Now is an opportune time to return to our
toolbox. Remember, one of our projects in this
class is to develop a box of tools that we can use to analyze the myths when we run
into something interesting. We've already talked about structuralism
and how it's useful in decoding some of the things we see inside of myths.
We talked about functionalism. And talked about how it works as a tool.
After having a look at [inaudible], it makes a lot of sense to introduce the
tools given to us by the great towering figure in the human sciences, Sigmund
Freud. His dates are 1856 to 1939.
Freud made many, many contributions, not the least creating a whole field of psycho
analysis, but he's important in the interpretation of, literate and literature
and across the humanities not so much in the social sciences anymore.
Interesting psychology has moved on but he's definitely left a mark on the
humanities and that's surely true for those of us that are interested in myths.
Freud has an important set of observations that help us understand this.
We'll work through them, but let's just summarize what Freud's main message is, at
least for our purposes in this class. Freud tells us that myths dramatize events
in every individual's mental or psychological development.
Myths dramatize events in every individual's mental or psychological
development. Now, we're use to having people in our
collection of tools and approaches to myth, looking at structuralism and
functionalism, and even going back to allegory.
We're used to having people tell us that yeah, myths contain hidden messages.
Our ancient allegorists thought that. Structuralists think they contain hidden
messages about the structure of the human mind.
Functionalists think that they contain messages about the values that a culture
wants to legitimize to itself. Freud thinks that hidden messages inside a
myth are always going to be about just you and me as individuals, developing, working
our way through a developing, the developing of our psychological state.
Now, as a doctor Freud is interested in any of us as a, a patient.
Now, when a, a patient goes to see a doctor, the doctor doesn't.
Interviewed a patient to talk about you know, your, national background, your
cultural ethnicity, and these kind of things, unless there's something very
relevant that happens in those little, little aspects.
Mostly what a doctor is interested in is you as a member of a species, as a
universal creature that needs some help. Freud thinks about all of us as universal
creatures, and he thinks about the human psyche as a universal like, organ that all
of us have inside of us, and it goes through a developmental process.
So, looking at a young one and a, a one transitioning from adolescence to
adulthood, and one transitioning from adulthood into very old age.
There is a kind of ongoing, consistent development that Freud, is trying to
develop a science of. Now there are many different aspects to
Freud. There are many ways that he looks at the
psyche. In some of his later periods, some will
recognize terms like ego, id, and superego.
We're going to look at an earlier version of Freud's idea of the psyche which has
two parts to it. This is one that shows up in The
Interpretation of Dreams, in 1900. Now in the interpretation of dreams there
are many observations that are important. That, the, the structure of the psyche
that he's working with here is one that's made up of two main parts with a
repression barrier in between. We have the unconscious mind and the
conscious mind and the repression barrier, in healthy people, keeps the unconscious
mind repressed. Now for some people, particularly in
America, the idea of repression is a bad thing.
It's thought that we should all just be kind of letting whatever desires we have
leak out all over the place. Well Freud thinks that would be a
disaster. If the repression barrier weren't there,
we would all answer to these deep, dark, unconscious desires that we have.
Now they're very powerful. Some of them can be benign, but some of
them can be very toxic and antisocial. All of us Freud says that our guts and our
core have the desire for the most intense pleasures we can.
And we'll pursue those deeply, selfishly, according to, the, the most antisocial,
kind of uncivilized behaviors as we possibly could.
If our unconscious was given free reign. If there was no such thing as a depression
barrier, sorry, a repression barrier, all of us would be running around trying to
gratify, our, deepest urges for, the most intense pleasure we could find.
Now where is this most intense pleasure going to be fround, found.
Freud makes the argument that sex is a very important piece of this.
Who can deny that such a thing is true. Freud also talks about food and the
pleasure that come from making sure that a, the organism maintains its metabolizing
at a very elemental level. Freud also talks about the pleasures that
come from being dominant over others in a group and that these are the things that
are. Animating our unconscious desires, and
luckily, our repression barrier keeps them, for the most part, in check.
Now when we think about our psychological houses, most of us think that our
conscious desires are the things that we answer to most, we're familiar with these,
and sure we might have some unconscious desires but they don't really seem all
that important. On occasion some urge will bubble up but
we'll talk ourself out of it and get on with our lives.
Now Freud says that actually that position should be reversed, the conscious desires
that we have are kind of like the tip of an iceberg.
Underneath is the biggest part of the iceberg, these unconscious desires are the
very powerful drivers that are the energy that presses our life forward.
Now what makes up these unconscious desires?
When we meet them we're going to be a little bit horrified.
According to Freud, we want to have sexual pleasure with anything and anyone.
That's what we look for in our view of the world, this most intense gratification
through sexual pleasure of anything and anyone.
Now, that includes even parts of the, larger grouping of human beings that you
and I run into that are not allowed to us, that are forbidden to us.
We want to even have sex with those with whom it's forbidden.
And in fact the forbiddenness makes a kind of forbidden fruit of these potential
sexual partners for us, and produces frustration that we're forbidden from it,
so even amps up the desire even more. And in fact the one person that you and I
are forbidden from having sex with is a parent.
Yes indeed. Freud says we all have an unconscious
desire to have sex with one of our parents.
We also have an unconscious desire to eliminate the parent of the same gender as
us, such that, that person is not in the way of us gratifying our sexual desires
for the parent of the opposite sex. This is what Freud says, all of us then,
in addition to this urge to have sexual gratification through this intense
pleasure. Also our gratifying urge to be dominant by
pressing the parent that has such a powerful role in our lives aside, the one
of the same gender, and having a close intimate relationship, one that's
forbidden, with the one of the different gender.
Gender. These powerful unconscious desires, Freud
says, are present in all of us. Now luckily there's a repression barrier,
right? Otherwise such things would go around
being gratified, and that would be a bad thing.
What Freud says in healthy people happens is that these powerful, even forbidden
desires, are kept down by the repression barrier.
But on occasion these unconscious desires grow, and they become huge, and they place
pressure on the repression barrier. Now in an unhealthy psyche, the repression
barrier has no gaps, and the pressure could cause the whole psyche to explode
and no longer work. In a healthy psyche, what happens is the
repression barrier opens up on occasion, and allows one of these unconscious
desires to actually show itself to the conscious mind, and allow itself to be
gratified. Now, lest you think that Freud thought
that on occasion each of us goes around and does those things that he said, live
beneath the repression barrier, that's not what happens.
Instead what happens is, this repression barrier allows the unconscious desire to
enter into the conscious mind, but not before it changes it.
Through these processes of condensation and displacement, that our desire we feel
for forbidden object, for example, become dominant over our own fathers.
And perhaps trying to have sexual relationships with the parent of the same
or opposite gender. These desires are allowed to be expressed,
but they're changed. They're displaced, and put onto someone
else who's authorized. So we can have a dream block, dominance
over someone else, who stands as a symbol for our father.
Or intimacy with someone else who stands as symbol, or replacement of, for our
mother. It's a system that Freud says allows this
sort of tea kettle of the, of the unconscious mind to let off some steam
without having anything that is absolutely forbidden by the conscious mind, to
happen. Now, getting back to our main story, what
Freud says happens here is that in a healthy mind the unconscious does indeed
allow itself to express these desires, and in the interpretation of dreams he says
that a main avenue by which these unconscious desires are expressed is
through dreams. Now to get back to our story in the
course, how do myths fit in? Freud tells us as he extends his thoughts
on myths as his as his thinking develops, in the interpretation of dreams in a
leader works, that precisely myths are the dreams of an entire culture.
Myths are the dreams of an entire culture. So what we get when we take a look at
myths is we get this kind of displaced and condensed expression of primal desires in
a culture that are displaced onto now more acceptable targets for those desires.
So the desire to overcome the father, all of us get to live it out vicariously by
looking at it through this awful figure of Cronus who we can scold and wag our finger
at, but actually each of us gets a little vicarious thrill by watching a father
figure get castrated. The special intimacy and closeness that
Cronus has with his mother. There's no sexual relationship that's
talked about but they had a special closeness.
This, in that sense, all kind of have that special extra intimacy with mother figures
in our life vicariously, but we now live it out through Cronus.
The connection here, according to Freud is that all of us have these desires.
These desires had a chance to get themselves worked out through this
apparatus. The apparatus though, you hope works in a
special way and modifies but does not allow the desire to express itself
straight up and clearly. Through this modification, then, each of
us is engaged always in a process of myth-making through our dreams, and our
cultures are, in a way, dreaming as they write their myths.
These myths then, according to Freud, are interpretable, according to his large
scheme. And we see a system, a giant system.
In which, not only is it true that as humans that are living along, thinking
that we have this very well set up conscious mind.
With a repression barrier that is keeping down our d, dark desires.
All of us are actually living in a psychological house over which we are not
quite masters. None of us are quite masters of our own
psychological desires. Similarly, in, myths, in our, in our
culture's myths, our culture is not the master over its own, cultural product.
Instead, what we do through myth is live out all the things that our culture
forbids itself. So keep an eye on those things in myth
that seem especially salacious, nasty, overstepping of lines, overstepping of
bounds. Freud gives us a really interesting tool,
that's helpful in trying to figure out why in the world would a culture want to tell
itself a myth like this?