Freud question

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What's infantile wish fulfillment?? I think I know what it is, but I want to be sure bfore I make a fool of myself.

― cybele (cybele), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:17 (twenty-two years ago)

please help!

― cybele (cybele), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Infantile Wish Fulfillment? Like reclaiming one's place in the womb maybe? Fuck, I don't know, I was an English Major.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:23 (twenty-two years ago)

i know what wish fulfillment is, i can't remember what the infantile bit is...

― cybele (cybele), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:27 (twenty-two years ago)

isn't it just the impulses that freud traces back to subconscious childhood urges?

― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:37 (twenty-two years ago)

"the social functions of religious institutions, the Freudian notion
that belief in God is the result of infantile wish-fulfillment" from a google search. all the references to it that i find are about man's belief in god being an "infantile wish." It's just another made up idea like all of Freud's thinking, are they still teaching his crap?

― D Aziz (esquire1983), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:38 (twenty-two years ago)

the 'infantile' part in that example comes from the freudian belief in our subconscious childhood desire for a protector

― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:40 (twenty-two years ago)

i think another key component to 'infantile' is the attached notion that it can be outgrown

― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:41 (twenty-two years ago)

It might have something to do with the "oceanic feeling," a feeling of unmediated connection between your own consciousness and the world. Freud, if I remember correctly, says this feeling is embodied in the infant's relationship with the mother. The baby wants food, the baby cries, the mother comes and gives the baby food. When the baby cries and the mother doesn't show up, then the baby begins to develop a sense of itself as a discrete entity separate from the rest of the world. Infantile wish fulfillment may be a kind of solipsistic desire for the world to correspond with your own individual consciousness.
I'm not sure, though. It's been a while since I've read any Freud.

― Prude (Prude), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Here is the context...in Six Feet Under, Margaret Chenowith describes the Nathaniel and Isobel books as presenting a pair of orphans reliant on each other to foil the plans of an evil nurse bent on returning them to an orphanage ‘but they always manage to outsmart her. Typical infantile wish fulfillment.’

― cybele (cybele), Friday, 27 February 2004 05:47 (twenty-two years ago)

hm. that seems to fit more when you take it at face value rather than as a freud reference.

― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 27 February 2004 06:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Ironically enough.. English departments are where they are still teaching this crap. Yeah, I think the Six Feet Under reference is not seriously Freudian theory.

― daria g (daria g), Friday, 27 February 2004 17:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Freud Bluffing It Guide: "Well, Freud would say that means you want to have sex with your mom."

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Friday, 27 February 2004 17:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Ironically enough.. English departments are where they are still teaching this crap.

Because no one in any english department has the time or inclination to keep abreast of what's current in psychology, I reckon. Hell, a lot of people don't even know what's current in english.

― Prude (Prude), Friday, 27 February 2004 18:18 (twenty-two years ago)

For example, we've dropped "k" from the alphabet.

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Friday, 27 February 2004 18:18 (twenty-two years ago)

And I said "reckon!" Argh! I'm such a square!

― Prude (Prude), Friday, 27 February 2004 18:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Let's just put it this way...
Freud smoked 15 cigars a day.

― natasha lushina, Friday, 27 February 2004 20:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Prude, you're familiar with Lacan's rereading of Freud's infant development stuff too, yeah? 'Oceanic feeling'=l'omlette etc..

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 20:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually, I'm not. I read Civilization and Its Discontents a while ago, and he mentions the oceanic feeling there as it pertains to religious experience. What does Lacan say about it?

― Prude (Prude), Friday, 27 February 2004 20:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey--just trying to make some connections here....

― cybele (cybele), Friday, 27 February 2004 20:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I know it's not serious Freudian theory and I'm not trying to use it to further understand the show...I'm interested more in exactly what you're pointing out--why is this stuff still being name dropped all over the place? Why, in shows like Six Feet Under and Frasier (for crying out loud) does Freud make and appearance as legitimate psychology? Bernard and Margaret Chenowith spout Freudian analytical jargon constantly on the show.

― cybele (cybele), Friday, 27 February 2004 21:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Prude, Check out his "Mirror Stage" which is the first chapter in 'Ecrits'. I think you'll love it. He basically talks about the infant's comprehending of "itself" in the mirror as the basis for subjectivity and the impossible desire for the self as idealized in the reflection. It's related to Freud's "fort, da" game where the infant sees himself in the mirror, but then hides away from his reflection, saying "baby gone" as a game of control and a way to deal with the mother's occasional absence (probably off enacting the primal scene with that asshole who keeps her away from him! i.e. dad). Interestingly, dolphins also recognize (or misrecognize as Lacan might put it) their own reflections.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 21:01 (twenty-two years ago)

The mirror statge does rule.

― cybele (cybele), Friday, 27 February 2004 21:05 (twenty-two years ago)

yes it does. also, it's meant to be a metaphor for what the child is going through as he is ushered into language as a subject - i.e. it's not necessarily a universal literal event, but the effect is the same.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 21:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Never mind what Lacan said, he went senile and his followers thought he was just being even more brilliant.

A child fantasizes about all kinds of things - marrying his or her opposite sex parent, sucking on the teat of the universe forever, making the cosmos bow down before its primal urges, smearing the cosmos with faeces, having mummy bring you whatever you want when you cry etc. Fantasies of omnipotence.

To hold on to these hopes in adulthood is infantile. We need to have encountered the reality principle a bit better by then, one hopes, and sublimated these very basic urges into blogs etc, where we still fantasise about omnipotence and the traling of clouds of glory, but within a more socially acceptable framework.

So infantile wish fulfillment is where an adult actually does fulfill one of these basic, id-driven, polymorpheously perverse fantasies. Many gurus are like this. They have been protected from the reality principle by their over-indulgent mothers. They grow up and become big babies, using their disciples to indulge and consummate their infantile wishes.

This is connected to the oceanic feeling in this way. The child experience bliss and unity with the cosmos in that whenever a need arises, the mother appears and satisfies it. Sucking on the Good Breast, the child feels warm, blissful and unified with the mother. Later, the Good Breast (or Good Mother) may be idealised as a feminine principle of universal bliss and compassion in which one can be absorbed, cossetted and protected. The feeling of bliss that results is intense and is felt as a profound religious enlightenment. All gurus have oceanic feelings of unity with the universe, which cannot be maintained without devotees. This is how society makes big babies.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Friday, 27 February 2004 21:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't see how this conflicts with pre-senile Lacan's theory - also "Since I Left You" is not merely turntablist collage! ;)

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 21:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Spencer Chow, you are too witty to live.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Friday, 27 February 2004 21:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Thank you oh so much. This makes a great deal of sense given that the example of Nathaniel and Isobel (running away from the malevalent nurse) would have been a good and realistic model for Brenda and Billy to follow. The psychological torture they both go through during their childhoods prevents them from gaining an understanding of "reality"--thus, Margaret Chenowith's statement that Nathaniel and Isobel were just "infantile wish fulfillment" is a titch ironic.

― cybele (cybele), Friday, 27 February 2004 21:20 (twenty-two years ago)

there is a freud movie on arte tonight

freud movies: search and destroy, please

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:02 (twenty-two years ago)

bill & ted!

― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:04 (twenty-two years ago)

are there any movies where freud appears like a deus ex machina to solve everyone's problems?

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:05 (twenty-two years ago)

There's a great essay which posits the cat in the movie 'Babe' as a psychoanalyst.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:09 (twenty-two years ago)

re: persistence of psychoanalytic theory in literature studies has to do with the connection-finding inherent in both, yes?

― Leee the Whitey (Leee), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:14 (twenty-two years ago)

OMG totally, you're so right! I never saw that!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:18 (twenty-two years ago)

actually, I don't think I understood that.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:22 (twenty-two years ago)

From what I understand of Freudian psychoanalysis (I read about it in a book!), it's all/mainly/something about symbologies and metaphors, right? Interpreting/reading some deeper meaning from a person's speech and impulses and such.

― Leee the Whitey (Leee), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:36 (twenty-two years ago)

sure, textual analysis in litcrit is very much like psychoanalysis - reading the subject's speech.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:40 (twenty-two years ago)

It's 1993 and I'm back in grad school again NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Ned, please listen to this.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:51 (twenty-two years ago)

When I get home, I'm about to leave work.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:52 (twenty-two years ago)

the joke'll be too old by then!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Well hold on...

*reads link*

When the blood begins to flow
And there's nowhere else to go
I feel complete
In a grad room seat.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Freudian movies -

Eyes Wide Shut
Apocalyse Now

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Saturday, 28 February 2004 02:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Crash

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 28 February 2004 03:13 (twenty-two years ago)

The Night Porter!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 28 February 2004 03:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Peeping Tom

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 28 February 2004 03:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Cf the Mekons, "Dora"

Crash isn't Freudian! No way!

Freudian movies seem to have peaked in the 70s, am I right? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Shining (I don't like either one)..

My take on it as far as litcrit goes.. is that OK, Freud was one of the first to structure and organize an interior life, but his way of doing so just.. lends itself to a lot of really uninteresting analysis that often doesn't really go anywhere.

― daria g (daria g), Saturday, 28 February 2004 04:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Freud was a fucking moron. If he was still around I'd make him lick his shit off my dick and tell him to think about it.

― Le Coq, Saturday, 28 February 2004 04:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I hope this thread goes on forever.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Saturday, 28 February 2004 04:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but isn't it interesting that he thought that a clear and coherent narrative structure for and interior life was actually possible? It's interesting to read his studies (like Dora, for instance) just to witness the inherent challenges of narration.

― cybele (cybele), Saturday, 28 February 2004 04:49 (twenty-two years ago)

There is a Freud biopic made in the mid 50s, starring Monty Cliff.

― anthony, Saturday, 28 February 2004 05:45 (twenty-two years ago)

You said it right there cybele.

Actually there's not much in Freud that wasn't in Shakespeare, the Bible and Greek mythology.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Saturday, 28 February 2004 05:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Freud admitted that writers in the past had noticed lots of valuable things about the way that we suppress latent motives, etc, and if you read "The Psychopathology of the Everyday" then you'll see that he acknowledges that we all treat each other as if we have unconscious motives etc. This part of Freud isn't meant to be new. Freud systematised all those fragmentary observations into a coherent(ish) theory of the unconscious, repression, return of the repressed, etc. That part was new.

― run it off (run it off), Saturday, 28 February 2004 09:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes - plus (in 1898-1905 anyway) he brought biological drives into the equation. That really moved things along as far as motivation was concerned. But neurology is still trying to fill in some giant gaps there - a hundred years later!

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Saturday, 28 February 2004 09:45 (twenty-two years ago)

i think the transplanting of freudian ideas to the realm of literature is intensely problematic for most authors treat a text (book, film, whatever) as though it were the same as the subjects of freud's studies

however i don't really accept many--or any--of freud's conclusons in the realm of psychology, so for me freud isn't interesting as holding any kind of useful truths but rather just as a figure of considerable importance

― amateur!st (amateurist), Saturday, 28 February 2004 13:21 (twenty-two years ago)

i mean he's almost impossible to escape, his concepts have permeated to a very basic level of discourse on feelings and actions

sort of like marx

it's useful i think to go back to a time before these two major figures and attempt to build on a conception of class relations and of the human mind from before their innovations

kant 4ever

― amateur!st (amateurist), Saturday, 28 February 2004 13:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Freud and Marx are far more interesting than Kant for literature (and more besides) precisely because they are part of (along with Nietzsche) what Paul Riceour called "the hermeneutics of suspicion"

― run it off (run it off), Saturday, 28 February 2004 13:50 (twenty-two years ago)

haha you've helped me to give a name to what i think is wrong with contemporary criticism!

― amateur!st (amateurist), Saturday, 28 February 2004 13:50 (twenty-two years ago)

What is 'wrong' with contemporary criticism? And surely you don't mean the entire industry, from New Left Review through to the New Criterion?

― run it off (run it off), Saturday, 28 February 2004 14:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Freud Bluffing It Guide: "Well, Freud would say that means you want to have sex with your mom."
-- The Huckle-Buck

Actually, Freud was having sex with your mom. You can thank him for the term "babymama"

― Skottie, Saturday, 28 February 2004 15:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Girl cuts her own body over and over.

Huckle-Buck says "Well, Freud would say that means you want to have sex with your mom."

Very convincing, I'm sure.

― run it off (run it off), Saturday, 28 February 2004 15:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually, the entire basis of Freudian psychology is that all people have a unconscious desire to have sex with Huckle-Buck's mom. For many of them, this desire has been realized. Hence, wish-fulfillment. At least, this is what everyone's saying, so I'm spreading it.

― Skottie, Saturday, 28 February 2004 15:46 (twenty-two years ago)

The thing is, Freudian concepts were a big part of literature and theatre long before Freud came on the scene and systematised the whole thing. Even if you go back to the Greeks and Hebrews, there are almost all the Freduian mechanisms being used as the cornerstones of storytelling, again and again. Freud himself was a fine writer, a frustrated author perhaps.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Sunday, 29 February 2004 02:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I just killed this thread didn't I. Talk about oedipal acting out.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Sunday, 29 February 2004 06:20 (twenty-two years ago)

"There's a man here who thinks he can help you!"
"Freud?"
"No, he's a scientist."
"Freud's a scientist."
"It's not Freud!"

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Sunday, 29 February 2004 09:26 (twenty-two years ago)

There's some weird kind of historical perspective in the music mole's Athenian Freudianism. Freudian mechanisms centuries before Freud are not Freudian mechanisms, not only because of the obvious point that Frued hadn't systematised them but also because before Freud they weren't considered to be mechanisms. The idea of conceptual, psychological and unconscious mechanisms is modern, industrial, Freudian.

But as I said before, Freud drew on this writing and used some of its terminology, characters etc, in his development of a new systematic theory. That does not mean that the Greeks knew all of this in advance; Freud deploys familiar references from literature in a new way. This is like saying that Newton didn't very much when he theorised gravity because there was an ancient idea of the magical force of the earth to gather everything up in the end.

― run it off (run it off), Sunday, 29 February 2004 09:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Freud also got a lot of metaphors from hydraulics. Flush toilets were the new and exciting thing in Vienna at the time.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Sunday, 29 February 2004 10:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Another big influence on Freud - Hartman's 'Philosophy of the Unconscious (circa 1868? not sure). Also Kabbalah. But that's a whole other minefield, Freud and Kabbalah. Kabbalah is a minefield on its own, let alone when you start bringing Freud into it!

Mechanisms were definitely all the rage at the time for the Victorians, run it off is right - and mechanism still is all the rage, and rightly so in my opinion. Then you look at the earliest Pali Buddhist texts and go, hmmm, maybe the idea of total mental causality isn't so new fangled after all...

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Sunday, 29 February 2004 10:30 (twenty-two years ago)

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