MDSA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Sexual Objectification, Male Gaze, Mirror Stage
Chapter 7 – Psychoanalytic Analysis
Overview
- Drives – somatic demands upon the mind
- consideration of how the mid registers the body’s internal, biological needs and
transforms them into motivating forces or drives
opleasure principle – different drives arise from different sources and seek out
achievement of these objects
variability of objects and aims distinguish drive from hard wired instinct
- reality principle – the constant curbing of drives according to possibility, law or social
convention
- interplay between drive and realistic limits placed on that activity = human mental
structure
Interplay between drive and reality
- drive blocked in achievement, mind copes with frustration by repressing or submerging
the wish for the object into the unconscious
omental screen behind which the individual cannot clearly or consciously
recognize
orepression – the immersion of a drive beneath the unconscious
temporarily relieves the sense of frustration -> drive always waits for an
opportunity to make itself known again in either the pre-conscious or to
consciousness
pre-conscious = link between unconscious and consciousness
orepressed drives come up to consciousness via dream
- ID, ego and superego
oID: part of mind present from birth -> source of drives regulated by pleasure
principle
oEgo: part of the ID closest to consciousness that develops as the individual
becomes aware of reality
Curbs drives
oSuperego: “borrowed forces” that allow the ego to accomplish regulations
Houses the individual’s understandings of morality and cultural propriety
Equips ego with common sense, shame and other tools that encourage
the repression and/or redirection of drives
Freudian Development
- Human motivation results from 2 basic drives:
oSexual – Eros: compels the individual to connect with others and the world,
feeling sexual/reproductive acts as well as lesser drives associated with other
physical comforts and the continuation of life
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oDeath – Thanatos: compels individual toward division from others and a
rejection of the living world -> manifest as aggression or other destructive
impulses
- Sex plays a more prominent role in human development
- Humans = polymorphous perverse
oAbility to experience sexual pleasure in many different ways
- Oedipus complex - mother becomes an object of sexual satisfaction for the child , as
being the provider of satisfying things
Lacanian Development
- All drives, including the sexual, are essentially death drive, in the sense that there is
something about all drives that compel the individual beyond permanent connections to
any real objects
- Conceptual triad of need, demand and desire
oNeed: biological -> human beings are born with needs for nutrition and comfort
that must be met
oDemand: need made symbolic
Every demand has 2 requests:
A request for a specific object
A request no to be denied – to be recognized (or loved) by the
caregiver
- Drives = result of one’s biological needs meeting symbolic demands that one’s caregiver
places on satisfaction of these needs
oOne cannot experience motivation until one understands the parameters which
the motivation can occur
Emphasis on power of language and communication in formation of
mental motivations
- Desire – the unquenchable yearning for love or recognition that no one else can ever
perfectly or absolutely fill
oThe “something” in the drives that keeps them from ever settling on a particular
object
- 3 “orders” of human experience that help to trace the transformation of the individual’s
need into desire:
i) The Real: part of life which cannot be put into language or what cannot be
articulated as a demand
ii) The Imaginary: primary developmental space in which the child learns to make
demands -> realm of chaotic images and sensory impressions
Crucial developmental moment: mirror stage
Organize the agency known as the ego, prior to its social
determination in a fictional direction
Basis of ego -> child recognizes and identifies own image
(immensely pleasurable impression of perfection and wholeness
iii) The Symbolic: cultural order of meaning maintained through words and symbols
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Id, ego and superego: id: part of mind present from birth -> source of drives regulated by pleasure principle, ego: part of the id closest to consciousness that develops as the individual becomes aware of reality. Curbs drives: superego: borrowed forces that allow the ego to accomplish regulations. Houses the individual"s understandings of morality and cultural propriety. Equips ego with common sense, shame and other tools that encourage the repression and/or redirection of drives. Sex plays a more prominent role in human development. Humans = polymorphous perverse: ability to experience sexual pleasure in many different ways. Oedipus complex - mother becomes an object of sexual satisfaction for the child , as being the provider of satisfying things. All drives, including the sexual, are essentially death drive, in the sense that there is something about all drives that compel the individual beyond permanent connections to any real objects.
