MDSA01H3 Lecture 7: MDSA01 Lecture 7
MDSA01
Lecture 7 – May 31, 2018
Psychoanalytic Analysis
- Largely about desire—development, fulfillment, lack of desire
Why do media studies scholars adopt a psychoanalytic framework to analyze media artifacts?
• Repressed or lost desires influence the creation of media artifacts and explain the mental drives
activated by those artifacts.
• This approach is generally grounded in:
o The genesis of individual psychology
o The psychology of the media artifact itself (what kind of desires it activates)
o The ways in which the two interact in the process of media consumption
• The ways in which we seek pleasure in fulfillment of drives and desires
o The pleasure of principle (we are pleasure-seeking creatures)
o The lengths to which we will go to achieve the satisfaction, to fulfill that pleasure of principle
o The variability of satisfaction
• The ways in which social constraints prohibit us from fulfilling certain desires in certain ways
o Some ways might not be socially acceptable
o Civilization limits our pleasure of principle, which causes our sexual tension
o The reality principle – appropriate sating’s of our desires within the social constraints
Two Key Psychoanalysts:
1) Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
o Freudian Psychoanalysis
o Psychoanalysis is talking
therapy
o Freud (Sexual
Development/Oedipus
Complex)
o The structure of personality
(iceberg model)
▪ Ego
▪ Id
▪ Superego
o Human mind is influenced
more by the unconscious level
than the conscious level
o Freud’s Model of the Human
Psyche
▪ Perceptional Consciousness
• Conscious awareness provided by your senses
▪ Pre-Conscious
• Things easily called to your conscious mind
▪ Conscious Mind
• Perceptional consciousness + pre-conscious
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
o ID
▪ Associated with the Pleasure Principle – the uncontrollable human drive to satisfy desire,
including libido, human sexual desire
▪ The one and only urge of Id is towards satisfaction
▪ “It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality”
▪ Doesn’t care about regulations; wild side
o SUPEREGO
▪ Associated with the Reality Principle – the constant curbing of desire according to
possibility; laws, both written and unwritten; and social convention
▪ Mediates between the ego and id
▪ Limits the id, but lets the id become ego to satisfy the id
o EGO
▪ Acts according to the reality principle and seeks to please the id’s drive in realistic ways
The boundary between the conscious
and unconscious is permeable.
The human mind is influence more by the unconscious level than
the conscious level
The unconscious can reveal itself through…
• Dreams
o Symbolism of dreams, what dreams meant
• Slips of the Tongue (Freudian Slips)
o You meant what you didn’t mean to say
2) Jacque Lacan (1901-1981)
o Lacanian Psychoanalysis
o Lacan (Induction into Language/The Symbolic
Order) or sense of loss
▪ we learn how to speak and
conceptualize
o Borromean Rings – Real, Imaginary, Symbolic
▪ Imaginary – fantasy
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
