Modern Condition II Midterm

• Outsider: b/c Jewish, but also outsider w/in Jewish community b/c he challeneged religion; to avoid the loniness of being an outsider, Freud found passion in his work, went to America; still needed people, and that is why he became the organizer- organizes people, ideas people had to accept to become part of his group, creates conferences, journals, followers, International Psychoanalytic Association
• - being an outsider did to Freud what Nietzsche said nature does to a tree
• - Saw glass ceiling in nuerology that existed b/c he was Jewish
• Philosophe: These were the philosopers of the 18th and 19th century, in the Age of Enlightenment
• - They call expereince their master, and nothing is exempt from candid, fearless examination
• - Uses scientific method, show reason in a way that can be examined and verified.
• - Before Freud was spirit of romanticism, saying forces of nature dominate over man, but Freud says forces like these are w/in us
• -Freud viewed psychoanalysis as a part of natural philosophy
• Scientist: Used scientific method, part of the Age of Enlightenment, when everything was reason
• - Had so few direct ancestors, essentially founded a whole new form of science, tho he did admit that there were people before him, noted his debts
• Pioneer: B/c he created a whole new science, Freud was a pionner. His work would go on to influence biology, philosophy, art, movies
• -Pioneer b/c first to say we were controlled by something other than reason, untestable ideas
• - He said that the "ancients understood it vividly" discussing the unconscious- we are controlled by something intangible, he wa a pionner like Darwin or galieleo

• Conscious: what we are thinking of right now
• Preconscious: not on our mind at the moment but we can call it up when we need to, like phone number
• Unconscious: We are unaware, it hides in us but controls us all the same
• -repression: things we do not want to accept are repressed into our unconscious, so we do not directly remember it, but it still influences our behavior; has full catharsis of energy but not access to motor discahrge
• - Unconscious controls our dreams, because this is when the ego, which holds it back, is at rest, so unconscious can try to make its way in there
• -This is why Freud created free association- just talk, try to come up with anything he could relate- psychiatriast must interprete ideas, b/c the unconscious does not want to be revealed
• - get to unconscious w/ the words we use- every word has a personal meaning, as well as a societal meaning
• -Freudian slip[- numerous little slips and mistakes people make, they are symptomatic actions of our impressions and intentions
• - In our unconscious is eros and thanatos- sex instinct and death instinct

• Freud presented children as sexual beings
• At around age two, during the phallic stage of
• sexual development, according to Freud, boys “concentrate their sexual wishes
• upon their mother and develop hostile impulses against their father as being a
• rival, while girls develop an analogous attitude”. 
• Boys are afraid that their father will try to
• eliminate them as competition by castrating them. Girls, on the other hand,
• become resentful towards their mother for not giving them a penis, since it
• appears it gives boys- certainly the more powerful sex at the time- their supremacy.
• this leads to feelings of guilt, fear- eventually creates the superego, which is all about morals, rules
• Some validity- What this idea states is that the earliest
• caregiving experiences is what shapes the idea of what we look for in a sexual
• partner. It sets the standard.  In a
• study, undergraduate students were able to match photographs of women’s
• adoptive fathers with photographs of their partners with a high degree of
• accuracy. This is important because it shows that it is not necessarily genetic similarities that caused the attraction, as these women were adopted, but rather similarities to the
• earliest caregiver

• Ego at rest, uncon. comes out, but is still restricted enormously; this is not a direct window, b/c it is still clouded by the ego
• Not necessarily a reality, but a psychological reality
• There are, in essence, two layers of dreams.
• There is the manifest content- what a dream is literally.  Latent content, however, is the meaning of the dream, what it is below the surface. This is what is important in a Freudian analysis. The manifest content of the dream is just a “façade”, acting as “ a starting point for the associations but not the interpretation”.
• Every dream, according to Freud, is a wish fulfilled in sleep which cannot be fulfilled in the day time. 
• Freud describes dreams as a method through which “a thought expressed in optative has been replaced by a representation in the present tense”. In other words, dreams take an “if only” statement and turn it into an actual event.

• Freud published this famous case study of one of his patients to be a tool for learning about how to use psychoanaltyic tools, like dream analysis, to deal with cases of hysteria
• He is publishing so others can test his theories- he wants to make psychoanalysis a real science
• Dora was a classic case of conversion hysteria- physical symptoms w/o physical csause (like stage fright)= difficulty breathing, could not speak at times, felt like there was a weight on her chest
• W/ this case, Freud discovered transference- freud believed that Dora was in love with Herr K, the man who assualted her sexually, and the reason that she reacted so violently to feeling his erection was b/c she was ashamed [superego]; Freud aslo beleived that she pulled up the oedipal love of her father to combat this forbidden feeling- a stream of water which hits an obstacle flows back into dry channels
• Then, Dora, according to Freud, started acting like she was in love with him- she
• saw similarities between him and her father (like they both smoked) and transferred her feelings of love onto FreudCan be defined as "the redirection of feelings and desires and especially of those unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object

• Three aspects of our personality, according to Freud
• Ego operates by the reality principle; Id purely by our sexual and destrcutive drives; and superego is all morals, all rules, created b/c we feel guilty about the Oedipus complex, does not find reason
• Superego does not worry about the consequences, just decides that it is wrong
• Religion is a societal superego- be good, and don't ask why
• These three aspects are constantly in conflict- seen in commercials today- how much is id, ego, and superego?- superbowl commercials were pretty graphic
• Sublimation- replacing an urge that is undesirable according to society w/ a desirable one- urge to kill father channeled into urge to be good like father

• Freud
• Feeling beyond yourself, of being connected to a greater world- "feeling of indissoluble bond, of being one with external world"
• Freud has never felt it, but he felt it was a crucial dynamic leading to religion
• This is derived from infantile narcissism- as a baby, you are all id, and feel that people should take care of you; not until age two that you realize there is a distinction between yourself and outside world
• As a child, you think you must be the ultimate center of your parent's world, therefore, as an adult, you think you must be the ultimate center of God's world
• People who do not have anything else, let them have religion

• Three sources:
• 1. The feebleness of our own bodies- they will decay; most of the ads on TV are for products to keep us young, give us energy
• 2. The fact that we cannot control weather and nature- superstorm sandy destroyed us
• 3. We cannot act the way we truly want to, due to our instincts, b/c of social regulations

Fairy tales always tell us that there is a happily ever after, but in reality someday we will be seperated from out beloved, and we suffer from this knowledge

Try to combat through isolation, intoxication

• Freud defines civilization as giving up short bursts of happiness for what we hope is longer bouts of happiness; we created civilization to eliminate our unhappiness, yet it is the greatest source of our unhappiness b/c so restrciting
• Man wanted to keep his sex-object close, and woman wanted to protect her offspring, so this helped to create civ; genital love creates the strongest satisfaction
• Civilization is built on repressed instincts; human drives of sexuality and destruction are harmful to the community so we make laws to go against it
• In civ, we have to have beauty, order, cleanliness, health, hygiene
• - This is why we call a bad joke a "dirty" joke- makes people feel physically dirty, social dynamic, creating guilt, b/c we should not be thinking of sex
• - order superimportant- we used to depend on God to give order, b/c he created the world, but now man has become a kind of "prothestic God"- we need man, science, to give us that
• there is anal eroticism that develops into a need for order and cleanliness, a sublimation of instincts into useful actions, alongside a more repressive renunciation of instinct
• Use religion as a mass delusion

• 1. More imageless- what was more disturbing- nature deformed or the canvas w/o nature?
•     Before the 19th century, most art was about religion, nobility, myth- it was the church, educated and rich that could afford to have these paintings made, and every art needs a commisioner
•     But now things are changing- more middle class people can afford art; people are reading Darwin and Freud, accommodating the ideas of change and not being controlled by reason; art is coming more into a realm of its own, of being appreciated for its own sake
•     Artists were able to use their freedom, their ability to be an individual, to show their spirit
• 2. Intensity of colors and forms, like Matisse, who used shockingly strong tones, abrupt contrasts, bold black lines;
•     This was a rediscovary of the potentialities of the medium
•    This desire for intense expression corresponds to new values of forthrightness, simplicity, and openness, to a joyous vitality in everyday life
• 3. Loosening of technique- once was thought that painting was a magic art, now abandoned for simpler, franker means of expression- like Matisse's The Scream, w/ its bold brush strokes and sharp lines
•    Depiction of our modern world- lots of bright colors, swirling, nothing is defined- symbolic of our chaos

• Before the 19th century, most art was about religion, nobility, myth- it was the church, educated and rich that could afford to have these paintings made, and every art needs a commisioner   
• But now things are changing- more middle class people can afford art; people are reading Darwin and Freud, accommodating the ideas of change and not being controlled by reason; art is coming more into a realm of its own, of being appreciated for its own sake   
• Artists were able to use their freedom, their ability to be an individual, to show their spirit
• W/ modern art, the individual and his freedom had become primary
• New art was a way of realizing new values, which were to become collective values
• Artist's values were the general values- different philosophy, etc
• Art used to be tied to institutions, fixed time and places, ceremonies, schools, etc; now increasingly localized in private life and subject to individual choice, a looser but still effective bond binds people
• Celebration of the individual
• People are free to view art bringing their own individual ideas to the communal experiences

• National Endowment for the Arts was set up in 1965- nobody could believe that a quarter century later art would be perceived as anything other than an unqualified spiritual good- marginal, underground art in 1965 became mainstream by 1990
• Our relationship to freedom defines us as a nation; our relationship to art defines us as a culture. So there is a conflict as to how much freedom we can allow, and whether or not the gov't should or should not fund art that it finds to be obscene
• The gov'ts role is to protect us in our rights to expression of our freedom of expression, it does not need to do anymore. In this way, it is best that art not be subsidized or censored. For if it is subsidized and therefore censored, that is limiting; if it is not subsidized but still censored, that is even more limiting
• But what limits this is the new idea, around the arousal of the pop art phenomenon, that there is no life without art, and thus the gov't has to protect us in having art- the issue, then, is not whether support should be given, but how much should be given. This is Danto's view
• Art has improved quality of life, made life worth living, seen in National Endowment, proliferation of museums, and pop art of1960s
• But Danto also points out that censorship may destroy art, for art could not have the seriousness it does w/o the implication for anger and disagreement

• Our relationship to freedom defines us as a nation; our relationship to art defines us as a culture. So there is a conflict as to how much freedom we can allow, and whether or not the gov't should or should not fund art that it finds to be obscene= different style of argument depending on where we are arguing from
• Between 1960 and 1963, a new museum was being set up every three or four days, so by mid-1980s there were 21 museums for every million Americans; art was seeming to become an essential aspect of culture; proliferation of them was like proliferation of cathedrals in Europe in the 11th century- focus of coomunity pride and spirit, point of pilgrammage, place for a meanigful form of life; art justifies the building of this great place, just like a knucklebone of a saint could justify the building of a church
• Museum is a very ritualized instituion
• Pop art of 1960s used what defined the common culture as their artistic inspiration; art is everywhere, why National Endowment was established in 1965- art changes according to the culture at hand, and we need freedom for that
• Art makes life worth living- Hegel- Absolute Spirit is made up of art, philosophy, and religon

Very visual poem- each line shaped like a wheelbarrow, but also gives you a great mental image

•     No period ever= no closure
•  
•     Great debate over what it means, if it actually has a meaning

Poem is uniform, simple, concise, has balance and harmony and composition, like a piece of art but also like a wheelbarrow

Spaces give it a wistfulness

• Capital letter of Forgive seems to stop you- makes it more
• emotional?

•     Tone is almost
• heartbreaking, like a little boy, but also silly

•     It is intimate-
• she knows how he is, he is playful, he feels the need to apologize but in a
• silly way, reminds her how delicious it was

    Imagist poem

•     WCM said that
• there are no ideas but in things- did not want abstract ideas, but things,
• reification

•     WCM was a
• physician in the early 20th century, when polio was rampant, and wings
• constantly had to be added to the hospital to take care of all the sick, therefore,
• using the image of the back wing makes it seem all the more desolate

•     Cinders in back-
• cinders are leftover of flame- still some spark?

•     Bottle is broken-
• can't hold water, but still can do something, like cut- people in hospital are
• broken but still can do something

•     Color is green=
• lush

•     The word shine
• pops b/c it is the only blatantly positive word in the whole poem- bottle
• shines even where it seems like nothing else could; like a phoneix, rising form
• the ashes

• With Virginia Woolf, her modern literature frustrates the
• expectations of the reader, just like modern art tends to frustrate the viewer;
• she makes you stop, and the viewer has to become part of the creation to obtain
• a full understanding

•     Woolf writes in
• the stream-of-consciousness, how she thinks, and uszes this to try to capture a
• moment in time that is infinite

•     According to
• Woolf, everyday the mind receives a myriad of impresions, and atoms fall into
• place how they may, and just how they all fall into place determines if
• something becomes a Monday or Tuesday

•     ATW, life is not a
• series of gig lamps, but a luminous halo- it is not linear, it has no definite
• lines, and writing tries to make it that way when it is not

•     This is what she
• does in  M/T- this is a moment in time,
• but as we really experience it; she is standing at a window, probably having
• tea w/ someone, sees a heron

•     The whole prose
• poem seems to be about how the mind works, drifts, is interrupted- starts off
• w/ verbs, all about process; no complete sentances, but phrases; she is not
• being a slave to convention as other writers tend to be

•     She is trying to
• distill truth dfrom all of her experiences, but the world is so distracting-
• why she writes her observations in parenthesis and dashes, trying to fight it
• but she has to notice it

•     Questions what
• truth is, in between observations, and with that, the nature of truth. Is truth
• the heron, or is it somebody offering me sugar? Is it an internal or external
• experience?

•     Moment of being-
• quidity- experience from something on the outside helps her to get it- seeing
• the heron, lazy and indifferent, helps her to get that the nature of truth is
• elusive

•     Focuses on light
• and darkness, covering and uncovering; similar to ideas of knowing truth and
• confusion, it is constantly changing.

• With Virginia
• Woolf, her modern literature frustrates the expectations of the reader, just
• like modern art tends to frustrate the viewer; she makes you stop, and the
• viewer has to become part of the creation to obtain a full understanding

•     Woolf writes in
• the stream-of-consciousness, how she thinks, and uszes this to try to capture a
• moment in time that is infinite

•     According to
• Woolf, everyday the mind receives a myriad of impresions, and atoms fall into
• place how they may, and just how they all fall into place determines if
• something becomes a Monday or Tuesday

•     ATW, life is not a
• series of gig lamps, but a luminous halo- it is not linear, it has no definite
• lines, and writing tries to make it that way when it is not
• In “The String Quartet” (1921), Virginia Woolf went beyond simply trying to render the experience of music in stream-of-consciousness terms; she renders the narrator’s state of mind while listening. Along the way, she raises questions about the nature of that experience. Is it aesthetic and recreational, or is it simply a means of escapism? In the end, she answers in favor of the latter. The experience of art has become a respite from the disappointments and  alienation of contemporary life.
• She is waiting for musicians to come, and all of these things come to mind, it is right after the first world war
• Everything is distracting, and music is an escape from this
• Class difference- wealthy are sad, fish wives laugh more
• Music gives order- points of music give order to the work, while she thinks of these many things
• "Mind shot through by such little arrows"... what is it, what does it all mean, what is reality
• These moments of clarity embrace our soul

• With Virginia
• Woolf, her modern literature frustrates the expectations of the reader, just
• like modern art tends to frustrate the viewer; she makes you stop, and the
• viewer has to become part of the creation to obtain a full understanding

•     Woolf writes in
• the stream-of-consciousness, how she thinks, and uszes this to try to capture a
• moment in time that is infinite

•     According to
• Woolf, everyday the mind receives a myriad of impresions, and atoms fall into
• place how they may, and just how they all fall into place determines if
• something becomes a Monday or Tuesday

•     ATW, life is not a
• series of gig lamps, but a luminous halo- it is not linear, it has no definite
• lines, and writing tries to make it that way when it is not
• Mr. Prichard- talks w/o stopping, and not only was each thing insig, there was no connections between them; but something in him stands out from words- relation to the world, poems, how we think, write

• What is happening v. poetic thoughts, there is a defintite shift
• Describes the garden in a very sensual, poetic way, then shifts to prosaic, linear- house is just a house, party is just a lot of people in evening wear, tree is no longer gilded
• The soul created all of the poetry beforehand- soul is unamted, for when you are in your head, it is a solitary experience