In continuation
For Freud, all human life is surrounded by two basic principles.
Pleasure principle: where everything we do is governed by the need to get pleasure and avoid ‘un-pleasure’.
Reality principle: understanding that all our pleasures cannot be fulfilled the way we want them, therefore, inspires us to seek other routes of attaining pleasure.
Libido: sexuality is the primary drive, according to Freud. This is what he termed Libido.
Sex drive gets repressed primarily. Individual’s sexual identity is a result of expression of desires or partly the condition caused by repression . In order to explain this, he developed the idea of Oedipus complex.
The Oedipus complex
Freud, speaking about the male child, says that the problem with sexual desires begin with the child’s dependence on the mother. Love for the mother is dominant theme in child’s psyche in the early years.
Father as a rival. Imagines a threat from father- castration.
Fantasies of killing the father. – Oedipus Complex
Soon, sees father as a authority. Source of all power and desire, shifts his focus to the father.
Desire for mother- shut away in the unconscious.
Dreams and the Unconscious
Dreams are the expression of repressed desire. They show us the unconscious.
Dreams are a language, language of the unconscious and of repressed desires. This language is termed as ‘Dream-work’
Dream-work –has two central dimensions:
Latent Dream Content: actual content of the unconscious that seeks expression.
Manifest Dream Content: the expression of the content in the form of images or events in one’s dream.
Problem: the Latent dream content is not clear. It is concealed inside a complex structure and codes. It can only be revealed through analyzing the Manifest dream.
Freud argued that the latent dream content goes through 4 stages- the dream work- before it expresses in the form of manifest dream.
Condensation: the latent dream is condensed in the manifest dream. Several elements are superimposed on each other to produce a complex image in the manifest dream. A situation in a dream may be expressed as a symbol.
Displacement: in this, the latent dream content works as an association and is then produced in complex image. Displacement works through association.
Representation or Representability: the language of the dream often uses complex images that has no apparent basis in reality. Strange images like upright objects, tower, or poles are representations of the male organ and constitute a language where there is no logical or rational connection between the two.
Secondary revision: the dreamer him/herself interprets the dream and in doing so, revises it in the process. The process is accompanied with censorship where the dreamer ignores or ‘forgets’ all the elements of the dream.
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