Louann Russell
Comm 342
Dr. Williams
Psychoanalysis
“Good morning and welcome to Communications 342. Today’s discussion will
focus on psychoanalysis.” HUH? What does psychoanalysis have to do with
communication? Why would communication students need to have any concept of
psychoanalytic theory? Psychoanalysis, according to the Encarta Encyclopedia, is “the
name applied to a specific method of investigating unconscious mental processes and to
a form of psychotherapy. The term refers, as well, to the systematic structure of
psychoanalytic theory, which is based on the relation of conscious and unconscious
psychological processes.” (Encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia). This
is important to communication because the underlying psyche of
the environment is as important, if not more so, than the spoken
word. It helps scholars understand people as a creation of their
cultures, and of their internal desires and instincts. Although
there have been many theorists in the field of psychoanalysis,
three major practitioners come to the forefront. Psychoanalytic
theory was developed by Sigmund Freud, who sought understanding of the structure
and functioning of the human mind. He adopted the “talking cure” that his friend Dr.
Breuer had used on one of Breuer’s own patients that was suffering from hysteria. By
allowing the patient to express verbally and communicate her anxieties, she made
progress in dealing with them. Freud allowed his patients to freely associate their
thoughts, which he felt came from their repressed unconscious, as did puns, slips of the
tongue, and double entendres. He also asked his patients carefully selected questions
with the intent of disarming the superego, or the watchdog of the psyche, permitting
the patient to confront unresolved conflicts with his conscious mind. Language also
comes to play in dreams. By having his patients share their dreams with him, Freud
linked the unconscious release of desires to the conscious world of conversation and
thus communication. Freud became involved in correspondence with a second
psychoanalytical practitioner, Carl Jung, whom he met in 1907.
Jung started as an admirer of Freud until they had an ideological
parting of the ways. Jung agreed with Freud about the ego which he says is the
conscious mind. He moves on to what he terms the “personal unconscious” or the part
of the psyche that is not conscious but could be. Finally, Jung theorizes that all humans
have a well of shared memories that do not come from experience. This is the
“collective unconscious”. This is “the reservoir of our experiences as a species. A kind of
knowledge we are all born with.”(Jung, Collected Works of Carl G. Jung, vol.7, pp.64-79).
The collective unconscious is home to the archetypes. The archetypes are recognizable
in myths, legends, religions, and ideologies. Jung felt that these often came to the
conscious through dreams. Dreams contain symbols which are universal in Jung’s
opinion. By examining the symbols in dreams, Jung opened a dialogue between
therapist and patient. Once again language became an important aspect of therapy. The
symbols in the dreams were signifiers that pointed to signifieds, which could then be
interpreted.
“Professor, how are we going to remember all these terms and their meanings?” We
will get into that after we meet the players. Jacques Lacan is the third practitioner, a bit
more contemporary than the other two.
Lacan considered himself most aligned with Freud. He deems that language is of
major importance because that is the way that knowledge is formed. His theory is that
the unconscious is structured as a language, the source of communication. The two parts
of Freud’s unconscious, condensation and displacement, have their basis in linguistics,
according to him. The first is metaphoric and the second is
metonymic. He also uses the science of semiology developed by
Ferdinand Saussure. Lacan accepts the signifier but says that it is
only a signifier that merely leads to another signifier. No one
signifier has a constant meaning. Lacan theorizes that the infant,
upon the acquisition of language, joins society at large and
becomes part of that culture. This is how the infant begins to
acquire its sense of self. After acquiring language and sense of self,
humans begin to desire what they learn from others is worth attaining. They learn desire
from what Lacan called the Other. Humans constantly strive to become part of the
Other. This is the connection between people in a culture.
So, before we get into the final part of our discussion let’s look at some terms and their
meaning and how we can relate them today.
Archetypes
• Archetypes: Primitive modes of thought that tend to personify natural
processes in terms of mythological concepts.
(Microsoft@Encarta@OnlineEncyclopedia).
• Carl Jung considered archetypes the primitive images that make up the
collective unconscious, which is the part of the psyche made up of memories,
ideas, and ways of thinking that comes from ancestors and the entire human
race. (Microsoft@Encarta@Online Encyclopedia).
• Since Shrek is a fairy tale, the characters are definitely archetypes. Shrek is
the hero, given the quest of freeing Fiona, the princess, from her entrapment
in a castle tower. Farquaad is the villain that desires a kingdom and will do
anything to acquire it. He is also the dispatcher who sends Shrek on the
quest. Donkey is the helper that accompanies Shrek on his trek.
Id, Ego, and Superego
• Id: The reservoir of the libido which seeks alternative expression for impulses
humans consider evil or excessively sexual, impulses humans often felt were
perfectly natural at an earlier or archaic stage and have since repressed. It is
governed by the pleasure-principle. (cla.purdue.edu).
• Ego: Representative of the outer world to the id. Represents and reinforces
the reality-principle. Could also be said to be a defense against the superego.
(cla.purdue.edu)
• Superego: The faculty that seeks to police what it deems unacceptable
desires; it represents all moral restrictions and is the “advocate of a striving
for perfection”. (cla.purdue.edu).
 Freud considered the ego to be the part of the psyche that dealt with the
real world and is present in the conscious. It seeks to replace the pleasure
principle of the id, or the internal instinct side found in the unconscious,
with the reality principle. The id controls the passions and the ego takes
charge of reason and sanity. The superego deals with the Oedipus
complex. This is where guilt and the conscience come from. (Felluga).
 Each of the three main characters in Shrek personifies one of the aspects
of the psyche. Shrek is an ogre that has to deal with the real world every
day. He sees things as they really are and deals with what is necessary.
This is the ego. Farquaad is the id, living in the pleasure principle at all
times. He doesn’t care who gets hurt as a result of his actions as long he
achieves his ends. Fiona is the superego in that she has high morals and
has the conscience to want to tell Shrek the truth about the spell she is
under. She feels guilty that she doesn’t share it with him.
Identification
 Identification: The process whereby one’s ego seeks to emulate another.
(Felluga).
 To resolve the Oedipus complex, Freud felt that identification was important.
According to Freud, “If a boy identifies with his father, he wants to be like his
father…” (Freud, in Strachey).
 Pinocchio sees himself as a “real” boy, a true human son to his carver,
Gipetto, a “real” man. Since he is not a “real” boy, his nose grows when he
makes this statement to the buyer of the fairy tale creatures.
Desire
Desire: To wish or long for; want; crave. (American
Heritage Dictionary).

Jacques Lacan theorizes that desire comes from
fantasy and thus can never be fulfilled. Desire is “caught up” in social
structures once language is acquired. Humans desire things when they,
through language with others, find that something is considered desirable.
When this fantasy object which Lacan called the “object petit a” is attained,
the desire for it is diminished and lost.

Princess Fiona desires to be rescued from the castle by her one true
love so that the spell that causes her to change from human to ogre at
sundown will be lifted and she will remain human. She achieves her desire
when she is rescued by Shrek and Donkey. She then loses her desire to
remain human when she falls in love with Shrek, an ogre.
Anima/Animus
 Anima/ Animus: Gender specific archetypical structures in the collective
unconscious that are compensatory to conscious gender identity. Thus,
animus
images primarily depict the
unconscious
masculine in a woman and anima
images
primarily depict the unconscious
feminine in a
man. (answers.com)
 “Woman is
compensated by a masculine
element and
therefore her unconscious has, so
to speak, a
masculine element.” (Carl Jung,
Psychological Types, 1921).
 Evidence of the anima/animus archetypical structures is revealed in Shrek
when the male side of Fiona singlehandedly defeats Robin Hood and his
men with her karate kick and amazing throws. For Shrek, his female side is
shown when, having dinner alone and feeling lonely, he lights a candle for
the ambiance, not for the light.
Puns Double Entendre, and Freudian Slips
 Pun: A humorous substitution of words that are alike in sound but
different in meaning. (answers.com)
 Double Entendre: A French phrase for “double meaning” adopted in
English to denote a pun in which a word or phrase has a second, usually
sexual, meaning. An accidental double entendre is often termed a
Freudian Slip. ( answers.com)
 In his 1901 book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud
recognizes the differences between errors of speech (Versprechen),
memory (Vergessen), and action (Vergreifen). He attributed these
faulty actions to the unconscious. (Davis, Haverford, p. 109)
 There are many examples of both puns and double entendres in Shrek.
A double entendre comes out of the mouth of the Gingerbread Man
when he is being tortured by Farquaad as to the whereabouts of the
fairy tale creatures. In response to a verbal threat the cookie replies,
“Eat me!” One way of looking at it is that he is indeed a cookie. The
other is a very derogatory insult.
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
 Willing suspension of Disbelief: Alleged willingness of a reader or
viewer to accept as true the premise of a work of fiction, even if they
are fantastic, impossible, or otherwise contradictory to reality.
(answers.com)
 The phrase was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817. It was
tested from the neuro-psychanalytic view by Norman N. Holland in
1968. His findings were published in his book The Dynamics of
Literary Response. He determined that this is a psychoanalytic
regression “to an oral merger of infant and nurturing other in a
potential space.” (Holland, The Dynamics of Literary Response).

The audience response to Shrek seems to be a willing suspension
of disbelief. An ogre who wants to kick fairy tale creatures out of his
swamp so he can be alone teams up with a talking donkey to rescue a
princess who is human by day and ogre by night. Yet the movie sold
millions of tickets, had two sequels made, and Shrek is a name familiar
to many people all over the world. People feel happy when Shrek and
Fiona are married and Farquaad is eaten by Dragon.
Amplification
 Amplification: A method of association based on the comparative
study of mythology, religion, and fairy tales used in the
interpretation of images in dreams and drawings. (New York
Association of Analytical Psychology).
 Part of Jung’s method of interpretation of clinical and cultural
material. It involves the use of mythic, historical, and cultural
parallels to clarify material in dreams that may be obscure, thin, and
difficult to attend to.
 Princess Fiona tells Shrek how her rescue is supposed to go. He is
supposed to fight and kill the dragon, remove her from the castle,
kiss her and become her true love so they can marry and live happily
ever after. She can only know these things from history given the
time period, culturally if she has known someone rescued, or has
heard it from past stories.
Eros and Thanatos
 Eros: In Greek mythology, the personification of love, a cosmogonic
force of nature: psychologically, the function of relationship. The
counterpart of Eros is Thanatos, the god of mortality and death.(New
York Association of Analytical Psychology)
 Freud believed that there were a small number of basic instincts that
could fit into two broad generic categories. These are Eros, which is
the instinct that promotes life and self-preservation and Thanatos,
which covers the instinct for aggression, cruelty, and selfdestruction. (Thornton, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
 Fiona and Shrek have a hard time getting along initially. After an
argument the night before, Fiona makes breakfast for Shrek as a way
of promoting the function of the relationship or make peace
between them. This is the eros side of her personality appearing.
Shrek’s thanatos instinct came out when he knowingly went to a
castle that was guarded by a giant dragon to rescue her.

Suturing
 Suturing: Procedures by means of which cinematic texts confer
subjectivity on their viewers. (Fielding, Slouchproductions.net)
 “Suture theory therefore focuses on how film works with our
psyches to position us so that we enter into the imaginary worlds…”
(Ranowlan, uwec.edu)
 The audience is drawn into Shrek to the point that they have
reactions to the interplay between the characters, begin to hope
that Shrek will save Fiona from the evil Farquaad, and actually cheer
with the people in the church when Shrek and Fiona will out. It
appeals to the psyche, both the conscious and unconscious.
So, moving along let’s think about why psychoanalysis is significant and why
use it as a theory of communication. Psychoanalysis explores the mind so
that humans can better understand their own motivations and the possible
motivations of others. It also gives people awareness about where their
feeling, fears, and joys come from. This awareness can be useful in
communication to help understand personal motives and desires and see
why there could be difficulty in communication with other. Looking at the
movie Shrek, the world we live in, for the most part seems pretty optimistic.
People still admire the hero and cheer when he triumphs over evil. Princess
Fiona is her own woman, which appears to be perfectly acceptable, holding
her own for the people she cares about. Humor is appreciated by both
children and adults. The text, as far as psychoanalysis and film are
concerned, highlights both the theories of Freud and Lacan. These include
the theories of Lacan that language is integral to the coexistence of different
people in a culture and a divisor. The text also looks at both men’s theory of
the Oedipal complex and what impact it has on becoming the “self”. The
main point of the text is that, although there are differences between
people, there are similarities as evidenced by the reaction, in general to the
film rendition of the world.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, times up. Class dismissed and have a great day!”
Works Cited
Allen, Robert, ed. Channels of Discourse. University of North Carolina Press,
1992.
Davis, David. “Sigmund Freud.” Haverford University. 2004.
http://www.haverford.edu/psych/p.109/fslip.html
Felluga, Dino. “Psychoanalysis.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory.
28Nov2003. 25 Nov. 2008. <http.//www.cla.purdue.edu/English/theory/>
Fielding, Melissa. “Passing, Queering, and Recovery.” Feminist Psychoanalysis
and the Performance of Plastic Surgery. Slouch Productions. 2007.
<http://www.slouchproductions.net/Essays/suture-orlan.htm>
Klages, Mary. “Jacques Lacan.” University of Colorado. 2001. 24 Nov, 2008.
http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/Eng2012klages/lacan.html
Nowlan, Robert. “Suture.” University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. 2001. 23 Nov,
2008. <http://www.uwec.edu/ranowlan/suture.html>
Sharp, Matthew. “Jacques Lacan.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006.
26 Nov. 2008. http://www.iep.utm.edu
Sharpe, Darrell. “Jungian Lexicon.” New York Association for Analytical
Psychology. 1991. 26Nov. 2008. http://www.nyaap.org/index.php
Williams, Kevin. “Psychoanalysis.” Shepherd University. Nov. 2008.