Class notes as on 8th July, 2010
Freud basically talked about the id, ego and the super ego. To get into some piece of detail let us look back to what Lacan who pointed out that since birth mankind is polymorphous and all that they desire is the pleasure principle.This desire is thereby sought through the mother. Can we then say that man by nature and conception is therefore incestuous?
According to Freud, both boys and girls realise at a young age that they cannot hold authority over their mother since she is legally, physically, emotionally possessed by the father who is all standing authority. In case of the boys this was referred to as the Oedipal complex which was followed by the castration complex. By this time, say, when the boy is approximately fourteen years of age he looks outside home for an alternative mother figure thereby becoming an exogamous heterosexual.
Similar is the case with young girls who cannot at their age differentiate between the clitoris and the penis. On realisation that they actually do not have one they become wary with their mothers for not having given them one. At this juncture quite like the boys, the girls too get attracted to their fathers. However, on coming to terms with the mother's authority and right over the father, the girl seeks a father figure outside home and hence, exogamous and heterosexual. The feminists however convert the lack (of a penis) to the advantage of possessing a womb. A feminist backlash to the core which places men (as in the gender) into the position of lacking something (the womb).
It is coming to terms which actually subordinates the pleasure principle to the reality principle.( If this is not done, one would actually be looking out for pleasures of the body and hence no work done.)
Freud says however that not everybody reaches this stage of proper subordination and therefore it is the repressed desire that form the unconcious.This also represents itself in the form of Freudian slips. The psychopathology of everyday life!
It is good to see that at no juncture is Freud critical of people.
Writing as per Freud is interestingly neurosis where the repressed desires are put down on paper.
For more on Freud, refer: a) Civilization and its Discontents b) Interpretation of Dreams and c)Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Pinto, Anil. Class lecture.On Freud.Christ University. Bangalore, India. 8 July 2010. Lecture.
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