simon.jones@leeds-art.ac.uk
PSYCHOANALYSIS
Aims:
- What it is
- particular figures
- the development of the psyche from birth
- the development and role of the unconscious in out everyday life
- the development of gender identity
- understanding the complexities of human subjectivity
- It is not only a form of therapy ( the talking cure) a theory of the mind and a model-based theory that can be applied to the other onjects and processes.
- A way of categorising and understanding desire, motivation and dreams
- That we are not entirely controlled by logical and reasonable thought.
SIGMUND FREUD
How can a mental issue become a physical issue? - question he wanted to answer
- conceived of the idea in the late 1890s
- treated the hysteria patients using psychoanalysis by guiding them to discover and accept repressed thoughts and events.
- Dreams - anslysed his own and others dreams in terms of their hidden associations and 'wish-fulfillment'
- Observed infants in their habits and associations with their parents
- established the psychoanalytic theory that allowed for a dynamic unconscious
THE DYNAMIC UNCONSCIOUS
- created through infancy to protect our conscious selves from events, ideas and thoughts that are unsuitable for consciousness
- continues to affect our conscious selves in SOME ways
- the unconscious is chaotic without order and without language
- makes itself present through ticks, slips and symptoms ( freudian slip - saying something that just slips out - not meaning to say it )
- Frueds hysteria patients developed debilitation symptoms as a result of experience or feelings that had become represses.
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
- development into will full, conscious beings is full of confusing contradictory and misapprehended thoughts and ideas
- an attempt to makes sense of both our biological/instinctual self and our logical/thinking self
- we create associations and assumptions through sense data - often incorrect
- the development child goes through stages - ORAL // ANAL // PHALLIC
PSYCHO-SEXUAL IDENTITY
- assumed identity through development of infancy.
Oedipus complex - sexual/love feeling towards mother and resentment of father - through childhood dependance and self-centred world view. The feeling of love, rivalry, jealousy all mixed and confusing feelings 'to want' vs 'to be wanted'.
- Development of own sexual identity is all related to the penis. When experience with opposite sex the male will assume that female have been castrated and feel the same will happen to him.
Castration complex - the boy fears castration while the girl accepts that she has already been castrated. Makes the boy identify with father more.
Penis-envy - the girl experiences this when she begins to relaise she doesnt hae a penis - not as sexual organ but a way of relating to the father-figure
Presence/absence - both create possible negative feelings: the boy fears his castration whole the girl feels that she is missing something
Through this we see that the penis is seen as positive symbol of power
- The child must experience and overcome these mixed feelings in oder to gain sexual identity
Misconceived ideas of gender, power and identity continue to work unconsciously throughout our lives.
THE UNCANNY
- Unhomely
- something that is simultaneously unnatural yet familiar
- something that was supposed to remain hidden which has come to the open
- where the boundary between fantasy and reality break down
- analogies between the unconscious and the uncanny
- film and producers use the idea of 'the uncanny' instead of using a bad/evil person within a story line.
- the surrealist use the uncanny to create painting/objects which have elements of familiarity but are surrealised.
UNCONSCIOUS, PRECONSCIOUS & CONSCIOUS LEVELS
ID, EGO AND SUPER-EGO
- something that is slightly outside of ourself
- ID- represents the biological part of ourself
- EGO - represents the individual of ourself
- SUPER-EGO - represents the part of ourselves in relation to other, to social order and language
JACQUES LACAN
- In 60s-70s Lacan presented his own brand of psychoanalysis claiming a 'return to Freud'
- He reconceptualised Freud's findings through the theoretical model of structural linguistics. Signification.
- Lacan posited that the development of the psyche is entwined within the structures of language. Language moulds us as much as we mould it.
- Without language we are not human
THE MIRROR STAGE
- The child recognition of itself in reflection. signifies a split or 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.
This results in the formation of ego which aids a reconciliation of body and image/subject and other.
- Captation - the process by which the child is at once absorbed and repelled by the image of itself.
Contradictory feelings, fascinated about own reflection but confused what it means. Who am i? Is that what other people see? Can people see my personality?
LACANIAN UNCONSCIOUS
- the unconscious is structured like a language
- thats not to say that the unconscious has a language but its structure is LIKE a language
- the unconscious is the discourse of the Other - super ego outside of yourself
- Highlighting the ways in which meaning in encoded within linguistic signs - written or spoken works
- Unconscious details are encoded in various ways as they slip into consciousness
METAPHOR/METONYMY
symptoms:
metaphor - a word is used to represent something else which posses similair characteristics
symptoms are translated elements or unconscious material adopting a metaphor style
Desire:
Metonymy - a part of something used to represent the whole or the whole used o represent a small part. Meaning is displaced along a series of associations. Desire for objects can never be filled.
LACANIAN PHALLUS
-not the biological penis but a symbol of power/order attained through its associated LACK - the potential of lack (male) and the actual lack (female)
- Masculinity/ femininity are not biological definitions by symbolic positions
- the symbolic phallus 'provides a speaking position in culture' by:
relating to the signifying nature of the phallus
our sexual identity informed through the phallus
THE ORDERS OF REALITY
The real
-that which cannot be symbolised
-where our most basic, animal selves exist
The Imaginary
- the order which exists before symbols and signification
- where the ego is born and continues to develop
The Symbolic
- the order of the Other
- exists outside of ourselves
- the order that allows us to exist within a culture
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND ART THEORY
Subjectivity - what it is to be human, motivations, desires, the unconscious
- to help us understand why things are as they are
- to help us understand artists/designers motivations for creating.
Model-based theory - Models provide a tool for categorising or breaking down individual and groups of art/design work.
EDWARD BERNAYS
- The godfather of PR, Freud's nephew
- applied knowledge of psychoanalysis, unconscious desire to advertising and PR campaigns
- You can sell things by selling the desire - the lifestyle that the object will give you.
- Revolutionised advertising by applying manipulation techniques.
- Believed that people were sheep, they needed to be controlled to have some sort of social order.
- Case study - 'Torches of Freedom'
Max Ernst - collages c1930
Victor Burgin - 'The Bridge' 1984
- Used psychoanalysis within the work and writes about it too.
- Uses the bridge as a symbolic metaphor as social interaction. Combines with references of painting aphelia, Hitchcock's vertigo - paintings symbolise characters within Vertigo.
Louise Bourgeois - 'Spiral Woman' 1952
Femininity and Masculinity. Refers to both male and female issues
CONCLUSION
- Psychoanalysis provides us with a definition of the unconscious
- A definition of subject hood outside of logic and rationality
- A tool to help understand motivations and meanings of art
- A tool to help us understand how art and design affects us and why
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