A Deeper Understanding of Three Tall Women
According to Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis is a “procedure for the investigation of mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way” (Fodor and Gaynor 147). It becomes a deeper contrast of a person’s mentality to consider the design of “interplay” within the “urging and checking forces” of the conscious and unconscious (Fodor and Gaynor 147). Freud’s representation of “Three Tall Women,” relate the characters by the “neuroses that sometimes result from the suppression of memories and desires too painful to deal with” (Freud, “The Dependent Relationship of the Ego). While not completely opposing religion as a factor in the conscious and unconscious, Freud does claim that the “Oedipus complex is at the root of religious feeling” (Palmer 113); so the idea of religion is not based on the desire of pleasing a God with the basis of good vs. bad, but instead, according to Freud, it is the sexual desires that come from being attached to a father figure. As characters B and C are introduced first as outside acquaintances, then as stages of character A’s past, the play is transformed into what may be perceived as Freud’s theory to the relation of the conscious and the unconscious, but could also be noted as the change a person undergoes throughout their lifetime in which religion, or the desire to maintain morality, is checked by outside influences.
The interpretation, backed by Carl Jung, argues that “religion need no longer be perceived as a conglomerate of guilt ridden repressions and ritualized obsessions, but as a natural and legitimate dimension of psychic activity” (Palmer 113). When Freud’s argument is counterbalanced, it can be found that the interpretation F...
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...ud may be correct on some terms, but the true unconscious desires do not come from a sexual want, but more from the want of a moral individuality, and characters C and B epitomize such a notion and deep understanding that exists in character A, but is challenged with the influence of society and the struggles of growing older.
Albee, Edward. Three Tall Women. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Fodor, Nandor, ed and Gaynor, Frank, ed. Freud: Dictionary of Pychoanalysis. New York: Philosophical Library, 1950.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1930.
Freud, Sigmund. “The Dependent Relationship of the Ego.”
Palmer, Michael. Freud and Jung on Religion. London: Routledge, 1997.
Personality Theories: Sigmund Freud. Boerce, C. George.. 25 November 2007 .
In 2002, Doctor Armand Nicholi, Jr. sought to put two of the greatest minds of the 20th century together to debate the answer to the lifelong question, “Is there a God, and if so, how should we respond to his existence?” Nicholi is the first scholar to ever put the arguments of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud side by side in an attempt to recreate as realistic of a debate as possible between the two men. He examines their writings, letters, and lectures in an attempt to accurately represent both men in this debate. His result, the nearly 300 page book, The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life, is one of the most comprehensive, well researched, and unbiased summaries of the debate between the worldviews of “believer and unbeliever” (Pg. 5).
When this story is viewed through Sigmund Freud’s “psychoanalytic lens” the novel reveals itself as much more than just another gory war novel. According to Sigmund Freud psychology there are three parts of the mind that control a person’s actions which are the id, ego, and superego. Psychoanalysis states that there are three parts of the human mind, both conscious and subconscious, that control a person’s actions. The Id, ego, and
Freud, S., Strachey, J., Freud, A., Rothgeb, C., & Richards, A. (1953). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (1st ed.). London: Hogarth Press.
Freud’s interpretation of the totem as representing the father of the tribe returns again to Freud’s problems with his own father. He approaches his Totem and Taboo theory from entirely a patriarchal stance ignoring the fact that his case ‘Little Hans’ fear was actually that his mother would disappear as she had often threatened this when the child misbehaved. (Storr, 1989, 108).
Freud S et al, 1995 The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908-1939., Belknap Press, Harvard University Press,ISBN 067415424X
In the midst of his already successful career, Sigmund Freud decided to finally dedicate a book of his to religion, referring to the subject as a phenomena faced by the scientific community. This new work, Totem and Taboo, blew society off its feet, ultimately expanding the reaches of debates and intellectual studies. From the beginning, Freud argues that there exists a parallel between the archaic man and the contemporary compulsive. Both these types of people, he argues, exhibit neurotic behavior, and so the parallel between the two is sound. Freud argues that we should be able to determine the cause of religion the same way we determine the cause of neurosis. He believes, since all neuroses stem from childhood experiences, that the origins of this compulsive behavior we call religion should also be attributed to some childhood experiences of the human race, too. Freudian thought has been dominant since he became well known. In Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, religion becomes entirely evident as a major part of the novel, but the role it specifically plays is what we should question. Therefore, I argue that Freud’s approach to an inborn sense of religion and the role it plays exists in The Last of the Mohicans, in that the role religion plays in the wilderness manifests itself in the form of an untouchable truth, an innate sense of being, and most importantly, something that cannot and should not be tampered with.
In the first two chapter of the book, Freud explores a possible source of religious feeling. He describes an “oceanic feeling of wholeness, limitlessness, and eternity.” Freud himself is unable to experience such a feeling, but notes that there do indeed...
Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Ed. James Strachey. Trans. James Strachey. Standard. Vol. 22. London: Hogarth Press, 1964.
The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic principles of Freud’s theories and to raise the main issues.
Erich Fromm in his psychoanalytical approach to religion is distinct from the earlier works of Sigmund Freud. Fromm defines religion as “any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion.” Fromm argues that irreligious systems including all the different kinds of idealism and “private” religions deserve being defined as a “religion.” Based on Fromm’s theory, it is explained that there is no human being who does not have a “religious need,” almost every part of human life reflects religious need and its fulfillment, in fact he states it to be “inherent” in man.
For Carl Jung, his view on religious experience was based on all experiences being a psychological phenomenon. He differed from James in his view that a personal or individual experience with a God was indistinguishable from a communication with one’s unconscious mind. He ...
Freud, Sigmund, James Strachey, and Peter Gay. An Outline of Psycho-analysis. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. Print.
Stwertka, Eve. Psychoanalysis: from Freud to the Age of Therapy. New York: Franklin Watts, 1988. Print.
The Psychology of Religion is composed of a variety of different perspectives, which in certain cases proves difficult in determining both the clinical and pastoral implications of a theory. Modern-day psychology has demonstrated possible beneficial results in religious spiritual individuals, however, much of the current research has avoided questioning the “real” presence of the Divine or a Higher Being. Although a century has passed since his undertaking of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud readily settled the question of religion by declaring it a form of mental illness. While Freud’s Psychology of Religion is that religion only exists as a neurosis, his view provides the three clinical implications of hypnotism, free association, and dream analysis, each of which have also remained a source of criticism.
Freud, S. (1957b). Some character types met with in psychoanalytic work. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 309–333). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1916)