Psychoanalysis, Popular Culture and Media?
What does psychoanalysis contribute to our understanding of the media and popular culture?
Psychoanalysis is the science of the unconscious functions of the mind and personality. The theories originate from Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud. He discovered these as a treatment for health problems and also as a way to understanding more about your mind. In this essay I am going to discuss how these theories discovered many years ago have contributed to popular culture and media.
Sigmund Freud divided the soul into the conscious and the unconscious. The conscious is the part of which we are mentally aware and in contrast the unconscious is where all are restrained wishes are stored. Freud stated that:
“Each individual who makes a fresh entry into human society repeats this sacrifice of instinctual satisfaction for the benefit of the whole community”(Storey 2001:91).
He also added:
“Society believes that no greater threat to its civilization could arise than if the sexual instincts were to be liberated and returned to their original aims”(Storey 2001:91).
What Freud is saying here is that we are born imperfect with many instinctual drives. From social to sexual drives, basically anything that are ID desires. He believes that these instinctual desires, especially sexual have to be restrained in the unconscious as they would have a detrimental act on society if they were to be followed through and would cause us to act in inappropriate manner to the views of our cultural society. This is where psychoanalysis demonstrates to us how it contributes to media and popular culture. It does this by teaching us certain ways to behave in order to fit in. There are right and wrong ways and psychoanalysis gives us an explanation to how our soul teaches us the appropriate mannerisms.
Freud continued on with his discoveries and further divided the psyche into the ego, the ID and the superego. The ID is something we are born with and is totally unconscious.
Psychoanalysis is the science of the unconscious functions of the mind and personality. The theories originate from Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud. He discovered these as a treatment for health problems and also as a way to understanding more about your mind. In this essay I am going to discuss how these theories discovered many years ago have contributed to popular culture and media.
Sigmund Freud divided the soul into the conscious and the unconscious. The conscious is the part of which we are mentally aware and in contrast the unconscious is where all are restrained wishes are stored. Freud stated that:
“Each individual who makes a fresh entry into human society repeats this sacrifice of instinctual satisfaction for the benefit of the whole community”(Storey 2001:91).
He also added:
“Society believes that no greater threat to its civilization could arise than if the sexual instincts were to be liberated and returned to their original aims”(Storey 2001:91).
What Freud is saying here is that we are born imperfect with many instinctual drives. From social to sexual drives, basically anything that are ID desires. He believes that these instinctual desires, especially sexual have to be restrained in the unconscious as they would have a detrimental act on society if they were to be followed through and would cause us to act in inappropriate manner to the views of our cultural society. This is where psychoanalysis demonstrates to us how it contributes to media and popular culture. It does this by teaching us certain ways to behave in order to fit in. There are right and wrong ways and psychoanalysis gives us an explanation to how our soul teaches us the appropriate mannerisms.
Freud continued on with his discoveries and further divided the psyche into the ego, the ID and the superego. The ID is something we are born with and is totally unconscious.