Louann Russell

Comm 342
Dr. Williams

Psychoanalysis
Good morning and welcome to Communications 342. Todays
discussion will focus on psychoanalysis. HUH? What does
psychoanalysis have to do with communication? Why would
communication students need to have any concept of psychoanalytic
theory? Psychoanalysis, according to the Encarta Encyclopedia, is the
name applied to a specific method of investigating unconscious mental
processes and to a form of psychotherapy. The term refers, as well, to
the systematic structure of psychoanalytic theory, which is based on
the relation of conscious and unconscious psychological processes.
(Encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia). This is important to communication
because the underlying psyche of the environment is as important, if
not more so, than the spoken word. It helps scholars understand
people as a creation of their cultures, and of their internal desires and
instincts. Although there have been many theorists in the field of
psychoanalysis, three major practitioners come to the forefront.
Psychoanalytic theory was developed by Sigmund Freud, who sought
understanding of the structure and functioning of the human mind. He
adopted the talking cure that his friend Dr. Breuer had used on one
of Breuers own patients that was suffering from hysteria. By allowing
the patient to express verbally and communicate her anxieties, she
made progress in dealing with them. Freud allowed his patients to
freely associate their thoughts, which he felt came from their repressed
unconscious, as did puns, slips of the tongue, and double entendres.
He also asked his patients carefully selected questions with the intent
of disarming the superego, or the watchdog of the psyche, permitting
the patient to confront unresolved conflicts with his conscious mind.
Language also comes to play in dreams. By having his patients share
their dreams with him, Freud linked the unconscious release of desires
to the conscious world of conversation and thus communication. Freud

became involved in correspondence with a second psychoanalytical

practitioner, Carl Jung, whom he met in 1907.

Jung started as an admirer of Freud until they had an

ideological parting of the ways. Jung agreed
with Freud about the ego which he says is the
conscious mind. He moves on to what he
terms the personal unconscious or the part
of the psyche that is not conscious but could
be. Finally, Jung theorizes that all humans
have a well of shared memories that do not
come from experience. This is the collective
unconscious. This is the reservoir of our experiences as a species. A
kind of knowledge we are all born with.(Jung, Collected Works of Carl
G. Jung, vol.7, pp.64-79). The collective unconscious is home to the
archetypes. The archetypes are recognizable in myths, legends,
religions, and ideologies. Jung felt that these often came to the
conscious through dreams. Dreams contain symbols which are
universal in Jungs opinion. By examining the symbols in dreams, Jung
opened a dialogue between therapist and patient. Once again
language became an important aspect of therapy. The symbols in the
dreams were signifiers that pointed to signifieds, which could then be
interpreted.
Professor, how are we going to remember all these terms and their
meanings? We will get into that after we meet the players. Jacques
Lacan is the third practitioner, a bit more contemporary than the other
two.
Lacan considered himself most aligned with Freud. He deems that
language is of major importance because that is the way that
knowledge is formed. His theory is that the unconscious is structured as
a language, the source of communication. The two parts of Freuds
unconscious, condensation and displacement, have their basis in
linguistics, according to him. The first is metaphoric and the second is
metonymic. He also uses the science of semiology developed by

Ferdinand Saussure. Lacan accepts the signifier but says that it is only a
signifier that merely leads to another signifier. No one signifier has a
constant meaning. Lacan theorizes that the infant, upon the acquisition
of language, joins society at large and becomes part of that culture.
This is how the infant begins to acquire its sense of
self. After acquiring language and sense of self,
humans begin to desire what they learn from others is
worth attaining. They learn desire from what Lacan
called the Other. Humans constantly strive to become
part of the Other. This is the connection between
people in a culture.
So, before we get into the final part of our discussion
lets look at some terms and their meaning and how we can relate them
today.
Archetypes

Archetypes: Primitive modes of thought that tend to personify

natural processes in terms of mythological concepts.
(Microsoft@Encarta@OnlineEncyclopedia).
Carl Jung considered archetypes the primitive images that
make up the collective unconscious, which is the part of the
psyche made up of memories, ideas, and ways of thinking
that comes from ancestors and the entire human race.
(Microsoft@Encarta@Online Encyclopedia).
Since Shrek is a fairy tale, the characters are definitely
archetypes. Shrek is the hero, given the quest of freeing
Fiona, the princess, from her entrapment in a castle tower.
Farquaad is the villain that desires a kingdom and will do
anything to acquire it. He is also the dispatcher who sends
Shrek on the quest. Donkey is the helper that accompanies
Shrek on his trek.
Id, Ego, and Superego

 Id: The reservoir of the libido which seeks alternative

expression for impulses humans consider evil or excessively
sexual, impulses humans often felt were perfectly natural at
an earlier or archaic stage and have since repressed. It is
governed by the pleasure-principle. (cla.purdue.edu).
Ego: Representative of the outer world to the id. Represents
and reinforces the reality-principle. Could also be said to be a
defense against the superego. (cla.purdue.edu)
Superego: The faculty that seeks to police what it deems
unacceptable desires; it represents all moral restrictions and
is the advocate of a striving for perfection. (cla.purdue.edu).
Freud considered the ego to be the part of the psyche that
dealt with the real world and is present in the conscious. It
seeks to replace the pleasure principle of the id, or the
internal instinct side found in the unconscious, with the
reality principle. The id controls the passions and the ego
takes charge of reason and sanity. The superego deals with
the Oedipus complex. This is where guilt and the conscience
come from. (Felluga).
Each of the three main characters in Shrek personifies one
of the aspects of the psyche. Shrek is an ogre that has to
deal with the real world every day. He sees things as they
really are and deals with what is necessary. This is the ego.

Farquaad is the id, living in the pleasure principle at all

times. He doesnt care who gets hurt as a result of his
actions as long he achieves his ends. Fiona is the superego
in that she has high morals and has the conscience to want
to tell Shrek the truth about the spell she is under. She feels
guilty that she doesnt share it with him.
Identification
Identification: The process whereby ones ego seeks to
emulate another. (Felluga).
To resolve the Oedipus complex, Freud felt that identification
was important. According to Freud, If a boy identifies with his
father, he wants to be like his father (Freud, in Strachey).
Pinocchio sees himself as a real boy, a true human son to his
carver, Gipetto, a real man. Since he is not a real boy, his
nose grows when he makes this statement to the buyer of the
fairy tale creatures.
Desire

Desire: To wish or long for; want;

crave. (American Heritage
Dictionary).
Jacques Lacan theorizes that desire comes from fantasy and
thus can never be fulfilled. Desire is caught up in social
structures once language is acquired. Humans desire things
when they, through language with others, find that
something is considered desirable. When this fantasy object
which Lacan called the object petit a is attained, the desire
for it is diminished and lost.


Princess Fiona desires to be rescued from the castle by
her one true love so that the spell that causes her to change
from human to ogre at sundown will be lifted and she will
remain human. She achieves her desire when she is rescued
by Shrek and Donkey. She then loses her desire to remain
human when she falls in love with Shrek, an ogre.
Anima/Animus
Anima/ Animus: Gender specific archetypical structures in
the collective unconscious that are compensatory to
conscious
gender identity. Thus,
animus
images primarily depict the
unconscious masculine in a
woman
and anima images primarily
depict the
unconscious feminine in a
man.
(answers.com)
Woman is
compensated by a
masculine element and therefore her unconscious has, so to
speak, a masculine element. (Carl Jung, Psychological
Types, 1921).
Evidence of the anima/animus archetypical structures is
revealed in Shrek when the male side of Fiona
singlehandedly defeats Robin Hood and his men with her
karate kick and amazing throws. For Shrek, his female side
is shown when, having dinner alone and feeling lonely, he
lights a candle for the ambiance, not for the light.
Puns Double Entendre, and Freudian Slips

 Pun: A humorous substitution of words that are alike in

sound but different in meaning. (answers.com)
Double Entendre: A French phrase for double meaning
adopted in English to denote a pun in which a word or
phrase has a second, usually sexual, meaning. An
accidental double entendre is often termed a Freudian
Slip. ( answers.com)
In his 1901 book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,
Freud recognizes the differences between errors of
speech (Versprechen), memory (Vergessen), and action
(Vergreifen). He attributed these faulty actions to the
unconscious. (Davis, Haverford, p. 109)
There are many examples of both puns and double
entendres in Shrek. A double entendre comes out of the
mouth of the Gingerbread Man when he is being tortured
by Farquaad as to the whereabouts of the fairy tale
creatures. In response to a verbal threat the cookie
replies, Eat me! One way of looking at it is that he is
indeed a cookie. The other is a very derogatory insult.
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
Willing suspension of Disbelief: Alleged willingness of a
reader or viewer to accept as true the premise of a
work of fiction, even if they are fantastic, impossible, or
otherwise contradictory to reality. (answers.com)

 The phrase was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in

1817. It was tested from the neuro-psychanalytic view
by Norman N. Holland in 1968. His findings were
published in his book The Dynamics of Literary
Response. He determined that this is a psychoanalytic
regression to an oral merger of infant and nurturing
other in a potential space. (Holland, The Dynamics of
Literary Response).
The audience response to Shrek seems to be a willing
suspension of disbelief. An ogre who wants to kick fairy
tale creatures out of his swamp so he can be alone
teams up with a talking donkey to rescue a princess who
is human by day and ogre by night. Yet the movie sold
millions of tickets, had two sequels made, and Shrek is a
name familiar to many people all over the world. People
feel happy when Shrek and Fiona are married and
Farquaad is eaten by Dragon.
Amplification
Amplification: A method of association based on the
comparative study of mythology, religion, and fairy
tales used in the interpretation of images in dreams
and drawings. (New York Association of Analytical
Psychology).
Part of Jungs method of interpretation of clinical and
cultural material. It involves the use of mythic,
historical, and cultural parallels to clarify material in
dreams that may be obscure, thin, and difficult to
attend to.
Princess Fiona tells Shrek how her rescue is supposed
to go. He is supposed to fight and kill the dragon,
remove her from the castle, kiss her and become her
true love so they can marry and live happily ever after.

She can only know these things from history given the
time period, culturally if she has known someone
rescued, or has heard it from past stories.
Eros and Thanatos
Eros: In Greek mythology, the personification of love, a
cosmogonic force of nature: psychologically, the function
of relationship. The counterpart of Eros is Thanatos, the
god of mortality and death.(New York Association of
Analytical Psychology)
Freud believed that there were a small number of basic
instincts that could fit into two broad generic
categories. These are Eros, which is the instinct that
promotes life and self-preservation and Thanatos,
which covers the instinct for aggression, cruelty, and
self-destruction. (Thornton, The Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy).
Fiona and Shrek have a hard time getting along initially.
After an argument the night before, Fiona makes
breakfast for Shrek as a way of promoting the function
of the relationship or make peace between them. This
is the eros side of her personality appearing. Shreks
thanatos instinct came out when he knowingly went to
a castle that was guarded by a giant dragon to rescue
her.

Suturing
Suturing: Procedures by means of which cinematic
texts confer subjectivity on their viewers. (Fielding,
Slouchproductions.net)
Suture theory therefore focuses on how film works
with our psyches to position us so that we enter into
the imaginary worlds (Ranowlan, uwec.edu)

 The audience is drawn into Shrek to the point that they

have reactions to the interplay between the characters,
begin to hope that Shrek will save Fiona from the evil
Farquaad, and actually cheer with the people in the
church when Shrek and Fiona will out. It appeals to the
psyche, both the conscious and unconscious.
So, moving along lets think about why psychoanalysis is
significant and why use it as a theory of communication.
Psychoanalysis explores the mind so that humans can better
understand their own motivations and the possible
motivations of others. It also gives people awareness about
where their feeling, fears, and joys come from. This awareness
can be useful in communication to help understand personal
motives and desires and see why there could be difficulty in
communication with other. Looking at the movie Shrek, the
world we live in, for the most part seems pretty optimistic.
People still admire the hero and cheer when he triumphs over
evil. Princess Fiona is her own woman, which appears to be
perfectly acceptable, holding her own for the people she cares
about. Humor is appreciated by both children and adults. The
text, as far as psychoanalysis and film are concerned,
highlights both the theories of Freud and Lacan. These
include the theories of Lacan that language is integral to the
coexistence of different people in a culture and a divisor. The
text also looks at both mens theory of the Oedipal complex
and what impact it has on becoming the self. The main
point of the text is that, although there are differences
between people, there are similarities as evidenced by the
reaction, in general to the film rendition of the world.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, times up. Class dismissed and
have a great day!

Works Cited
Allen, Robert, ed. Channels of Discourse. University of North
Carolina Press, 1992.
Davis, David. Sigmund Freud. Haverford University. 2004.
http://www.haverford.edu/psych/p.109/fslip.html
Felluga, Dino. Psychoanalysis. Introductory Guide to Critical
Theory. 28Nov2003. 25 Nov. 2008.
<http.//www.cla.purdue.edu/English/theory/>
Fielding, Melissa. Passing, Queering, and Recovery. Feminist
Psychoanalysis and the Performance of Plastic Surgery. Slouch
Productions. 2007.
<http://www.slouchproductions.net/Essays/suture-orlan.htm>
Klages, Mary. Jacques Lacan. University of Colorado. 2001. 24
Nov, 2008.
http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/Eng2012klages/lacan
.html
Nowlan, Robert. Suture. University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
2001. 23 Nov, 2008.
<http://www.uwec.edu/ranowlan/suture.html>
Sharp, Matthew. Jacques Lacan. Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. 2006. 26 Nov. 2008. http://www.iep.utm.edu
Sharpe, Darrell. Jungian Lexicon. New York Association for
Analytical Psychology. 1991. 26Nov. 2008.
http://www.nyaap.org/index.php
Williams, Kevin. Psychoanalysis. Shepherd University. Nov.
2008.