Freud katie mccue


The book we read about Freud’s life and work was not only informative, but really broke down his theories and ideas in a way it was easier to digest. For the most part, I knew a lot of Freud from psychology classes and just an interest in his work. It was truly fascinating to read about how he worked his ideas out and pushed further and further, despite how everyone around him seemed to disagree at one point or another. He took the accepted and conventional ways of looking at how the human brain and sexuality work and turned it upside down. His work is still used today but created such a revelation for not only other psychologists to read and work on, but I feel like any individual interested in their own mind and sexuality. It is a scary thing to be the only one supporting your own ideas and theories, especially when it is out in the open for anyone to critique and tear apart. It was not only Freud’s theories on our sexual desires and unconscious that people did not buy into, but also his character. Since Freud was challenging our ideas on our own minds and unconscious, many people jumped on board to totally disregard his theories and see him as some kind of deviant. i kind of related Freuds work to what atists face all the time, which is a constant critique of ones work and a constant push for new ideas and practices.

1 comment:

  1. Nice Liz,
    You make a correlation between the artist and researcher's process...and while many of Freud's findings were first controversial, they have been totally assimilated into pop culture. Obviously, the Surrealists used these ideas of the subconscious and in reaction against Freud, women filmmakers/video artists from the early 60's tore into Freud's theories about women, in particular. Laura Mulvey is one of the most notorius- she used Freud's theories of sexuality and sexual devience to critically view how women are portrayed in film- how the camera performs as a male voyeur and how the industry created a male gaze that didn't incorporate perspectives or looking from the female character's point of view.

    ReplyDelete