Freud and the Self          OBJECTIVES:   1. Be able to discuss the various intellectual influences on Freud, and the ways in which he synthesized those influences.   2. Be able to discuss Frued's concept of the self, and how it responds to and differs from Cartesian notions of the self.   3. Be able to discuss how Freud's psychology is and is not related to our notions of what a science is.   4. Be able to discuss the stages of Freud's career, and his contributions to the understanding of hysteria, repressed desire, dreams, condensation, parapraxis, infantile sexuality, and sublimation.   QUOTATIONS: "The reason why such ideas cannot become conscious is that a certain force opposes them, that otherwise they could become conscious, and that it would then be apparent how little they differ from other elements which are admittedly psychical. The fact that in the technique of psycho-analysis a means has been found by which the opposing force can be removed and the ideas in question made conscious renders the theory irrefutable. The state in which the ideas existed before being made conscious is called by us repression, and we assert that the force which instituted the repression and maintains it is perceived as resistance during the work of analysis. Thus we obtain our concept of the unconscious from the theory of repression. The repressed is the prototype of the unconscious for us... We have formed the idea that in each individual there is a coherent organization of mental processes; and we call this his ego. It is to this ego that consciousness is attached; the ego controls the approaches to motility -- that is, to the discharge of excitations into the external world; it is the mental agency which supervises all its own constituent processes, and which goes to sleep at night, though even then it exercises the censorship on dreams. From this ego proceed the repressions, too, by means of which it is sought to exclude certain trends in the mind not merely from consciousness but also from other forms of effectiveness and activity. In analysis these trends which have been shut out stand in opposition to the ego, and the analysis is faced with the task of removing the resistances which the ego displays against concerning itself with the repressed. Now we find during analysis that, when we put certain tasks before the patient, he gets into difficulties; his associations fail when they should be coming near the repressed. We then tell him that he is dominated by a resistance; but he is quite unaware of the fact, and, even if he guesses from his unpleasurable feelings that a resistance is now at work in him, he does not know what it is or how to describe it. Since, however, there can be no question but that this resistance emanates from his ego and belongs to it, we find ourselves in an unforeseen situation. We have come upon something in the ego itself which is also unconscious, which behaves exactly like the repressed -- that is, which produces powerful effects without itself being conscious and which requires special work before it can be made conscious. From the point of view of analytic practice, the consequences of this discovery is that we land in endless obscurities and difficulties if we keep to our habitual forms of expression and try, for instance, to derive neuroses from a conflict between the conscious and the unconscious. We shall have to substitute for this antithesis another, taken from our insight into the structural conditions of the mind -- the antithesis between the coherent ego and the repressed which is split off from it." The Ego and the Id "Anatomy is destiny." "The great question -- which I have not been able to answer -- is, "What does a woman want?"" Men and Women OUTLINE I. General Overview A. Influences on Freud i). Positivism ii) German Idealism a) Brentano B. Biography   II. Freud's concept of the Self A. Cartesian notion of Self B. Freud's challenge to the Cartesian Self C. Behavior as symbolic of the Self D. The Structure of the Self i) The ego ii) The id iii) The Superego   III. Freudian Theories A. Hysteria i) seduction theory of hysteria ii) fantasy and later connection to infantile sexuality iii) Oedipal complex B. Dreams C. Parapraxis D. Infantile Sexuality E. Defense mechanisms F. Origin of Kant's Transcendental Concepts G. Civilization and its Discontents i) sublimation IV. Problems and Issues A. Does his psychology fulfill the criteria of a science B. Wissenschaft C. The interpretation/connection of things not previously interpreted or connected