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Feminist Criticism a farewell to
Feminist criticism in general essay
Feminist criticism in general essay
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Sigmund Freud’s “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” a. In 'Creative Writers and Daydreaming', Freud proposes that fiction is a wish-fulfilling realm in which the artist, disguised as the hero, is guided by his ego to fulfill unsatisfied desires by means of phantasy. This act is a continuation of childhood play as adults are ashamed of their fantasies and repress them. b. This text represents Psychoanalytic criticism. Several assumptions relate back to the belief that the author’s phantasies come from unsatisfied desires and are an attempt to recover childhood pleasure. Psychoanalysis also states that the goal of all behavior is the reduction of tension through release, in accordance with hedonistic principles. Psychoanalytic theory interprets work through the author’s psyche. For instance, Freud highlights childhood development and totalizes literary production as a hedonistic act conducted by the author as a substitute for childhood play. This interpretation relies on the examination of the creator’s unconscious and of the heroes in the creator’s wish-fulfilling world. c. Freud establishes a common element: the human desire to alter their existing and often unsatisfactory or unpleasant reality. All individuals are frustrated within their lives, whether they are non-writers who cannot reclaim their childhood stimulant or as individuals unhappy in their marriages, etc.. Freud contests that desires, repressed to an unconscious state, will emerge in disguised forms: in dreams, in language, in creativity, and in neurotic behavior.. We can look for these occurrences in the future to conduct an analysis of the author’s own repressed desires or fictional characters. Chinua Achebe’s An Image of Africa a. Achebe claims that Heart of Darkn... ... middle of paper ... ...mentalize themselves into dividing forces. Feminism is about equality for men and women. Patriarchal societies instill that women must compete with themselves (men having women fight over them, calling each other sluts, etc.) to rise instead of uniting. This is an example of a common ideology that powers a superstructure—looking for similar instances will broaden analyses using a feminist lens as Marxism lends heavily to feminism criticism. Lorde's essay is an important contribution to feminist discourse, but it is also important to our fundamental approach to life. Not only feminists, but most social movements, and societies, try to gloss over difference. We try repeatedly to "overcome our differences," to unite "despite our differences". We must recognize our differences and understand that these are a potential source of creativity and unity in and of themselves.
Freud presents an interpretation of how individuals fall ill. He states that when individuals have an unpleasant idea they repress these ideas into their subconscious. Here the idea grows and festers and can lead to neurotic behaviors. Through psychoanalysis Freud was able to alleviate these problems but also came to the conclusion that these repressed ideas actually were not the root of the problem but in fact sexual frustration from the patient’s childhood or teenage years is the true cause. Individuals then fall ill when the libido is unsatisfied and refuses to accept that reality can offer them satisfaction. The result is that individuals fall into fantasies in order to properly achieve wish-fulfillment since they cannot seem to find satisfaction in the real world. One can avoid becoming neurotic by channeling these desires into pieces of art. But if they fail they will fall into a neurotic state. While in this neurotic state we begin to regress to our infancy, when obtaining pleasures were easier. Thus, the flight to illness is the easy way out since it allows for an individual to simply bypass the troubles of society, moving to a state where they can instantly obtain pleasure. The illness Nietzsche writes about is bad conscience.
Inspired by Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and his analyses of his own and patients’ psychological behavior, Sigmund Freud developed the Oedipus complex. Freud believed that dreams are suppressed oedipal urges, and that these urges are universal to humankind. Opposition to the theory’s name is common, since many believe that Oedipus Rex has a profounder meaning than Freud asserts. Through the content of the play, Sigmund Freud supports his complex by shining light on Oedipus’s tragic, yet inevitable prophecy.
Lorde believes that white feminists argue about patriarchy and want it to be diminished from society, but how can it when it is white women that are doing the same to other women. How can gender equality be achieved if there is a patriarchal structure within one specific gender? Feminists need to recognise what is happening what it is that’s being ignored. ‘Both white feminist theory and practise need to recognize that white women stand in a power relation as oppressors of black women’ (Carby, 1982: 46) feminisms main arguments and belief all revolve around equality for women, but with a racist patriarchy amongst women this isn’t possible, there is a very visible patriarchal structure within society white men have dominance over black men and th...
In her essay, Audre Lorde argued that feminism was not being equally represented since white woman represented the majority of attendees at the New York Institute conference. Since she was one of two African-American women invited to the conference last minute, the issue of unequal representation for all races of women was brought to her attention. Lorde saw that if there is no difference or better yet diversity amongst feminist how can they hope to overcome a patriarchal structure that oppresses women’s freedom. Lorde's argument is persuasive because she uses rhetorical methods such as author's identity and ethos to get her message about how she feels about feminism and how it should be represented.
Freud, S. (1957b). Some character types met with in psychoanalytic work. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 309–333). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1916)
The professors who composed Psychological Science explain that, “For [Sigmund] Freud, the powerful forces that drive behavior were often in conflict. A key aspect of his thinking was that we are typically unaware of those forces or their conflicts” (Gazzinga et al. 570). To Freud, conflicts in the mind consisted of the never ending battle between the ego, id, and superego. The “id” is the mechanism that drives humans to seek pleasure and avoid pain. The superego is a person’s conscience and morality principle. The “ego” is the mediator between the superego and id. In fact, Freud developed a theory based on analyzing these unconscious struggles which he called the psychoanalytic, sometimes psychodynamic, theory. He recorded peoples’ words and actions to describe their unconscious desires, wishes, fears, and hidden memories. The psychoanalytic theory was later translated into literature as a kind of criticism. This criticism can be applied to any type of literature including dramas. The drama “Naked Lunch” by Michael Hollinger is a good representative of the dramas in which the reader can perceive the unconscious conflicts between the characters through the use of dialogue and non-verbal cues. The reader senses the desires, fears, thoughts, and underlying mechanisms at work behind the conversation and in turn is able to come to a greater understanding of how a person’s word and non-verbal actions describe the person’s subconscious mind.
Traditional interpretation of literature from a psychoanalytic standpoint has relied extensively upon the work of Sigmund Freud. In the case of Dostoevsky, however, this method is both anachronistic and inadequate. Dostoevsky's great works, considered individually or holistically, though fictional, established him as one of the forefathers of psychoanalysis, and a predecessor to Freud.3 Indeed Freud himself acknowledged that "the poets" discovered the unconscious before he did,4 stating further in a letter to Stefan Zweig, "Dostoevsky 'cannot be understood without psychoanalysis- i.e., he isn't in need of it because he illustrates it himself in every character and every sentence.'"5 There is, however, a complementary relationship between Dostoevsky and Freud brought about through the striking clinical accuracy of psychological traits exhibited both individually in Dostoevsky's characters, as well as in reflecting the author's own mental processes. Thus, it is necessary first to examine Freud as a point of departure before looking at modern alternatives of psychoanalytical method.
Dreams are series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. Dreams occur during a certain stage of sleep known as REM. Several different psychologists, including Freud and Hobson, have studied dreams. Psychologists have provided many theories as to what dreams are and the meanings behind them.
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.
“The period from 1700 to 1840 produced some highly sophisticated psychological theorizing that became central to German intellectual and cultural life, well in advance of similar developments in the English-speaking world” (Bell i). Some of the psychologists that have helped German literature, advanced are Sigmund Freud, Karen Horney, and Carl Rodgers. Originally, Sigmund Freud studied personality and developed a theory of neurosis and later, Karen Horney built upon his theory, changing some ideas, making her own theory of neurosis. Using Horney’s newer concepts of neurosis, and additional psychological notions from other psychologists, one can apply these to the German literary work, “The Sufferings of Young Werther.”
The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic principles of Freud’s theories and to raise the main issues.
...st and feminist literary theory have one goal, to challenge the power structures in a society. I believe that there is a relationship between the fight for both a classless society and equality among genders is not possible without the other. Inessa Armand the first leader of the women's department of the 1917 Russian Revolution said that: "If women's liberation is unthinkable without communism, then communism is unthinkable without women's liberation." This simply means patriarchy and all its unwanted baggage cannot be eradicated without uprooting obtaining a classless society. Apart from Emeli Sandé using imagery and sweet voice to create a beautiful compilation, she tells us a simple message which when viewed through these two lenses makes this clearer, has showed me the relationship between the two analytical glasses and it definitely remains my favourite text.
FREUD, S. (2010). THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS, THIRD EDITION. (A.A. BRILL, TRANS.). NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY (ORIGINAL PUBLISHED 1913)
Adichie was born in Nigeria and is most known for giving a TEDxTalk in 2013 about modern feminism. After the overwhelming success of the talk, such as having millions of views on YouTube and being featured in the song “Flawless” by Beyoncé, she decided to publish the speech into an expanded essay named “We Should All Be Feminists.” In this essay, Adichie talks about her life and encounters of sexism from a young age, especially her introduction to the word “feminist” occurring at fourteen. She is having a normal day, playing and arguing with her friend Okoloma, until he “harmlessly” quips, “`You know, you’re a feminist’” (8), which in Nigeria, is not a compliment. She also spends a third of the essay addressing the fact all negativity towards gender inequality has the same root: unwavering tradition. She questions, “What if, in raising our children, we (the parents) focus on ability instead of gender… interest instead of gender” (36)? Simply, if negativity towards the opposite sex is eradicated in a new generation, there will be no more inequality to worry about. She also parallels Wollstonecraft in commenting on the fascinating diversity of males and females. She claims that if men are undeniably strong physically, women should be held in the same
By considering such arguments, psychoanalysis can be said to have no ultra fundamental meaning when assessing an author’s work. For former advocate of this analysis, Frederic...