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HUMA 1170: The Modern Age
Professor Mark Cauchi
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Lecture 17
Freud’s Genealogy of
the Self 2:
Morality &
Social Affects
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REVIEW
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Last week, we discussed how Freud develops the 19th-century historical
turn and applies it to personal history
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Who we are is bound to our personal histories
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Many of the most formative experiences in our lives happen before we are
able to understand them
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Why we are the way we are is often unknown to us
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Review
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In order to make sense of this, Freud puts forward new ideas about the human mind and behaviour
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We have looked at:
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Unconscious
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Part of mind is not conscious
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It exerts an affect on our character, our consciousness, our lives
Tri-partite structure of mind
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Id
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Source of our instincts (drives, urges, motives)
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Fully unconscious
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Ego
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Superego
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Our consciousness/awareness, sense of self, will, reason
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Source of moral feelings (guilt, pride)
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Inherited from our culture
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Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
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We said that for Freud psychoanalysis is both
theory and therapy
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Therapy consists in developing techniques to
help patients with psychological challenges to
improve
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Psychoanalytic therapy is “talking cure”
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Patient and therapist only talk
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No drugs, no medical procedures, etc. (although
those may be administered separately, as a part
of concurrent therapy)
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Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
In ”An Outline for Psychoanalysis,” Freud distinguishes between
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treating psychotics (those who have made a break with reality)
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treating neurotics (those who have common impediments), which he concentrates on
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“total honesty in return for complete discretion”
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“we don’t simply want to hear from the patient the things he knows and hides
from others: he also has to tell us what he doesn’t know”
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“switch off self-critical mechanism”
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free association (think of one thing, immediately say what it brings to mind)
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stream of consciousness (just let ideas flow and try not to stop it or censor it)
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A number of artists in the early-20
century were very influenced by these
ideas of free association and stream of
consciousness
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Digression:
Free Association & the Arts
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Writers like Virginia Woolf, James Joyce,
William Faulkner, André Breton often
used stream of consciousness in their
writing: they would just write and see
what comes out
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Some visual artists associated with
Surrealism tried to incorporate symbols
that that they came up through free
association
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Jazz musicians in the 1960s began to
use the idea to explain what is
happening when they improvise
Andre Masson, Automatic Drawing, 1924
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Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
TRANSFERENCE
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The therapeutic relationship is a very intimate one:
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Patient tells the therapist about their personal history, goals, pain, desires, dreams and day
dreams, wishes, sexual history and sexual fantasies, who and what they hate, most important
memories, etc.
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Patient begins to relate to the therapist through the patterns that they relate to most
people – they unconsciously transfer to the therapist the ways they relate to important
figures in their life
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That allows the therapist and patient to watch in real-time the psychological mechanisms
that structure the patient’s life
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Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
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Jonathan Shedler, clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California,
San Francisco
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“The 7 Principles of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy” (12 mins)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNWy1ksxIDo
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Review
Freud’s theories are relative to his patients, who are bound to the time and
place they lived:
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Early 20th century, white, bourgeois European society
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In the late-19th century, there was more intellectual and artistic attention to
affects like melancholy, anxiety, boredom,
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Early-20th century, Europe saw a lot of chaos:
Spanish Flu, Great Depression, WWI, WWII
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Anxiety
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Throughout 19th and 20th centuries, artists and thinkers devoted attention
to anxiety (angst)
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Some connection between modernity and anxiety
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Recall Romantics on melancholy
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Recall Marx that capitalism creates alienation (disconnection) and agitation of
endless change
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Recall Baudelaire on getting drunk
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Recall Manet’s painting of the women in the bar
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Recall Nietzsche’s madman: if God is dead, then the world has no built in
meaning or purpose
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Recall DuBois on the “strife” of the African-American
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Anxiety
Anxiety is not fear
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Fear is a response to a specific and usually external threat
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Anxiety is similar, but it is less intense, more general and vague, and there is
no specific threat
Some level of anxiety is normal in life
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During Covid, we are all feeling various levels of anxiety
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E.g., the dark, water, dogs, heights, horror movies, a physical threat
Will I and my loved ones be safe? Will I keep my job? Will life return to normal?
Sometimes anxiety can be debilitating
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Edvard Munch
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1863-1944
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Norwegian Artist
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Influenced by French artists
(Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh,
Guagin)
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Mother died of TB when he was
young, raised by father who slowly
became mentally ill
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Suffered from anxiety; underwent
various forms of psychological
therapy; had a drinking problem
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Was financially successful as an
artist
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Contracted the Spanish Flu
(survived)
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Nazis conquered Norway. His work
was banned by the Nazis (we’ll
discuss next week)
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“Illness, insanity, and death,” Munch wrote, “were the black angels that kept
watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life.”
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Edvard Munch
Leann Davis Alspaugh, “Ecce Homo: Munch Paints Nietzsche,” Hedgehog Review,
Nov 16, 2014
His work reflects this “darkness”
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Early French critics described his work as “brutal”
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He paid attention to dark moods, feelings, and experiences
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This is evident in the subject matter of the works, but also in their tone, style,
and composition
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“Melancholy,”
1891
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“Death in the
Sickroom,”
1893
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• Somber topic
• Munch’s mother died
of TB
• Most people are
faceless
• Strange colouring
(green and orange)
• Groups of people
separated from each
other
• Proportions of room
seem strange, like
we’re not in a real
place
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“Anxiety,” 1894
• Swirling sky and land (seem alive, or like
controlled by a great force)
• Blank, monstrous, and sickly faces
(greenish)
• Sombre, haunting tone
• Staring at viewer (as if we are accused or
perhaps part of them)
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“Love & Pain
(Vampire)”
1896
• Love can’t be
counted on to bring
only joy
• His sexist view that
woman is a
vampire (drains
your life)
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“Portrait of Nietzsche,”
1906
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Munch and Nietzsche never
met
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But Munch was an admirer of
Nietzsche and read many of
his works
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“Self-portrait with the
Spanish Flu,”
1919
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“The Scream”
1893
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His most famous painting
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Nature looks menacing
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Bloody, fiery, alive, overpowering, apocalyptic
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Main character looks skeleton-like
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Two characters in black in background
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Bridge that comes from and goes to nowhere
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The character seems both to cover his/her ears
(scream comes from somewhere else) and open
his/her mouth (as if screaming)
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“The Scream”
1893
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The world looks haunted
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Something is overwhelming this
character (from beyond and/or from
within)
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The character seems to be experiencing
dread or anxiety
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Homework
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Next week, trigger warning
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we are reading Hitler, who is racist and anti-semitic
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We are also reading Kafka’s “Penal Colony,” which depicts torture
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Babar will be lecturing (and me too)
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