psychoanalytical tale tell heart
Andreea-Cezara Dragomir
1st year, University of Bucharest
A Psychoanalytical Reading of “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Scientists admit that isolated systems tend to behave chaotically. Due to the conservation of energy, the particles sometimes become turbulent, for instance. Why? Because every single pressurized system needs a relief valve. I believe that this is what dreams are to the human body, or, furthermore, to the human mind. They act like a dam and when the flood of the consciousness starts to resemble a threat, it lifts and lets the calm set in.
However, connections between life and dreams are not as straightforward as we might imagine.
“A dream element is, in the strictest sense of the word, the ‘representative’ of all this disparate material in the content of the dream. [...] as a rule a single dream thought is represented by more than one dream element.” (Ștefănescu, Surdulescu 98)
What happens is that “the psychic” associates our hidden desires with objects, for example, and it strikes the mind because these connections don’t initially make sense.
“In the course of the dream-work the psychical intensity passes over from the thoughts and ideas to which it properly belongs on to others which in our judgment have no claim to any such emphasis.” (Ștefănescu, Surdulescu 98)
Coming to define the dream-displacement, I would call it the process in which the psychic projects affections towards the senses. This process also contributes to making the dream unrecognizable and to concealing its meaning. Nietzsche calls it a transvaluation of psychical values. It is believed that the more confusing a dream is, the more hidden the desire or the idea which stands behind it.
Moving on to Oedipus complex, it has to be mentioned its triangular character and the bisexual nature of each individual. The triangular character could easily be explained if we think about a family: the mother, the father and the child. Be the child boy or girl, it initially
1st year, University of Bucharest
A Psychoanalytical Reading of “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Scientists admit that isolated systems tend to behave chaotically. Due to the conservation of energy, the particles sometimes become turbulent, for instance. Why? Because every single pressurized system needs a relief valve. I believe that this is what dreams are to the human body, or, furthermore, to the human mind. They act like a dam and when the flood of the consciousness starts to resemble a threat, it lifts and lets the calm set in.
However, connections between life and dreams are not as straightforward as we might imagine.
“A dream element is, in the strictest sense of the word, the ‘representative’ of all this disparate material in the content of the dream. [...] as a rule a single dream thought is represented by more than one dream element.” (Ștefănescu, Surdulescu 98)
What happens is that “the psychic” associates our hidden desires with objects, for example, and it strikes the mind because these connections don’t initially make sense.
“In the course of the dream-work the psychical intensity passes over from the thoughts and ideas to which it properly belongs on to others which in our judgment have no claim to any such emphasis.” (Ștefănescu, Surdulescu 98)
Coming to define the dream-displacement, I would call it the process in which the psychic projects affections towards the senses. This process also contributes to making the dream unrecognizable and to concealing its meaning. Nietzsche calls it a transvaluation of psychical values. It is believed that the more confusing a dream is, the more hidden the desire or the idea which stands behind it.
Moving on to Oedipus complex, it has to be mentioned its triangular character and the bisexual nature of each individual. The triangular character could easily be explained if we think about a family: the mother, the father and the child. Be the child boy or girl, it initially
Bibliography: Ștefănescu, Bogdan and Surdulescu, Radu Contemporary Critical Theories. A Reader. București Lodge, David, The Art of Fiction. Penguin Books: London & New York, 1992 Lodge, David, Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader. Longman, London and New York Poe, Edgar Allan, The Collected Works. Wordsworth, București, 2004 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/315477-sometimes-i-m-terrified-of-my-heart-of-its-constant-hunger