doubt.
This is where the ego comes in. The ego is that element of our psyches that mediates between the conflicting demands of the id and the superego. The ego tests reality and stores up experiences in the memory, in an effort to find a way to balance the demands of the id and superego and allow people to be free of neurotic compulsions based on overly powerful id or superego elements in the psyche. It seems to harness the energy of the id in socially constructive ways by using the superego to moderate id behavior. Many psychological problems people face are caused by either an overly powerful id or superego.
The ego uses a number of different defense mechanisms to find ways to control id-based impulses and superego-based anxieties and guilt. These defense mechanisms operate at the unconscious level. Some of the more important defense mechanisms are:
Ambivalence. A feeling of both love and hatred toward some person
at the same time.
Avoidance. A refusal to pay attention to subjects that are disturbing because they are connected to unconscious aggressive or sexual impulses.
Denial. A refusal to accept the reality of something by blocking it from consciousness.
Fixation. An obsessive preoccupation with or attachment to something or someone.
Projection. A denial of negative and hostile feelings in oneself by attributing them to someone else.
Rationalization. A means of excusing one’s behavior by offering reasons or excuses.
Reaction formation. A situation that occurs when ambivalent feelings creates problems and which is dealt with by suppressing one element and overemphasizing the other, its opposite.
Regression. An individual’s return to an earlier stage in development when confronted with stressful or anxiety provoking situations.
Repression. A barring from consciousness of wishes, memories, desires that are derived from the unconscious. Repression is considered the most basic defense mechanism.
Sublimation. A transferring of sexual impulses and other desires and impulses into other kinds of behavior, such as writing, painting and other kinds of creative arts.
Suppression. A voluntary attempt to put out of mind and consciousness something we find upsetting and distasteful. Suppression is voluntary, unlike repression which works at the unconscious level. Suppression is considered the second most important defense mechanism.
These defense mechanisms are of interest to media and communication scholars, as well as therapists, since they can be found in so many narratives and other texts found in the media. They appear in these works because they are in the unconscious the people who create them.
We must recall that Freud called psychoanalysis an “interpretative
art.” One of the ways it can be applied is by using psychoanalytic theories to deal with symbolic behavior. A symbol is something that stands for something else. A symbol can stand for institutions, ideas, beliefs, values, and wishes. In psychoanalytic theory, symbols are important because they are often used to disguise aggressive wishes and sexual desires, and, in the case of dreams, prevent our dream censors from waking us if the sexual content of our dreams becomes too evident.
As Freud points out in his masterwork, The Interpretation of Dreams,
symbolism is all pervasive in human life. As he writes (1900/1965:386):
Symbolism is not peculiar to dreams, but is characteristic of unconscious ideation, in particular, among people, and is to be found in folklore, and in popular myths, legends, linguistic idioms, proverbial wisdom and current jokes, to a more complete extent than in dreams.
In his discussion of dreams, that follows a bit later in his book, he offers some typical examples of the symbolism found in dreams. After offering some qualifications for his ideas he writes (1900/1965:389):
The Emperor and Empress (or the King and Queen) as a rule really represent the dreamer himself or herself…All elongated objects, such as sticks, tree-trunks and umbrellas may stand for the male organ—as well as all long, sharp weapons such as knives, daggers and pikes…Boxes, cases, chests, cupboards and ovens represent the uterus, and also hollow objects, ships, and vessels of all kinds. Rooms in dreams are usually women.
From this list we can see that many objects have a hidden, symbolic and often sexual significance. In the pages that follow Freud deals with other symbols, mentioning that snakes are an important phallic symbol. This notion of objects having a sexually symbolic nature often strike people as ridiculous and absurd. We must recognize that these symbols are operating at the unconscious level and are often tied to myths and legends. Freud himself said “sometimes a cigar is only a cigar,” in reference to the notion that symbolic objects have a sexual dimension, but this quotation suggests, also, that sometimes a cigar isn’t only a cigar.
There are two ways that the sexual content in dreams is disguised, according to Freud. The first way is by condensation, in which parts of different sexual symbols are combined into one that disguises the dream’s sexual content and thus fools the dream censor. The other, displacement, involves the substitution of one image for another which is associated with it but which is not explicitly sexual, thus evading the dream censor, which wakes us if there is too overtly a sexual dimension to our dreams.
Dreams are a very controversial subject and one about which theorists continually argue. The Freudian position is described by an important psychoanalytic writer Erich Fromm in his book The Forgotten Language: An introduction to the understanding of dreams, fairy tales and myths. In this book he writes (1957:67):
Dreams are understood to be the hallucinatory fulfillment of irrational wishes and particularly sexual wishes which have originated in our early childhood and have not been fully transformed into reaction formations or sublimations. These wishes are expressed as being fulfilled when our conscious control is weakened, as is the case in sleep.
This notion, that dreams are a means of satisfying frustrated desires and thus a form of wish-fulfillment is at the heat of the controversy over the Freudian theory of dreams.
Another Freudian theory that many people find difficult to accept
involves his theory of infant sexuality and, in particular, his notion of the Oedipus Complex, which was named after the myth of Oedipus. In this myth, an oracle prophesizes that Laius, the king of Thebes, will be killed by his son. When Laius’s wife Jocasta gives birth to a son, Oedipus, Laius arranges to have the son left on a mountain peak to die. He is unaware that Oedipus has been rescued and taken to a king, Polybus, in Corinth, who raises him as his son.
When Oedipus hears that a prophecy says he will kill his father, Oedipus leaves Corinth to spare Polybus. On the road toThebes he meets Laius at a crossroads, they get into a fight, and Oedipus kills Laius. He then goes to Thebes which is under a plague from a monster, the Sphynx, which has the face of a woman and the body of a lion. The Sphynx devours anyone who cannot answer this riddle: “What creature goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?” Oedipus answers “A man, who crawls as a child, walks on two feet in the prime of his life, and needs a cane to walk in old age.” When he answers the riddle correctly, the Sphynx kills itself and Oedipus is welcomed into Thebes as its savior. He is made king, marries Jocasta, the wife of the former king (not knowing that she is his mother) and they have two children. Later Thebes is visited by another plague. Tiresias, a blind prophet, is sent to an oracle which says that the murderer of Laius must be punished for Thebes to be rid of the plague. When Oedipus discovers that he is the one who killed Laius, his real father, and that he has married his mother, he blinds himself and Jocasta commits suicide.
This myth is a paradigmatic one that Freud believed explained the process of development in all children. There is, in this story and Freud believed in the lives of all children, a hostility toward the parent of the same sex and an attraction to the parent of the opposite sex that eventually manifests itself. As a rule, children overcome their Oedipus complex and can lead normal lives, but those who cannot do so become neurotic. Freud argued that the Oedipus Complex is the core of all neuroses.
Freud wrote about his discovery of the Oedipus Complex in a letter to a friend, Wilhelm Fleiss on October 15, 1897 (quoted in Martin Grotjahn: Beyond Laughter: Humor and the Subconscious, 1966:84):
Being entirely honest with oneself if a good exercise. Only one idea of general value has occurred to me. I have found love of the mother and jealousy of the father in my own case too, and now believe it to be a general phenomena of early childhood…If that is the case, the gripping power of Oedipus Rex, in spite of all the rational objections to the inexorable fate that the story presupposes, becomes intelligible…Our feelings rise against any arbitrary individual fate…but the Greek myth seizes on a compulsion which everyone recognizes because he has felt traces of it in himself. Every member of the audience was once a budding Oedipus in fantasy, and this dream-fulfillment played out in reality causes everyone to recoil in horror, with the full measure of repression which separates his infantile from his present state.
In this letter Freud adds that he thinks that there is a strong Oedipal component to Hamletthough he isn’t talking about Shakespeare’s conscious intentions but unconscious feelings of kinship with his tragic hero.
This brings us to our final consideration, the role that psychoanalytic theory plays in the study of mass mediated and other kinds of texts. The English critic Simon Lesser, points out in his book Fiction and the Unconscious, that psychoanalysis investigates the same themes that our greatest fiction writers dealt with, namely (1957:15) “the emotional, unconscious or only partly comprehended bases of our behavior.” It is psychoanalytic theory that offers us, Lesser adds, systematic and well validated knowledge about the non-rational and in some cases irrational forces that shape our behavior, areas which before the development of psychoanalytic theory, were no accessible to criticism.
Psychoanalytic theory has been used by Bruno Bettelheim to investigate fairy tales, by Erich Fromm to study myths and dreams, by Ernest Jones to analyze Hamlet and by many other writers to interpret novels, films, humor, television shows and other forms of the elite arts and popular culture. There are, of course, other theorists who deal with the human psyche, such as Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, who offer different insights into the human psyche and personality, but it is Sigmund Freud and his followers who have defined psychoanalytic theory as we commonly know it.
Bibliography
Berger, Arthur Asa. 2000.
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