Intro Chapter Flashcards
What did Freud say to challenge accepted assumptions of childhood sexual development?
Development is diphasic (infantile sexuality, latency period, post-pubertal sexuality); Sexuality is constructed; Sexuality is not necessarily heteronormative and aimed towards reproduction.
What are instincts?
Instincts are representations that exist on the border between the psychic and the somatic.
What four aspects can instincts have?
Source, pressure, aim, and object.
What four types of change (or vicissitudes) can instincts undergo?
Reversal into their opposites (activity to passivity, love to hate, etc); Turning around onto the subjects own self; Repression; Sublimation
Vicissitudes
A change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.
Sublimation
Sublimation involves redirecting unacceptable desires or impulses into socially acceptable activities.
What are the stages of sexual development?
Oral, anal, phallic, genital.
How is the transition from phallic to genital stage mediated?
The Oedipus and castration complexes mediate the transition from phallic to genital state.
Briefly explain the Oedipus complex.
Before the genital stage, children are sexually undifferentiated; every child is a little man who rivals their father for the possession of the mother.
How does the male child resolve his Oedipus complex?
The male child resolves his Oedipus complex by accepting the father’s threat of castration, identifying with his father and finding a mother-substitute.
How does the Oedipus complex differ for little girls from little boys?
The female child must change her erotogenic zone from clitoris to vagina, as well as the love object from mother to father (since all children begin sexually undifferentiated). This process takes place when she perceives that she is already castrated. This means that she must go through the castration complex before the Oedipus complex (opposite from boys), rivalling her mother for the possession of the father or his gift (a baby).
In what order do female children experience the Oedipus/castration complexes?
Female children must experience the castration complex first, as they must become aware that they do not have a penis in order to change their love object. Therefore, the female child goes through the castration complex, which gives way to the Oedipus complex where she vies for her father against her mother.
What are the developmental lines of the male Oedipus complex?
Active (leading to heterosexuality), and passive (leading to homosexuality).
What are the developmental lines of the female Oedipus complex?
Sexual inhibition or neurosis, masculinity complex, or normal femininity.
How did feminists react to Freud’s theory of female sexuality?
Feminists objected to Freud’s theories as they were heavily male-centered.
What is the pleasure principle?
Every individual seeks the discharge of excessive energy or libido as quickly as possible.
What is the death drive?
All organisms seek to return to an inorganic state (i.e. to die) in their own fashion.
What is the reality principle?
The individual is willing to abandon small gains of immediate pleasure if in the long term the individual will be able to secure much greater pleasure.
What is narcissistic love?
Narcissistic love identifies with the object on the basis of similarity to self.
What is anaclitic love?
Anaclitic love seeks to possess the object on the basis of the object’s ability to fulfil a need.
In what way did Freud gender narcissistic and anaclitic love?
Freud considers narcissistic love to be typically feminine and anaclitic love typically masculine. Men love; women want to be loved.
What is an example of literature that addresses the complex relationships between narcissistic and anaclitic love?
Petrarchan sonnets.
How does mourning work?
The task of mourning is to detach libido from the lost love object by bringing up and setting aside the hopes and memories attached to the dead. In mourning, the libido is displaced onto another object.
How does melancholia work?
In melancholia, the libido is withdrawn into the self through identification with the lost love object. In melancholia, the love for the object is transformed into hate for the self, thus creating ambivalence.
What is the core of the unconscious made up of?
The core of the unconscious is made up of repressed infantile desires.
In what way do repressed desires show symptomatically in a person’s life?
Symptoms can be seen through the formation of a compromise such as dreams, parapraxes, and neurotic symptoms.
Define parapraxes
A parapraxis (parapraxes pl.) is an error in speech, memory, or action that is thought to be influenced by unconscious desires or thoughts.
What was Freud’s metaphor for censorship of the repression?
Freud likened censorship to the distribution of manuscripts. Medieval manuscripts do not alert you to the fact that you need the original text to identify redacted material. Scribes, when they copied out a text, did not tell you that they changed a text. The scribes this that they are making the text better by redacting material.
Additionally, many of the texts being transcribed were written in Latin, but the monks likely did not know Latin. The monk would come across references in the text that he did not understand, so the monk did the best he could and tried to make it make sense when he wrote it, so he performed a kind of censorship by censoring out the difficult bits.
What is neurosis?
Neurotics accept the threat of castration, but their repressed desires return as physical symptoms, obsessive mental symptoms, or phobias.
What is psychosis?
Psychotics disavow the threat of castration and attempt to replace the reality of castration with a fantasy world that they project onto the real world (paranoia).
What is perversion?
Perverts avoid making a decision on the threat of castration by adopting fetishes - objects that, as substitutes for the mother’s penis, at once acknowledge and deny the threat.
Define cybernetic.
The psyche is a complex feedback loop mechanism.
What does the unconscious contain?
The unconscious contains all those representations that cannot enter consciousness or that the consciousness has repressed.
What does the preconscious contain?
The preconscious contains whatever isn’t at the moment conscious but can become conscious (your mother’s phone number, for example).
Define “primary processes”
Primary processes is defined as exemption from mutual contradiction, mobility of cathexes, timelessness, and replacement of external with psychic reality?
True or False: “No” affects the unconscious.
False - there is no “No” in the unconscious.
What is the id?
The id is the “location” of repressed desire.
What is the superego?
The superego represents morals. It is an expansion of the ideal reality that the ego creates.
What is the ego?
The ego is the balance between the id and the superego - it is a compromise. However, it is dominated by the superego and enslaved to the id.
