Identity Lecture Notes
- Russian formalists suggest that the process of defamiliarization of the making of something
strange is that it is no longer familiar. This process enables one to look at it with fresh eyes.
- Freud's similar concept is uncanny which is when something is made very strange. Freud
does this by taking what is repressed or repressed diaries and making them real.
- Repression: is the suppression of feelings that are considered too dangerous to be known by
others and possibly even by the conscious self.
- Repression can result in illnesses, anti-social, projections, and negative feelings toward
others.
- The Id is what is responsible for the desires. The superego (the unconscious) is what
pushes down unwanted/unacceptable desires. The feelings also do not disappear but
rather are pushed back and repressed but they are still there.
- What is the uncanny?
- “That class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long
familiar.” (RR3: 593)
- “Ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light” (Shelling, qtd. Freud,
RR3: 596)
- “Familliare and old - established in the mind that has been estranged only by the process
of repression” (RR3: 604)
- Doubling the self (mirrors/shadows)
- “The fact that an agency of this kind [=the superego] exists, which is able to treat the rest
of the ego like an object – the fact, that is, that man is capable of self-observation –
renders it possible to invest the old idea of a ‘double’ with a new meaning....” (RR3: 601:
RR2: 425).
- “There are also all the unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in
phantasy, all the strivings of the ego which adverse external circumstances have crushed,
and all our suppressed acts of volition [from the id] which nourish in us the illusion of
Free Will” (RR3: 601: RR2: 425).
- Note the “urge towards defence which has caused the ego to project that material outward
as something foreign to itself ” -- doubling it at a very early age (RR3: 601: RR2: 425)
- Repression and Resistance:
- The repression barrier prevents unconscious thoughts from entering consciousness. But
sometimes the pressure builds up from below, erupting in dreams and neurotic symptoms.
- Russian formalists suggest that the process of defamiliarization of the making of something
strange is that it is no longer familiar. This process enables one to look at it with fresh eyes.
- Freud's similar concept is uncanny which is when something is made very strange. Freud
does this by taking what is repressed or repressed diaries and making them real.
- Repression: is the suppression of feelings that are considered too dangerous to be known by
others and possibly even by the conscious self.
- Repression can result in illnesses, anti-social, projections, and negative feelings toward
others.
- The Id is what is responsible for the desires. The superego (the unconscious) is what
pushes down unwanted/unacceptable desires. The feelings also do not disappear but
rather are pushed back and repressed but they are still there.
- What is the uncanny?
- “That class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long
familiar.” (RR3: 593)
- “Ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light” (Shelling, qtd. Freud,
RR3: 596)
- “Familliare and old - established in the mind that has been estranged only by the process
of repression” (RR3: 604)
- Doubling the self (mirrors/shadows)
- “The fact that an agency of this kind [=the superego] exists, which is able to treat the rest
of the ego like an object – the fact, that is, that man is capable of self-observation –
renders it possible to invest the old idea of a ‘double’ with a new meaning....” (RR3: 601:
RR2: 425).
- “There are also all the unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in
phantasy, all the strivings of the ego which adverse external circumstances have crushed,
and all our suppressed acts of volition [from the id] which nourish in us the illusion of
Free Will” (RR3: 601: RR2: 425).
- Note the “urge towards defence which has caused the ego to project that material outward
as something foreign to itself ” -- doubling it at a very early age (RR3: 601: RR2: 425)
- Repression and Resistance:
- The repression barrier prevents unconscious thoughts from entering consciousness. But
sometimes the pressure builds up from below, erupting in dreams and neurotic symptoms.
