Psychoanalysis COP

COP Lecture 1

11/10/2012

Psychoanalysis – Simon Jones

A)   The development of the psyche from birth

B)   The development and role of the unconscious in our everyday lives

C)   The development of gender identity (psycho sexual identity)

D)   Understanding the complexities of human subjectivity

Forms of therapy and mind. A model based theory that can be applied to other objects and processes. We are not entirely controlled by logical and reasonable thoughts, our unconscious plays a part in our day to day life.

Sigmund Freud

Conceived the idea in 1890’s. Frued treated hysteria patients using psychoanalysis by guiding them to discover and accept thoughts and events. He analysed his own dreams as well as others to discover their hidden physic content.  As well as this Freud observed infants and their habits with their parents for the first few years of their lives.

What was very significant was that Freud asked how could a mental issue possibly translate into a physical issue. He wrote a book that’s supposed to be easy to read called Interoperation of dreams

The Dynamic unconscious

Created through infancy to protect our conscious sleve from events, ideas and thoughts that are now acceptable to consciousness. Continues to affect our conscious selves in some ways. The unconscious is chaotic without order and without language. For example when a sexual reference slips out without meaning it outloud, this is called the Freudian slip.

Stages of development

Our conscious beings is full of confusing and misapprehended thoughts and ideas. So we attempt to make sense of our logical and thinking self by creating associations and making assumptions through sense data. The child develops preconceptions that must be deals with in order to develop successfully.

Psycho- sexual identity

As the child grows, they will experience and overcome mixed feelings and misconceptions. This will allow them to gain a sexual identity and give them confidence.

The uncanny – meaning unhomely. Something that was supposed to remain hidden which has come to the open, where the boundary between fantasy and reality break down, a film makers term for this is called uncanny valley. Analogies between the unconscious (psychology) and the uncanny (aesthetics) something that is very familiar then becomes unnatural.  This theory is used by film directors in horror to make our normal situations feel very uncomfortable. For example the Paranormal Activity movies.

Freudian models:

·      Id (unconscious) represents the biological/instinctual part of ourselves

·      Ego (conscious) represents the individual/personality of ourselves

·      Superego (social order) represents the part of ourselves in relation to others, to social order and to language.

·      Unconscious hidden, repressed, chaos. Where things are stored that are unacceptable to our conscious selves.

·      Preconscious – unconscious yet not repressed. Where memories, word associations, etc are stored where are thus recalled from

·      Conscious – our outward self, personality, identity

Jacques Lacan

Presented his own brand of psychoanalysis late 1960/70’s claiming ‘return to Freud’. Claims ‘language molds us as much as we mold it.’

The mirror stage

The child’s recognition of itself in reflection signifies a split in alienation. While the child mare recognise its own image, it is still limited in movement and dexterity. The result in the formation of ego continues to aid a reconciliation of body and image subject to others. The specular image is first processed, then absorbed and repelled by the image of itself

The structure of Lacanian unconscious is like a language and its discourse of the other. Unconscious details are encoded in various ways as they slip into consciousness

We learn from the lacanian, metonymy, and lacanian phallus that the males when they are younger already feel power by having being born  with a penis, and assuming one way or another that because the girls don’t have one, they attain power. This is not a biological definition but a symbolic position.

There is a symbolic order of reality; The real, the imaginary, and the symbolic

Edward Bernays ‘The godfather of PR’ was Freuds nephew. He had applied knowledge of psychoanalysis, unconscious desire to advertising and PR campaigns. Promoting lifestyle rather than the product, embedding desire within products. This case study is called ‘Torches of freedom’

Conclusion

Psychoanalysis allows us to understand the state of mind in conscious, unconscious and preconscious states of minds. Defining the outlines of logic and rationality. Almost like a skeleton guideline to help us understand our meanings and motives. I can link this to film producers and makers and storyboard writers to help practitioners understand why characters act the way they do, and to create the most realistic and believable films possible. Without character archetypes , understanding and creating realistic characters is almost impossible.

When creating short films and working at the beginning stage of pre production, its fundamental to lay down a good foundation, and without the basics of well worked characters, it’s again going to be impossible to create a good film. 

Tasks

2. Un Chien Andalou (1929, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali)
Notes on imagery used

- Man cleverly cuts the woman's eye open, time then fasts forward by 8 years.
- No dialogue, so you have to make out the story in it's non linear form. The film jumps all of a sudden from 3am, to 16 years ago.
- The conscious, unconscious and the uncanny play a big part, where you could describe whats happening as a trippy experience, or a bad nightmare. Some actions the man was undertaking seemed wrong and it was almost like he knew this himself but he couldn't help himself. Quite heavily influenced by some of Freud's ideas and theories. 
- Lots of examples where a hand is referenced throughout the film, when being poked by a stick, carried in a box, or with flies coming out of it, probably represents a fetish.
-  Violence and death is a theme thats carried out through out the film with a man falling off his bike, and a man getting shot.
- The audience is left feeling quite abject and struggle to understand some of the repulsive actions in the film.
- Female Phallus: girl with stick poking the hand, her lipstick.
- Fetish: After the man falls off his bike and the woman lays his clothes out on the bed.
- Perhaps the hand being chopped off was a reference to castration.


3. Notes

FETISHISM - S. Freud (Dealing with Frued's idea of the 'castration complex' and fetishism as the substitution of an inanimate object for the female phallus.

Castration complex: The boy fears castration while the girl accepts that she has already been castrated

- Fetish is a substitute for the female's penis that the little boy once believed in and for reasons unfamiliar to us does not want to give up. - Women have a problem that they don't have penises & it's a cause of big phycological problems
- Men being scared of losing their penis
- The little boy believed his mother had a penis when he was growing up, he grows older and realises his mother doesn't actually have a penis. Therefore he worries and questions did somebody cut it off? He then freaks out at the thought of being castrated.
- The development child goes through stages; oral, anal and phallic
- The uncanny

MATCH POINTS FROM THE FILM AND FROM FREUD