The Uncanny and other minor works of Freud

So I have been reading a lot of Freud and Jung, making my way through the goal of reading their works in chronological order in which they were written. I sometimes get so sucked into their works I forgot to step back, reflect and then type up something about my thoughts on this blog. So since I posted my last article about Freudian Slips, I have completed three books by Freud, three by Jung and a biography on Jung. After finishing the most recent book by Jung it felt like this was a perfect place to catch up on the blog.
This article, as you can tell from the title, will be about one collection of Freud's minor works and also a brief mention of lectures he gave at Clark University. I hope Inshallah(God Willing) to make a Youtube video on Jung, his biography that I read along with the first three books in his Collected Works which I read. When that video is going to be made I am not sure, but hopefully, Inshallah, sooner rather then later.

Freud wrote a number of minor works which has been collected by Penguin Classics into a book entitled "The Uncanny". I will only speak on a few of the essays included in this book since a lot of them are expanded upon by Freud himself in works I have already discussed here or on Youtube. The first two go together and are named "Screen Memories" and "The Creative Writer and Daydreaming".

Both of these papers have something in common and that is to discover the explanation for why we remember certain childhood memories that are usually fragmented and why is it that creative writers tend tap into the same mental experience that children do when they are "at play". What these have in common is that the source of both of these experiences The Screen Memories are again fragmented memories from our past that we are at times unsure of if they are actually legitimate or contain exaggerations or content that our imagination created to aid in the gaps of memory. Freud would argue that why certain memories that were forgotten from consciousness and then emerges from the unconscious would be important to look at and analyze. Obviously the triggering of that content would be important for the person and also if certain images were created by the imagination, why were they created? I have to give Freud credit for not soaking this paper full of sexuality as being the main reason for this phenomena. He does mention masturbation at some point in the paper but it is not the crowing part of the piece.

In his paper on creative writers and daydreams Freud discusses the various levels of daydreams, fantasies and dreams and how and why they are produced in the human psyche. When a child is at play he creates and acts out fantasies with which he physically interacts. The creative writer does not act the fantasy but instead formulates it in his mind and then puts it down on paper. At some point, according to Freud during adolescence , we stop "playing" in the sense of childhood play and instead starts to fantasize. Freud summarizes fantasies of the mind into two catagories: the personaity attempting to elevate itself and the erotic.

Freud then moves on to what he calls as proof for these things found in the writings of authors. He says that romances are a given, since they contain obvious erotic/love/romance situations regarding the plot and characters. He then says that in the example of adventure novels and short stories that the elevating of the ego is clear since the main character is a projection of the author's personaity into the story. So the author, if he puts the main character into harms way, will save him in the sequeal or the next chapter. This really makes me wonder if Freud actually ever read Shakepear, anyone thinking of Hamlet or am I alone in this? I think with dreams, Freud saying they are nothing but Wish-fulliments and residue from the previous day, anyone who has had a daydream or has written a creative story, can refute Freud and his narrow assertions. Also when we get to Carl Jung's views on Active Imagination we will see just how narrow Freud's views really are regarding this topic.

The last paper in this collection I will comment on is the work entitled "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of Childhood". This is the first work of its kind for Freud, since he attempts to psychoanalyze an artist, Da Vinci, based on a childhood memory and his art. In other words he does not have this patient on his couch but is rather going off of assumptions based on indirect evidence and objects related to the person. We will see in future posts/videos that this was not uncommon for Freud to do, to analyze a person who was not actually in his presence. I will not go to exhaustive detail on this subject since I will leave it to the reader to pick up this work and have a look for him/herself. In summary Freud looks at each major art work done by Da Vinci and his early childhood memory and claims that he was a homosexual and deeply disturbed man who had mother issues considering the women depicted in his artwork. I think the major flaw with this topic that we are attempting to get into the mind of a historical figure which would be very difficult since analysis requires such an active participation with the patient. This is such a limited scope into the mind that I cannot see how we can take the findings seriously. I think making guesses regarding historical persons is one thing but actually claiming you know the mental processes of that person is guesswork if nothing else.

The other book that I just want to mention in brief is the transcript written by Freud for his lectures he gave at Clark University entitled "Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis". This was the first major lecture serious given by Freud where he first presented his ideas on the structure of the Psyche, importance of dreams and the Oedipus Complex. It is worth reading for anyone who is interested in the evolution of Freud's theory on psychology.