Psychoanalysis and...

Australian novelist, Kate Grenville, writing about her novel “Dark Places” [a novel about a highly abusive misogynistic man] says

“… Freud showed us that those disowned parts of the self don’t go away, they just go toxic. A boy forbidden the female parts of himself might experience an underground stream of something like envy of those allowed to express them. It’s a small step from envy to hatred.”

Novelists draw on their own inner worlds in order to create the characters and “plots” which become their novels. Although Kate Grenville acknowledges Freud, most novelists – past and current – are well “in tune” with the psychological forces which drive us all without any need to acknowledge psychoanalytic ideas.

Socrates, at his trial for heresy, is famously said to have asserted: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Psychoanalysis would certainly support examining one’s life – but with the goal of understanding it! [And, hopefully, of living a more enjoyable and rewarding life as a result of that understanding.]

We read great novels – as well as lesser ones – for the pleasure they bring as well as the understanding they offer about human personalities and family and society dynamics. We read to understand others – and ourselves.

A literary critic, writing about the role of the reviewer and critic in his final newspaper column, said

“The psychodynamics of criticism is easy enough to nail down. Just as children attracted to the police force are, naturally weaklings desperate to wield power and exact revenge, critics are bookish nerds with bully instincts. …. And of course, we’re hobbled by jealousy. Don’t doubt it for a second: critics envy artists. Inside every critic is a painter, a photographer or sculptor fantasising about the opening of their own sell-out show.”

You don’t have to agree with this statement, but all the concepts it contains are “the stuff of psychoanalysis”. These are the concepts which have been written about by many psychoanalysts since Freud.

The novelists almost universally acclaimed to be among the greatest were the Russian writers, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Without the benefit of Freud at all, their finely observed novels deal with grand scale human drama and family and social dynamics. Their portrayal of personalities which might only too readily be recognised as having severe dysfunction in their interpersonal relationships are recognisable in psychoanalysts’ consulting rooms today.

But this can be said of all writers whose novels endure – they possess something with which we can all resonate and recognise: in ourselves and others.

Familiarity with psychoanalytic concepts gives us a tool with which to more easily recognise and understand the powerful psychological forces which drive and motivate us all.

Human beings have loved stories from earliest times. Stories have been passed on from one generation to another by individuals remembering the stories they were told and re-telling them.

It is now known that the earliest cave paintings – many tens of thousands of years old – not only represent static portrayals of scenes observed by these earliest of painters, but that adjacent series of drawings and paintings appear to go together and tell stories!

The modern cinema is the outcome of the human desire to be told stories – both for entertainment and education.

Over the past 100 years or so, we have gone from the flickering, silent, black and white movies to the most lavish colourful productions on almost unimaginable scales – often portraying the wildest fantasies of the film makers.

But it is these very fantasies – conscious and unconscious – which move us all.

Every continent (North America, Europe, Latin America, Russia, China, India and Australia) has produced its film writers, directors, producers and actors. The themes these movies portray have much in common: the way we humans think, feel and interact with other in our individual and family relationships.

Viewing these films with the help of psychoanalytic concepts adds a depth of understanding.

Glen O. Gabbard has written, perhaps, the most accessible account of the role of psychoanalysis in understanding – in some depth - many of the more famous movies made over the years. His “Psychoanalysis and Cinema” [Karnac Books, 2001] is easily found using “Google”!

Gabbard has also applied his psychoanalytic mind to the popular TV Series “The Sopranos”. This series apart from portraying the “underworld” of a mafia-like group of criminals, also has the lead character – Tony himself – going to see a therapist! The opportunity to see inside a therapist’s consulting room holds a fascination for us all. We perhaps identify with both sides of the relationship – the one who needs to be understood, and the one who tries to understand.

Where outside the therapist’s consulting room do we have access to the intimate details of people’s lives than books about “lives”, be they written about individuals, or by the individuals themselves?

Biographies and autobiographies are of interest because they give us an idea of the very experiences which have influenced the development of personalities about whom the books have been written.

Biographies and autobiographies almost always describe the early family lives of the subject – their parents and siblings, as well often their grandparents. All this helps us try to think about “where they came from” in the psychological sense more than any geographical sense (although that, too, may be important).

As we mentioned in the section of Psychoanalysis and Literature, Socrates famously said “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Biographies and autobiographies are perfect examples of described lives. Often the authors do intend to examine the lives of their subjects – and best of all, they will seek to understand them.

But we probably also read these books to help us understand ourselves.

Psychoanalysis is essentially concerned with the development and function of the human mind. Biographies are a rich source for the interested reader of all the kinds of experiences which go toward forming a personality and a “mind” which may or may not serve the person well in their life. The kinds of relationships which a person “enters into” and the kind of creativity or productivity which they pursue can often be traced by a thoughtful reader to their earliest experiences.

Biographies have been written about artists of all kinds, about military figures, about captains of industry, about sportsmen and sportswomen and myriad others. All will contain “clues” as to what has contributed to the formation of each one’s personality.

As with storytelling and painting on cave walls, the “acting out” of stories in front of an audience probably has its origins in the earliest of human cultures.

The portrayal of grand human dramas before audiences pre-existed the printing press and the technologies of the modern cinema.

We know that the Greeks must have had a well developed tradition of theatre-going or else we would not still have those powerful Greek Tragedies (for example Oedipus Rex, Medea, Mourning Becomes Electra). The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer, and the plays of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles are each part of present day western culture.

So representative of the human psyche are these ancient plays, that Freud drew upon one of the most well known, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, to “name” his discovery of what he thought was a universal unconscious “complex” – the Oedipus Complex.

Freud also drew on Shakespeare’s Hamlet to further illustrate inter-generational psychodynamics and ways of responding to loss. Shakespeare, of course, never read Freud (who had yet to be born!), but Shakespeare’s own works appear to well cover the whole range of human conflict and family relationships. Freud – and Psychoanalysis – have provided a “framework” whereby to understand these probably universal psychological phenomena (not all would agree that they are universal, but the themes appear to have their counterparts in the literature of many varied cultures).

What can be said of the psychological appeal of “going to the movies” can probably also be said of going to the theatre. But the theatre is probably a more intimate and “human scale” environment. We relate more directly to the actors on the stage than those, sometimes, larger-than-life characters on the movie screen.

Nevertheless, theatre-going and movie-going have much in common.

Playwrights often have their works transformed onto the “silver screen”, where larger scale portrayals are possible and going backwards and forwards in time is so easily achieved. However, the immediacy of live theatre makes it a much more “risky” environment. There are no “re-takes” on the stage! The actors are “living on the edge” at every performance and we probably identify strongly with this as well as the characters who “speak to us” – or “for us”.