Intro Chapter

Question 1

What did Freud say to challenge accepted assumptions of childhood sexual development?

Answer 1

Development is diphasic (infantile sexuality, latency period, post-pubertal sexuality); Sexuality is constructed; Sexuality is not necessarily heteronormative and aimed towards reproduction.

Question 2

What are instincts?

Answer 2

Instincts are representations that exist on the border between the psychic and the somatic.

Question 3

What four aspects can instincts have?

Answer 3

Source, pressure, aim, and object.

Question 4

What four types of change (or vicissitudes) can instincts undergo?

Answer 4

Reversal into their opposites (activity to passivity, love to hate, etc); Turning around onto the subjects own self; Repression; Sublimation

Question 5

Vicissitudes

Answer 5

A change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.

Question 6

Sublimation

Answer 6

Sublimation involves redirecting unacceptable desires or impulses into socially acceptable activities.

Question 7

What are the stages of sexual development?

Answer 7

Oral, anal, phallic, genital.

Question 8

How is the transition from phallic to genital stage mediated?

Answer 8

The Oedipus and castration complexes mediate the transition from phallic to genital state.

Question 9

Briefly explain the Oedipus complex.

Answer 9

Before the genital stage, children are sexually undifferentiated; every child is a little man who rivals their father for the possession of the mother.

Question 10

How does the male child resolve his Oedipus complex?

Answer 10

The male child resolves his Oedipus complex by accepting the father’s threat of castration, identifying with his father and finding a mother-substitute.

Question 11

How does the Oedipus complex differ for little girls from little boys?

Answer 11

The female child must change her erotogenic zone from clitoris to vagina, as well as the love object from mother to father (since all children begin sexually undifferentiated). This process takes place when she perceives that she is already castrated. This means that she must go through the castration complex before the Oedipus complex (opposite from boys), rivalling her mother for the possession of the father or his gift (a baby).

Question 12

In what order do female children experience the Oedipus/castration complexes?

Answer 12

Female children must experience the castration complex first, as they must become aware that they do not have a penis in order to change their love object. Therefore, the female child goes through the castration complex, which gives way to the Oedipus complex where she vies for her father against her mother.

Question 13

What are the developmental lines of the male Oedipus complex?

Answer 13

Active (leading to heterosexuality), and passive (leading to homosexuality).

Question 14

What are the developmental lines of the female Oedipus complex?

Answer 14

Sexual inhibition or neurosis, masculinity complex, or normal femininity.

Question 15

How did feminists react to Freud’s theory of female sexuality?

Answer 15

Feminists objected to Freud’s theories as they were heavily male-centered.

Question 16

What is the pleasure principle?

Answer 16

Every individual seeks the discharge of excessive energy or libido as quickly as possible.

Question 17

What is the death drive?

Answer 17

All organisms seek to return to an inorganic state (i.e. to die) in their own fashion.

Question 17

What is the reality principle?

Answer 17

The individual is willing to abandon small gains of immediate pleasure if in the long term the individual will be able to secure much greater pleasure.

Question 18

What is narcissistic love?

Answer 18

Narcissistic love identifies with the object on the basis of similarity to self.

Question 19

What is anaclitic love?

Answer 19

Anaclitic love seeks to possess the object on the basis of the object’s ability to fulfil a need.

Question 20

In what way did Freud gender narcissistic and anaclitic love?

Answer 20

Freud considers narcissistic love to be typically feminine and anaclitic love typically masculine. Men love; women want to be loved.

Question 21

What is an example of literature that addresses the complex relationships between narcissistic and anaclitic love?

Answer 21

Petrarchan sonnets.

Question 22

How does mourning work?

Answer 22

The task of mourning is to detach libido from the lost love object by bringing up and setting aside the hopes and memories attached to the dead. In mourning, the libido is displaced onto another object.

Question 23

How does melancholia work?

Answer 23

In melancholia, the libido is withdrawn into the self through identification with the lost love object. In melancholia, the love for the object is transformed into hate for the self, thus creating ambivalence.

Question 24

What is the core of the unconscious made up of?

Answer 24

The core of the unconscious is made up of repressed infantile desires.

Question 25

In what way do repressed desires show symptomatically in a person's life?

Answer 25

Symptoms can be seen through the formation of a compromise such as dreams, parapraxes, and neurotic symptoms.

Question 26

Define parapraxes

Answer 26

A parapraxis (parapraxes pl.) is an error in speech, memory, or action that is thought to be influenced by unconscious desires or thoughts.

Question 27

What was Freud's metaphor for censorship of the repression?

Answer 27

Freud likened censorship to the distribution of manuscripts. Medieval manuscripts do not alert you to the fact that you need the original text to identify redacted material. Scribes, when they copied out a text, did not tell you that they changed a text. The scribes this that they are making the text better by redacting material. Additionally, many of the texts being transcribed were written in Latin, but the monks likely did not know Latin. The monk would come across references in the text that he did not understand, so the monk did the best he could and tried to make it make sense when he wrote it, so he performed a kind of censorship by censoring out the difficult bits.

Question 28

What is neurosis?

Answer 28

Neurotics accept the threat of castration, but their repressed desires return as physical symptoms, obsessive mental symptoms, or phobias.

Question 29

What is psychosis?

Answer 29

Psychotics disavow the threat of castration and attempt to replace the reality of castration with a fantasy world that they project onto the real world (paranoia).

Question 30

What is perversion?

Answer 30

Perverts avoid making a decision on the threat of castration by adopting fetishes - objects that, as substitutes for the mother's penis, at once acknowledge and deny the threat.

Question 31

Define cybernetic.

Answer 31

The psyche is a complex feedback loop mechanism.

Question 32

What does the unconscious contain?

Answer 32

The unconscious contains all those representations that cannot enter consciousness or that the consciousness has repressed.

Question 33

What does the preconscious contain?

Answer 33

The preconscious contains whatever isn't at the moment conscious but can become conscious (your mother's phone number, for example).

Question 34

Define "primary processes"

Answer 34

Primary processes is defined as exemption from mutual contradiction, mobility of cathexes, timelessness, and replacement of external with psychic reality?

Question 35

True or False: "No" affects the unconscious.

Answer 35

False - there is no "No" in the unconscious.

Question 36

What is the id?

Answer 36

The id is the "location" of repressed desire.

Question 37

What is the superego?

Answer 37

The superego represents morals. It is an expansion of the ideal reality that the ego creates.

Question 38

What is the ego?

Answer 38

The ego is the balance between the id and the superego - it is a compromise. However, it is dominated by the superego and enslaved to the id.