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The Light Of Freudian Psychology Essay The influence of psychoanalytic theory upon contemporary thought is difficult to overstate, and equally difficult to quantify. Fundamental concepts of a dynamic unconscious, repression, ego, infantile sexuality, and the Oedipus complex have passed into popular discourse. Psychoanalysis is the root of all contemporary forms of psychotherapy, and as a clinical modality has had an enormous impact on the treatment of mental illness and on the fields of psychology and psychiatry, though this influence has been challenged in recent years by the rise of biological psychiatry. Though the scientific validity of its methods and premises has been hotly disputed, neuro-scientists, including Mark Solms, Antonio Damasio, Jaak Panksepp, and Joseph LeDoux, were actively conducting research in the early twenty-first century to correlate psychoanalytic ideas with the latest findings in brain science. In the humanities, psychoanalytic theory has strongly influenced approaches to literary texts, biography, history, creativity, and sociology. Freud himself was the first to apply psychoanalytic principles to the arts, through readings of Wilhelm Jensens novel Gradiva (1903), Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmanns The Sand-Man (1817), and several of William Shakespeares works; and through psycho biographical essays on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Leonardo da Vinci. Freud also explored the implications of his ideas upon anthropology, history, and, perhaps most famously, religion, which Freud considered a primitive, quasi-psychotic projection, and which he considered at length in The Future of an Illusion (1927) and Moses and Monotheism (1939). The poet Wallace Stevens characterized Freuds influence as a whole climate of opinion, and the writings of Freud and other analysts, especially those of Jacques Lacan, have inspired countless artists and thinkers, including Andre Breton, Andre Gide, Benjamin, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Jackson Pollock, Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Slavoj Zizek; and cultural movements such as surrealism, dada, existentialism, deconstruction, and postmodernism. Psychoanalysis and Surrealism: An Exposition: The instincts and unconscious urges of humankind were heavily featured in the works of the surrealists of inter-war Europe. The link between psychoanalysis and the surrealist movement is most evident in the films of the movement. Before examining to what extent the surrealists (in particular, the Spanish film-maker Luis Bunuel) was influenced by Sigmund Freuds writings, I will first briefly present Freuds various models of the mind. Freuds scientific process was anything but static he constantly changed his theoretical framework, as he encountered discrepancies between the theories and his practical experiences during the continuing treatment of patients. The affect/trauma model, a result of Freuds studies of hysteria, focused on the repressed memories of patients. The goal was relief of the symptoms by forcing the patient to remember, a cathartic cure. The dramatic nature of the cure caused this particular version of Freuds work to be prominently featured in Hollywood movies dealing with psychoanalysis. The next stage in Freuds development of a model of the human mind was the topographical model, which he held from 1897 to the early 20s. This model divided the mind into three agencies; the conscious (being the immediately accessible thoughts and feelings), the pre-conscious (not immediately recallable, a reservoir of what can be remembered) and the unconscious (repressed feelings and thoughts which influence actions even though we are not aware of them). Through psychoanalytic treatment the patient can become aware of his repressed motives, making the unconscious conscious. The topographical movement was very much in tune with the Surrealist philosophy on the importance of the irrational. The start of the 1920s saw the emergence of Freuds main project, his structural model. After observing how many patients did not seem to want to get better, Freud came to the conclusion that the topographical model overestimated the importance of instincts. His new personality model consisted of the id, the ego and the super-ego. The id compares broadly with the unconscious, representing aggression and primitive instincts. The id is innate, not learned through socialisation. The ego enables a person to master his instincts; it is the rational part of the personality. Lastly, the super-ego is the part of the ego that is observing and criticising the self. Built up through socialisation and internalising the values of the parents, the super-ego is the moral part of the personality. The surrealist movement arose as a result of the Dadaist movement which existed during the First World War and shortly thereafter. The growing awareness of the horrors of the Great War destroyed any belief in the romantic innocence of the past. One of the results was the surrealists, who inherited from Dada the contempt for traditional bourgeois culture and the classical aesthetics of art for arts sake. Born out of artistic and literary circles and with the writer Andre Breton the closest thing to a leader of the movement, the members of the movement were primarily writers and painters, and not filmmakers. Nevertheless, the surrealist movement was one of the first to acknowledge the importance of the new medium of film. Film was used as inspiration to boost creativity for prose and paintings. Interestingly, the surrealists preferred the popular Hollywood films, because the films were not part of bourgeois art, but of a new anti-art medium. Artists like Man Ray and Hans Richter started experimenting with cinema towards a surreal end. Co-operation between filmmakers and painters also took place, like Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dalis partnership in making Un chien Andalou. The special surrealist sensibility needs to be considered. It was a world view, a philosophical and active position approaching life and art. The surrealists celebrated the unconscious as a liberating force, to escape the deadening pressures of the rational, civilised world. The realistic attitude, according to Breton, clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual or moral advancement (Breton 6). Dreams are more real than reality. The surrealists made use of drugs and hypnotism to reach into the dream-like state of their selves, to see the true reality behind the everyday appearances. Unconventional and subjective, dreams hold no logical and rational restraints to true creativity. The surrealist method of automated writing (ecriture automatique) is pure mental automatism, writing from a passive state, avoiding moral, religious and logical restrictions. This state of true authenticity closely resembles Freuds method of free association. Bunuels early movies Un chien Andalou and Lage dor show the influence of free association and to what great extent surrealism shocked the bourgeois sensibilities of the time. Filled with attacks on the numbing influences of the state and church, Bunuels 1928 debut became a resounding success, much to his chagrin. Bourgeois traditional circles were praising its high art and aesthetics. Bunuel asked how they could, when the film clearly was a passionate call to murder? Bunuel on Un chien Andalous famous eyeball-slitting sequence that opens the film and his career: To produce in the spectator a state which could permit the free association of ideas, it was necessary to provoke a near traumatic shock at the very beginning of the film. The irrational montage that follows necessitates a purging of rationality, relying on emotional and unconscious impact to carry the film. Incongruent jumps in time and space abound, like when the protagonist is shot by his alter-ego, only to in the falling motion end up in a park, briefly clutching the shoulder of a statue-like woman. In trying to make sense of the images, the viewer must negotiate with the unconscious. The young man is fighting his own unconscious urges for the young woman. In one remarkable scene he strains against the combined weight of a piano, a donkey and two priests an absurdly humorous representation of the repressive forces of bourgeois culture and religion. While Un chien Andalou can be seen as a piece of cinematic poetry, Bunuel used the dramatic language of cinema to its fullest in the revolutionary Lage dor in 1930. Lage dor, Bunuels next movie, has the main character of Modot incarnating the wild, untamed power of love and sexuality that threatens the institutions of family, state and church. The lovers Modot and Lya Lys are constantly thwarted in their unacceptable passion by society. Modot can be seen as representing the unconscious in its free, anarchic aspect, while the repressive society is the aggregate super-ego. Modot has no tolerance for the trappings of society; they are but obstacles to the fulfilment of his desires. An example is the way he slaps the mother at the dinner party, and when he kicks the blind man. Eros is closely tied up with Thanatos. A particularly poetic piece of surrealism is the scene where Lya Lys is gazing into her mirror, which reflects a cloudy sky. The sounds of wind, bells and barking link the two lovers together even if they are miles apart. Rarely has the power of the unconscious to overcome the boundaries of reality been more brilliantly evoked. Freudian psychology played an important, if somewhat unacknowledged, role in surrealist thinking. However, the surrealists were highly eclectic, they borrowed from Freud whatever suited their purpose in whichever form they saw fit. Their goal was to change the view of mankind, not to offer any objective, scientific contribution to the field of psychology. The very idea of a controlled science was alien to them, held that their own ideas were more subtle and profound than that of any science. Even if the method of automated writing closely resembles free association, the surrealists never directly acknowledged Freud for it. The difference between the two positions can be seen in that Freuds method of free association held that one should keep to the original notion that started the association, whereas the surrealists were vehemently opposed to this idea. For them, this was to unnecessarily repress and limit the expression of a free spirit. The surrealists were influenced by Freuds topographical model, before the development of the structural model of the 20s. The concept of the super-ego in the structural model was exactly what the surrealists wanted to destroy, the image of the moralistic bourgeois society. Its very existence was anathema to the surrealist world view. It follows that parts of the movement (accentuated after the increasing politicisation of the movement in the 30s into communist and non-communist camps) were suspicious of Freuds bourgeois nature in his theories on the super-ego. Direct meetings between Freud and the surrealists were somewhat of a disappointment to both parties, the surrealists were let down over the fact that Freud privately was quite the bourgeois gentleman, whereas Freud was dismayed by the frivolous nature of the surrealists. The unconscious as a liberating force is central to the films of Bunuel and to the surrealist movement in general. For the surrealists the unconscious is a spring-well of pure art, devoid of the degenerating effects of reality. Bunuels style thrived on bringing the unconscious to the surface of reality, thus enmeshing it with reality. As opposed to this central theme in surrealist productions, Freud postulated a sharp divide between reality and dreams. The Freudian concepts of condensation and displacement were also used widely in surrealism, again unacknowledged. Still, Breton gave thanks to Freud in his Manifesto of Surrealism for his discoveries on the mental world. Applauding Freud for applying his faculties to the study of dreams, Breton writes that it is inadmissible that this considerable portion of psychic activity has still today been so grossly neglected (Breton 10). Whereas the surrealists examined the dream-state for its freedom from logic restraints, Freud studied dreams for uncovering problems evident in the awakened state. For instance, the Freudian psychologies of dreams play an important part in Bunuels films. Both Belle de Jour and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie make frequent use of the dream-vehicle. In Belle de Jour the dreams act as wish-fulfilment of the repressed sexual desires of Severine, and in Discreet Charm the dreams of the bourgeoisie represent their fear of the unmasking of their superficial world (witness the scene where the bourgeoisie suddenly find themselves eating dinner on the stage of a theatre). The surrealist view of the unconscious is indebted to the unconscious of Freuds topographical model. The difference is in the motives and reasoning behind the use of the unconscious. Freud wanted to understand the human psyche, while the surrealists were on a mission of liberation and freedom. Perhaps both parties had more in common than they cared to admit, regardless of their differing cultural framework. WORKS CITED: 1) Anzieu, D. Freuds Self-Analysis. Translated by Peter Graham. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1986. 2) Breton, A. Manifestoes of surrealism 1969. 3) Mellen, J (ed). The worlds of Luis Bunuel 1978.