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Do Literary Works Have an Unconscious. Do Literary Works Have an ‘Unconscious’? ...
Certainly then we can say that literary works do have an unconscious. ...
... The second has to do with a way to ... Freud and Carl Jung's concepts of the unconscious
have provided a ... and for the interpretation of artistic and literary works. ...
... The second has to do with a way to ... Freud and Carl Jung's concepts of the unconscious
have provided a ... and for the interpretation of artistic and literary works. ...
... Freud did develop another theory that many author's have described in their literary
works which included ... of the human body and why we do the things we do. ...
... Þto heap Pelion upon Ossa, it means to do something rather ... ÛHe would have preferred
to ... in a fever to learn classical Greek and Roman literary works so that ...
Submitted by lukemad on April 26, 2007
Category: English
Words: 1927 | Pages: 8
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Do Literary Works Have an ‘Unconscious’? Discuss With Reference to Any Two Works Studied this Past Semester.
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...
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