Civilization and its Discontents

civilization

pleasure principle 快乐原则

Pleasure refers to a state of gratification, particularly in terms of delight or sensual fulfillment. Freud names the pleasure principle the psychic drive after gratification which has to be repressed in order that humans can function in the social world.

reality principle 现实原则

sublimation 升华

A Freduian term, sublimation signifies the ways in which sexual drives are rerouted into other creative and intellectual areas of activity which are socially acceptable. 

unconscious

the unconscious is the mental realm into which those aspects of mental life that are related to forbidden desires and instincts are consigned through the process of repression. The unconscious is absolutely unknown to the subject except where it exerts pressures on conscious life, as when repressed objects refuse to remain repressed.

1. indirect routes into the contents of the unconscious

1.1 dreams

why dreams?

The interpretation of Dreams

two mechanisms of dreams: condensation and displacement.

1.1.1 condensation:

a psychoanalytic, specifically Freudian, term referring to the psychic process whereby phantasmatic images assumed to have a common affect are condensed into a single image. Drawing on the linguistic work of Roman Jackbson, Jacques Lacan compares the Freudian notion of condensation to the work of metaphor.

or

When a whole set of images is packed into a single image or statement, when a complex meaning is condensed into a simpler one. Condensation corresponds to metaphor in language, where one thing is condensed into another. 'love is a rose, and you'd better not pick it', this metaphor condenses all the qualities of love, including its sweetness and its pain, into a single image.

A concrete example:

My dream that I'm battling a ferocious bear might represent psychological 'battles' or conflicts both at home or at work.

your daily psychological battles or conflicts are transfigured/condensed into a bear attacking you in the dream.

1.1.2 displacement

Freudian term for psychic process whereby one psychic figure is relocated in another manifestation or image. Lacan links the work of metonymy to displacement. 

or

where the meaning of one image or symbol gets pushed onto something associated with it, which then displaces the original image.

or

whenever we use a 'safe' person, event, or object as a 'stand-in' to represent a more threatening person, event or object.

a concrete example

an elementary school teacher is sexually molesting me in order to express (and at the same time avoid) my unconscious knowledge that one of my parents sexually molested me.

primary revision、latent content、manifest content、secondary revision

primary revision is the processes occurring when we dream.

manifest contents are those images which appear in one's dreams while latent contents are the actual meanings of these images.

we change the contents of dreams for which we are consciously unaware in order to further protect us from knowing what is too painful to know when we are awake.

1.2 Parapraxis (ˌpærəˈpræksɪs)

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life 

slips of tongue、errors in speech...

1.3 Jokes

Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious

Jokes indicate repressed wishes.

The overarching role of sex

sexual desires + sexual desires ....= Unconscious

sexual desires=majority of repressed ideas.

sexual pleasure

erotogenic zones

mouth as baby feel pleasure by nurturing. 

libido the drive for sexual pleasure

the oral, the anal and the phallic 

major stages of childhood development from age 2-5.（in constant change)

oral stage

soon after birth, the oral stage is associated with incorporation, with taking things in, with knowing no boundaries self and other, inside and outside.

anal stage

anal stage is associated with expelling things, with learning boundaries between inside and outside, and with aggression and anger.

phallic stage

phallic, Freud argues, refers to both penis and clitoris. Phallic stage leads a child toward genital masturbation, and hence to the gateway of adult sexuality.

Three essays on the Theory of Sexuality

Child is polymorphously perverse, a term Freud uses to describe a being whose sexual or libidinal drives are relatively unorganized, and are directed at any and every object that might provide sexual pleasure. 

incestuous child.

from polymorphous perversity to latency period.

from seeking pleasure to keep it at bay.

at puberty to retrieve the sexual pleasure-final stage of sexual development. 

at puberty, sexual drives turn from being autoerotic (that is, masturbatory or directed at one's own body as a source of pleasure) to being directed at an object, another person. These sexual desires also acquire a new aim, which is not just pleasurable stimulation but orgasm.

three erotogenic zones channeled into a reproductive heterosexual intercourse: genital zone alone leave the rest forepleasure. 

The project of psychoanalysis in general is to chart how this polymorphously perverse incestuous desiring animal turns into a self with a firm sense of differentiated gender (masculine or feminine), with sexual and libidinal desires channeled into proper forms (defined as non-incestuous reproductive heterosexuality), and subordinated to the reality principle so that this self can get some work done and not just have sex all the time. 

The main vehicle for the construction of properly gendered and sexual selves is the Oedipus Complex. The Oedipus Complex is what ends the phallic phase, and the polymorphous perverse phase in general, and forces the child into the latency phase.

going through the Oedipus Complex as a developmental stage in childhood turns us from incestuous sexual desire to exogamous (outside the family) sexual desire, hence from a state of nature to one of culture or civilization.

what is 'masculine' is active; what is 'feminine' is passive. Both sexes are 'masculine' in regards to infantile sexuality, which is active in seeking pleasure, especially through masturbation.

Thus the girl, or woman, at puberty has the task of switching primary erotogenic zones, from the clitoris which was the focus of her pleasure in the phallic stage to the vagina, which is to become the focus of her pleasure in adult reproductive heterosexual intercourse in order to become a 'normal' adult. 

The boy, or man, meanwhile gets to stick with his phallic zone and focus his adult sexuality, like his infantile zone and focus his adult sexuality, like his infantile sexuality, on the pleasure he gets from his penis. 

object shifting

boy: from mother to female 

girl: from mother to male 

This double-shifting required of the girl-from clitoris to vagina and from a female body as erotic object to a male boy-creates the potential for a lot of neurosis.

Women, that is, 'proper' women who are oriented solely toward non-incestuous reproductive adult heterosexuality, are pretty neurotic.

libidinal cathexis

his mother 

castration anxiety

the fact that his father, angry at the boy's desire to kill him and have sex with the father's woman, will cut off his penis in revenge.

castration complex

penis envy

direction one:psychosis

two: inferiority to the male.