Lecture 9

Sigmund Freud

• Asked: Why do people do what they do?
• Essentially a literary critic posing as a psychologist.
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• Oedipus Complex
  • Children with a penis want their mother’s attention, but their father stands in the way.
• Electra Complex is similar to the Oedipus Complex but for children with a vagina.
  • But moms are cool (feeds/cares for kids), so they can’t hate their mom as much
  • Split the mother in two: the side that gives food and the side that gets in their way
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The Uses of Enchantment (book by Bruno Bettelheim)

• Bettelheim argues fairy tales help children solve anxiety, Oedipal complex, sibling rivalry, etc
  • Kids can live out these experiences in a fantasy world

Carl Jung

• Friends with Freud, then super not friends with Freud
• Collective Unconscious
  • We all have this same structure in our unconscious
    • Archetypes (birth, death, marriage, great mother, devil, wild old man, wise old woman, trickster, hero, apocalypse) are passed down and we just know them
    • This explains commonalities between stories in different cultures