Unconscious in James Joyce's Dubliners and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
Although the notion of a human unconscious preceded Freud, his work is certainly most useful for explaining what it actually is. With an understanding of a human unconscious we can apply some of its characteristics to the literature studied thus far. Much of Freud's work on the unconscious is contained within his book The Interpretation of Dreams' but a concise definition is hard to come by. Essentially Freud believes that the unconscious is the part of the mind that is beyond consciousness which nevertheless has a strong influence on our actions' . Dreams are, for Freud, a very important tool in studying the unconscious; he believes that they are one of the very few times when repressed' material can move from the unconscious into the conscious mind. However, these thoughts have been repressed for a reason and therefore they must be disguised through, what Freud calls, displacement and condensation. Freud describes displacement using the example of the Sappho- dream of my patient, ascending and descending, being upstairs and down, is made the central point; the dream, however, is concerned with the danger of sexual relations with persons of low degree.' Condensation is seen because the dream is meagre, paltry and laconic in comparison with the range and copiousness of the dream-thoughts.' Nevertheless, dreams are not the only way repressed material finds an outlet; Freud refers to the parapraxis' or slips of the tongue, pen or unintended actions' (Beginning Theory 97) as another way for repressed material to seep out into the conscious mind.
Therefore, when discussing the question of an existence of a literary unconscious we must regard it as a kind of dream. Some will argue that literature is not similar to dreams, such as David M. Rein. Rein who believes that the creator of a dream performs spontaneously
The author of a story plans deliberately'. However, the similarities between dreams and literature seem to be evidence enough for us to analyse them as such.
James Joyce's Dubliners' and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre' can be argued to have an unconscious in that there is similarities between Freud's view of the unconscious and the text itself. Certainly the individual stories of Dubliners' seem to greatly resemble dreams; the stories, much like dreams occasionally seem unsystematic and puzzling. For instance in the very first story of the book The Sisters', many events go unexplained.
In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud proposed that dreams serve as a gateway between a dreamers’ conscious and his subconscious thoughts (Mccurdy, 1946). Many ideas and information were condensed into a single dream. The dream displaced important parts and insignificant parts of the dream to confuse the dreamer. Certain objects would be introduced into the dream to symbolize the embryonic substance of the dream (Sprengnether, 2003). The dreamer would then comprehend the dream, thus generating the content of th...
The fantastic tale “Was It a Dream?” by Guy de Maupassant is a story narrated from the first point of view, in which the main character, who remains anonymous, describes his desperation and overwhelming grief since the loss of his loved one. He also relates a supernatural event he experienced, while in the cemetery, in which he finds out the truth about his significant other’s feelings but refuses to accept it, or at least tries to ignore it. Maupassant’s readers may feel sympathy towards the narrator as they perceive throughout the story his tone of desperation, and are able to get to the conclusion that he was living a one-sided relationship. Maupassant achieves these effects in the readers through the use of figures of speech, like anonymity, symbolism and imagery, and the structured he employed in the story.
The first basis of Freud 's belief system was found in the existence of the personal unconscious. The mind is a substance that incorporates much more than the simple conscious component. The unconscious component is the much larger than the
I wrote this paper to get a better understanding of Sigmund Freud’s method and theory of dream analysis. The purpose of the paper will be to show the principals of Freud’s dream related theory that focuses on the physiology, interpretation, and psychology of dreams and to explain concepts such as latent and manifest content of dreams, the part of unconscious process, and the nature of dreams role in the determination of dream content. I would like to explore Sigmund Freud’s explanations of psycho-analytic and psychological theory and method to reveal whether Freud’s continuous revising to sexually based conclusions are able to support his own arguments. One of his themes was the amount of activity that goes on in our brains without us even realizing it is happening. Freud studied dreams looking for a better understanding of certain features of our personalities, mainly the features that developed into disorders and psychological problems. He believed nothing a human being did, could happen by chance, and every action, if it was big or small, was in some way motivated by the unconscious mind.
In 1900 , an Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud produced a work entitled The Interpretation of Dreams, reviewing the idea that dreams allow psychic examination, that the dreams that are happening contain some sort of psychological meaning which can be brought on by interpretation. Freud says that every dream will release itself as a emotional structure, full of importance, and one which may be assigned to a designated place in the psychic activities. According to Freud's original thoughts dreams have two contents, a manifest content which is the dream that one actually experiences and a hidden content which is the meaning of the dream as discovered by interpretation.
The psychoanalytic perspective was first discovered by Sigmund Freud which uncovers the nature of the mind and leads to the discovery of the unconscious. The unconscious is layered underneath as the proprietary element of the individuals mind, it is built over time and is only revealed through dreams, and slips. The development of the unconscious can be built at an early stage, as it shapes our personality. The individual does not have access to the unconscious as it’s deep in the mind and we find these events and feelings unacceptable for our conscious.
Freud’s understanding of the unconscious is organized into three echelons: the conscious mind, the preconscious mind and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind involves everything we are cognizant of. The preconscious mind signifies regular recollections. The unconscious mind contains emotions, reflections, memoirs and compulsions that are unknown to our conscious perception. Along with the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious, there are the three additional elements to Freud’s structure of personality: the id, ego and superego. Unlike Freud, Jung had a more optimistic theory of the unconscious.
Oprah Winfrey once said, “The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.” But, what actually is a dream and what do dreams really have to do with one’s everyday life? In essence, a dream is a series of mental images and emotions occurring during slumber. Dreams can also deal with one’s personal aspirations, goals, ambitions, and even one’s emotions, such as love and hardship. However, dreams can also give rise to uneasy and terrible emotions; these dreams are essentially known as nightmares. In today’s society, the concept of dreaming and dreams, in general, has been featured in a variety of different mediums, such as literature, film and even music. While the mediums of film and music are both prime examples of this concept, the medium of literature, on the other hand, contains a much more diverse set of examples pertaining to dreams and dreaming. One key example is William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While the portrayal of dreams, in general, plays a prominent role in Shakespeare’s play, the exploration of many aspects of nature, allows readers to believe that dreams are merely connected to somewhat unconventional occurrences.
It is universally known that dreams are full of meanings and emotions. In Freud’s theory, all dreams are wish fulfillments or at least attempts at wish fulfillment. The dreams are usually presented in an unrecognizable form because the wishes are repressed. Freud proposes there are two levels in the structure of dreams, the manifest contents and the latent dream-thoughts. The manifest dream, a dream with understandable contents, is a substitute-formation that hides latent dream-thoughts, which are the abstract ideas in dreams. This translation of latent dream-thoughts to the manifest dream-content is defined by Freud as “dream-work”. Dream-work consists of certain types of transformation.
Psychology, neuroscience try to explain them, 2012). He studied dreams to better understand aspects of personality as they relate to pathology. Freud believed that every action is motivated by the unconscious at a certain level. In order to be successful in a civilized society, the urges and desires of the unconscious mind must be repressed. Freud believed that dreams are manifestations of urges and desires that are suppressed in the unconscious. Freud categorized the mind into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. When one is awake, the impulses if the id are suppressed by the superego, but during dreams, one may get a glimpse into the unconscious mind, or the id. The unconscious has the opportunity to express hidden desires of the id during dreaming. Freud believed that the id can be so disturbing at times that the id’s content can be translated into a more acceptable form. This censor leads to a sometimes confusing and strange dream image. According to Freud, the reason one may struggle to remember a dream is because the superego protects the conscious mind from the disturbance of the unconscious mind (Dream Theories,
Based on On Dreams, written by Sigmund Freud, and Spellbound, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, provide the most psychological significant aspect of dreams through the theory of dreams made by Freud. I partially agree with Freud’s theory on dreams and the dreaming process. Dreams have the ability to form a bridge from reality to transfer over to the unconscious mindset. Throughout his article, On Dreams, he gives explanations behind his theory.
During the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, a psychologist named Sigmund Freud welcomed the new age with his socially unacceptable yet undoubtedly intriguing ideologies; one of many was his Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams. Freud believed that dreams are the gateway into a person’s unconscious mind and repressed desires. He was also determined to prove his theory and the structure, mechanism, and symbolism behind it through a study of his patients’ as well as his own dreams. He contended that all dreams had meaning and were the representation of a person’s repressed wish. While the weaknesses of his theory allowed many people to deem it as merely wishful thinking, he was a brilliant man, and his theory on dreams also had many strengths. Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind enabled him to go down in history as the prominent creator of Psychoanalysis.
Dreams play a major role in the story, and, throughout the history of literature, sleep has often been consid...
Porter, Laurence M. The Interpretation of Dreams: Freud's Theories Revisited. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1987. Print.
In terms of the unconscious and conscious, Freud situates these conceptions in a topographic model of the mind. He divided it into two systems called the unconscious and the preconscious. Their knowledge in the unconscious system is repressed and unavailable to consciousness without overcoming resistances (e.g., defense mechanisms). Thereby, the repression does not allow unconscious knowledge to be completely aware; rather, it is construed by means of concealing and compromise, but only interpretable through its derivatives dream and parapraxes that overcome resistance by means of disguise and compromise. Within the preconscious system, the contents could be accessible, although only a small portion at any given moment. Unconscious thought is characterized by primary process thinking that lacks negation or logical connections and favors the over-inclusions and 'just-as' relationships evident in condensed dream images and displacements. Freud asserted that primary process of thinking was phylogenetically, and continues to be ontogenetically, prior to secondary process or logical thought, acquired later in childhood and familiar to us in our waking life (1900, 1915a).