Explain Freud's Conception Of Love
Freud’s conception of love (via Santas) is that “all love is a derivative of the sexual instincts” with romantic love having the “aim [of] sexual union” (Santas, 1988, Chapter 6). This definition of love takes sexuality as the central foundation of love, inferring that all non-sexual love, therefore, non-romantic love is an abstraction, repression or “sublimation” of natural sexual aim, which Freud equates to perversion. Freud then states that this love derives from a form of psychosexual development pertaining to the libido and the process of object-choice and associated object-cathexis, an investment of libidinal energy to an object. Suppression of cathexis (anti-cathexis) results in deflection of the aim, and therefore, formation of perversion.
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Though the phallus is intrinsically a neutral symbol, due to social conditioning, it has become associated with the object and the image of the penis, therefore resulting in all sexuality being based around it. This distinction then results in gendering in respect to the presence of the metonymic phallus/penis, with males “having” and females “lacking”. In males this results in a compulsion to “confirm phallic desire” via affirmation, whereas in females this results in the “Lack”, leading to a compulsion to become a phallus, an object of desire, as compensation for phallic castration. These compulsions result in paradigm shift in terms of anaclitic and narcissistic object-choice; the male tries to affirm his narcissistic, phallic position while the female is dependent on becoming an object and being desired by others (Lapsley & Westlake, 1992, pp …show more content…
In addition, she states that melancholia is tied to the relation to the mother, where simultaneous rejection and identification of the symbolic mother results in ego-loss. She continues by relating melancholia and suffering to artistic endeavour, as it functions as a process of acclimatisation to disconnection from the mother and gives loss a mode of articulation. This articulation or relation of objects to symbols results in a “symbolic immortality” of the object as a resolution of “the Ego, the Ideal and the Real” is formed and the object is raised to symbol. From this definition of love and melancholy, techniques in film can now be analysed with reference to these
Though the phallus is intrinsically a neutral symbol, due to social conditioning, it has become associated with the object and the image of the penis, therefore resulting in all sexuality being based around it. This distinction then results in gendering in respect to the presence of the metonymic phallus/penis, with males “having” and females “lacking”. In males this results in a compulsion to “confirm phallic desire” via affirmation, whereas in females this results in the “Lack”, leading to a compulsion to become a phallus, an object of desire, as compensation for phallic castration. These compulsions result in paradigm shift in terms of anaclitic and narcissistic object-choice; the male tries to affirm his narcissistic, phallic position while the female is dependent on becoming an object and being desired by others (Lapsley & Westlake, 1992, pp …show more content…
In addition, she states that melancholia is tied to the relation to the mother, where simultaneous rejection and identification of the symbolic mother results in ego-loss. She continues by relating melancholia and suffering to artistic endeavour, as it functions as a process of acclimatisation to disconnection from the mother and gives loss a mode of articulation. This articulation or relation of objects to symbols results in a “symbolic immortality” of the object as a resolution of “the Ego, the Ideal and the Real” is formed and the object is raised to symbol. From this definition of love and melancholy, techniques in film can now be analysed with reference to these