Interpretation of Dreams, the Uncanny and Fetishism

The Unconscious & Structure of the psyche the child's sexual development-a. polymorphous sexuality, three stages, fixation b. Oedipal stage--gendering process,
Oedipus complex, castration fear dream analysis-condensation, substitution, symbolization repression and pyschological diseases: psychological or physical abnormalities as symptoms (or covert expressions of desire)
Art as Daydreaming  Psychobiography

The Unconscious  can only be
"diagnosed “ through analyzing unintended lapses in memory, slips of tongue, puns and dreams . the child's sexual development –
Oedipus complex, castration fear  the uncanny (return of the repressed)
Repression & pyschological diseases: psychological or physical abnormalities as symptoms  fetishism

Definition p.
heimlich-- "familiar," "homely," to "secret and hidden" to "dangerous and dreaded"
 unheimlich (p. 934)
What are the two kinds of of the uncanny according to Freud? The examples of each?

Cessation of a belief and then the return of the old, discarded beliefs: Many people experience the feeling [of the uncanny] in the highest degree in relation to death and dead bodies, to the return of the dead, and to spirits and ghosts.... --animism, magic and sorcery, the omnipotence of thoughts, man's attitude to death
Return of the repressed p. 950-- involuntary repetition and the castration complex comprise

Examples on two levels of child development:
(1)
(2) oedipal-level castration fear. the pre-oedipal stage of primary narcissism
(1) castration fear-- the example of
Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. "The
Sandman": tear the kids' eyes out to induce sleep.  the castrating oedipal father
This story is "uncanny" because Nathaniel's fear of the "sandman" is at once incomprehensible and strangely familiar: it partakes of the unconscious.

What are repeated in N ’ s childhood and adult life?
Freud ’ s interpretation and clues 938
Childhood scene; traumatic but repressed: both fantasy and real;
"the Sandman" of nurses's tale
Adult life: there is a sense of fatality...of being haunted;
The spy glass;
The lawyer Coppelius as the sandman / the good, mild father;
Coppola the optician/
Professor Spalanzin;

N ’ s resistance-hiding in closet to see the
Sandman; frightend by C
The love of Olympia and
Olympia ’ s bleeding eyes;
Clare? punishment arrival of the Coppelius as castrating threat of blinding, death of father
Olympia as automoton dismembered....when
Coppelius reappears, he hurls himself off tower

the pre-oedipal stage of primary narcissism
-- double as (1) reflection, (2) superego and (3) shadow
1.
2.
double: an insurance against destruction of ego;
An agency of self-observation
3.
A creation dating back to a very early mental stage
Repetition compulsion 941 -

Compulsive repetition of traumatized patient
Vs. Fort-da game (Beyond the Pleasure Principle)
(the motive of this repetition remains to master the unpleasant situation. The boy compensates his powerlessness by placing himself in the position as agent.)
Death drive  stasis; repetition = return to a prior state and re-finding of the lost wholeness.
Vs. sexual drive  disruption and transformation; repetition = detour and deferring finality

the pre-oedipal stage of primary narcissism
Primary narcissism: the infant ’ s libido is focused on itself; an investment in the self as an ideal ego (vs. ego-ideals, the objects of libidinal energy in the outside world).
Secondary narcissism: libido is withdrawn from the persons it invested in and returned again to its own ego.
Lacan: primary – the creation of a corporeal image
(mirror stage) vs. fragmented body
Secondary – dialectic of love and aggression

Pp. 950
The uncanny as it is depicted in literature: more fertile province than the uncanny in real life, for it contains the whole of the latter and something more besides, something that cannot be found in real life. profound modification  the uncanny in fiction
 (1) a great deal that is not uncanny in fiction would be so if it happened in real life;
(2) there are many more means of creating uncanny effects in fiction than there are in real life.

His stylistic concerns: eroticize reality + Trompel'oeil
'After Freud it is the outer world, the world of physics, which will have to be eroticized and quantified.
‘
Dali , IN 'THE WORLD OF SALVADOR DALI,' MACMILLAN
1962 (source: S ALVADOR DALI http://www.mmlab.ktu.lt/Dali/index.html
)
"My whole ambition in the pictorial domain is to materialize the images of concrete irrationality with the most imperialist fury of precision ."
"to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality"

His Life
Gala and Dali met in the summer of 1929. In that year,
Dali's paintings were full of flourishing sexual symbols.
"This historic meeting was accompanied by a fit of extreme madness. Dali was in such a state of constant exaltation that every time he started to speak to Gala he burst into insane laughter" (Neret, 22).
“ The Great Masturbator ” bears witness to Dali's first encounter with Gala and the state in which she left himmidway between 'hard' and 'soft'" (Neret, 28).

A large, soft, terrorized head, livid and waxlike, with pink cheeks; the closed eyes
(embellished by very long eyelashes) suggest the state of sleeping or dreaming.
A tremendous nose -leaning on the ground
Metamorphosis at the neck region
The mouth, replaced by a decaying grasshopper crawling with ants.

"The Great Masturbator" is one of Dali's classic surreal images of sexual persecution and an obsession with castration, impotence, and masturbation. It is also an image that plays off of psychic automatism and Freudian dream logic: displacement, condensation, and fetish. ( source )
Where do we see displacement, condensation and fetish?

The American-- move toward "ego psychology"; the French -- a "return to the real Freud"
What do you think about Freud ’
s major concepts ?

Salvador Dali 1904-1989 by Gilles Neret, Giles Neret
20th Century Art History Tutorials
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