A Psychological Insight of Sigmund Freud - Article Example

Sigmund Freud – A Psychological Insight into the Field of Creativity and Day Dreaming Creativity is the process through which a person expresses his personal views and his inner cravings through various direct or indirect forms. It is completely different from “ideas” or “opinions” expressed by a person and can be best described as the unique perspective a person has about life and its meaning. While creativity is present in every individual to some extent, the translation of the same into some form of art is what makes someone a “creative artist”. Many argue that the deep levels of a subconscious mind are the beginning of the creative process. While this is obvious in some creative art movements like “Surrealism”, to a certain extent, this holds true for every art form though often not very obvious. The subconscious mind, in its wandering day-dreaming form, allows the artist to touch such deep rooted emotions which normally are restrained by social consciousness and social appropriateness. The drifting mind creates a world of its own in the deep alleys of the subconscious, allowing the mind to roam in this unreal play world and create images and imagery. This becomes the basis for many a creative endeavor. Sigmund Freud, the famous psychoanalyst and the originator of modern psychoanalysis, in his theories had subscribed to some form of this theory. This is hardly surprising as the Freudian theory is based on bringing out the subconscious thoughts of a person into consciousness and thereby making the person free from the agonies of repression and consequent distortion. As Sigmund Freud once said, “there are no indications of reality in the unconscious, so that one cannot distinguish between the truth and fiction that has been cathected with affect” (as cited in Steiner, 5). Sigmund Freud was born in Austria on 6th May 1856 to Jewish parents. He came from a very impoverished family but worked his way up through sheer hard work, intelligence and talent. Though he started his research work related to medical studies on the life history of eels, failure in this line made him change and turn to psychology as his field of study. He later founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology and is famous for his theories on the unconscious mind and his method of treating psychological patients through psychoanalysis or dialogues between a patient and the doctor. Freud believed that the subconscious or the unconscious was an inroad to the thoughts and actions of a conscious mind and helped in understanding the latter. Dreams, as per Freud, were a method by which one can understand the complexities of the sub conscious mind. Freud in one of his papers related to day dreaming and creativity published in 1908, had compared the day dreaming with a childs play. As per Freud, a child exists in his “real” world and his imaginary or “play” world. While the play world is almost as “real” as the real world to the child, the child understands the difference between the two worlds quite well. As the child understands that the “play” world is, in fact, not the real world, he imports the objects and situations from the real world into his play world. Thus a childs play world is usually an attempt of the child to be a grown up, an adult. When the child actually grows up, the play gets replaced with fantasies (“Phantasies” as spelled by Freud). The essential difference between the childs plays and an adults “phantasies” is the fact that the adult is always ashamed of his “phantasies” and therefore tries to hide them. In other parts, the play of a child and the “phantasies” of a man are, in many ways, the same. Both represent an essential “wish fulfillment” - an expression or a desire to attain the unattainable. Freud also tried to define the nature of the “phantasies” of a person. According to Freud, “phantasies” are expressions of unfulfilled wishes and therefore a completely satisfied person will not have any “phantasies”. He also argues that “phantasies” are predominantly either based on ambition or based on eroticism. The exact nature may depend on the sex, character and background of the person indulging in phantasies. As is the case with the childs play, phantasies also have objects and situations of real life inserted into them and make them close to reality. For a creative author, this day-dreaming or fantasizing is an avenue to let the subconscious mind roll out the inner desires and then this can be converted into creative writing. Freud explains that for this reason, the most popular books have a hero who is handsome and talented, who survives against all odds and is victorious at the end. This is definitely not realistic but it tickles the day-dreaming nature of the reader to perfection, as well. As per Freud, when a reader indulges into the pleasure of reading a book, he essentially indulges into day-dreaming. The book, therefore, behaves as an avenue to his unfulfilled desires and passions – which forms a socially acceptable form of day-dreaming. Hence the most popular books, the novels and story books invariably have the supreme hero; who survives everything to achieve the impossible and ultimately achieves the unachievable, only to lay it down at the feet of his goddess, his lady love. These popular books, though unrealistic, nurtures and adds fuel to the dreams of the person reading the book. Freud had stretched this argument into other types of books as well. According to Freud, books can be categorized into - Popular story telling fictions - Psychological novels - Books created from old readymade materials In all three forms of story-telling, the essential day-dreaming and the alter-ego of the author come into picture. The popular story telling novels have already been described in the previous paragraph. The psychological novels, the author split his ego into multiple characters and makes the hero as a mere spectator of these characters. This leads to splitting the subconscious desires of the author and the reader in multiple characters. The books created from old readymade materials – books based on old myths are also chosen by the author and modified to that they allow the readers to indulge into a kind of fantasizing. Freud describes this as the “secular dreams of youthful humanity”. It is also worthwhile to understand Freuds interpretation of dreams and Psychoanalysis to understand how these contribute into creative writing. Sigmund Freud himself had once commented “I must insist that the dream actually does possess a meaning and that a scientific method of dream–interpretation is possible”(14). As per Freud, the dream is a kind of protective shield to protect the sleeper from external or internal stimuli. In particular, the internal stimuli like unfulfilled desires, lack of satisfaction, fears etc are negated by the dreams. The dreams therefore work on these emotions and create, what was described as the “latent content” of the dream. Freud defined dreams to be made of “manifestation content”, the part which the sleeper remembers and which is based on his conscious thoughts and the “latent content”, the subconscious minds acts. Furthermore, Freud argues that the latent content gradually gets transformed into manifestation content through four different processes: Condensation Displacement Symbolism Secondary revision However, even Freud acknowledged the fact all dreams cannot be analyzed completely, as dreams go far below the level of the sub conscious mind, far beyond the analytical skills and realms of any scientific explanation or human understanding. As he himself said that “there is a tangle of dream-thoughts which cannot be unraveled...This is the dreams navel, the spot where it reaches down into the unknown”(as cited in Lear, 104). Dreams have always fascinated creative artists like Salvador Dali, Louis Bunuel and has led to the creation of a new art movement called Surrealism. What is of greater significance is the fact, that dreams and reality, in a dialectic approach has led to a creative urge in a general sense. This theory, often known as Psycho dynamic approach, proposes that the constant tension and conflict between the reality and the imaginary world of dreams lead to the creative product. This creative product is therefore, a product which is created by the sub-conscious mind to express their deepest desires in a socially acceptable manner. In the last two hundred years (specially keeping in mind the views of Romanticism) we have seen that there is a growing believe, that an art reflects the internal state or condition of the artist and this view had greatly influenced Freud. As he expressed that it is not the thoughts of an artist that are reflected in his work, but it is his emotional condition or concerns that are expressed. Creativity, like dreaming, makes connections that are led by the ruling emotions of the artist at that present moment. The emotional concerns of the artist help, creating the art, much like it helps in forming dreams of a person. The only difference being that creativity finds its fulfillment in the emotional attachment between the creator and the observer or audience. In case of dreams, this remains personal unless the dreamer himself wishes to share it. However there is another angle or way of looking at it. We can say that a dream reaches it fulfillment with the emotional attachment that is created between the mind that is subconscious and therefore dreaming, to the conscious mind that is awake and remembers the dream. A creative work can be derived from a dream as is suggested by Freud. In his famous article Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming published in 1908, Freud gives us a story of creativity in which the artist plays the role of an obsessed day-dreamer and an egotist through whom we are able to enjoy the dreams we see without feeling any sense of shame or sin. The artists creations have the effect of nerve soothing drugs and lulls the artist and the audience both, into a feeling of bliss and thus provides a route of escape from stark reality. A day dreamer is a person who escapes into his fantasy world to avoid realities of life. He is a complete slave to the pleasure he derives from his imaginary fantasies. According to Freud, an artist, to realize the commands of the sub conscious, also creates his own fantasy world. However, unlike a dreamer, he can come back to reality whenever he wishes to. Another major contribution of Freud in creative writing analysis is his theory of pathography. As per this theory, the creative artist is treated like a patient and his works are analyzed to understand the inner world of the artist. Freud attempts to use this with Leonardo Da Vinci in his article written in 1910, with Michelangelo in his article on the sculpture of Moses and with Dostoevsky in 1928 in his essay "Dostoevsky and Parricide" which was published as an introduction to the book “The Brothers Karamazov”. In his article “A Memory of His Childhood” on Leonardo DA Vinci, Freud interpreted the painting “The Virgin and the child with St Anne”. This is an oil painting depicting the Virgin that is Virgin Mary, her mother St Anne and child Christ. Interestingly, both Virgin Mary and St Anne seem to be of similar age. As per Freud, this is a symbolic representation of his own mother – his biological mother who brought him up till he was adopted by the wife of his father. Thus the “illegitimate” child Leonardo DA Vinci, in fact, had two mothers which have been depicted in this picture. Freud also interpreted that the virgins garment represents a vulture and this is a symbol of Leonardos passive homosexual childhood. Leonardo, in his work “Codex Atlanticus” had mentioned about his childhood dream of being attacked in his crib by a vulture. As Vulture is represented as a mother in the Egyptian Hieroglyphics as the Egyptians believed that there are no male vultures and the female vultures are impregnated by the wind. As per Freud, this fantasy is based on Leonardos memory of sucking the nipple of his mother and is potent with passive homosexuality. While this argument had been shot down later on (since Leonardos dream actually spoke or a Kite and not a Vulture), it is certainly an interesting analysis of the sub-conscious mind of the artist. Similarly, in his essay “Dostoevsky and Parricide”, Freud has juxtaposition of the most crucial aspects of Dostoevskys works: the father and son relationship; the concept of crime and sin and morality; his gambling vis-a-vis the strong sense of religious morality. These powerful imageries in this novel can only be understood properly if one accepts the interpretations of Freud to a large extent. This, in fact, also ties us the other works of Dostoyevsky like “Notes from underground” and creates a complete picture of the author. Freuds article on Michelangelo’s Moses is also brilliantly illuminating. He describes the figure to be having three emotional layers – the face reflecting the victory of will over anger, the middle part representing control of anger and the foot representing remnants of impulsive anger. This, as per Freud, is also a representation of the violent and impulse streak of Michelangelo as well as the Pope Julius (for whom the sculpture was being created) which needs to be controlled. Thus the status becomes Michelangelo’s expression of mind controlling emotional anger. Freuds method of approach and understanding of the subject of art was handicapped by various reasons. He was too intent on explaining his newly devised psychoanalytic theory and used it overtly to explain the artists and their works. He also tried to dwell too much on the obsessive or neurotic experiences of an artist. The technical and other aspects of art, not directly dealing with psychology, he himself was not very well acquainted with. Psychoanalysis has not been able to explain all the secrets and artistic capabilities of an artist. This theory of psychoanalysis, like an investigator, wanted access to all the personal and biographical details of the artist so as to be able to explain their art completely and it was not viable always. So his theory on artists and dreaming was a bit too ambivalent and incomplete and drew sharp criticism. Though most of Freuds theories have always been controversial and therefore criticized and rejected but his contribution to the field of psychotherapy and to some extent psychoanalysis cannot be over looked. Though not a philosopher himself, he had tremendous influence on many philosophers of his times. Though in this age of science and technology many of his theories appear redundant and dead, he still remains the father of the branch of psychoanalysis, being its founder, and a passionate contributor to it, throughout his entire life. References Freud, S. Brill, A.A. Wilson, Steven. Interpretation of Dreams. Wordsworth Editions. 1997. Lear, J. Freud. Routledge. 2005. Steiner, R. Unconscious Phantasy. Karnac Books. 2003. Read More