Optimus2g

I enjoyed the first class very much because of the level of personal interaction that occurred between all the members of the class. Too many times in the past here at QC, I've witnessed how gruff the professors could be with the class. It's a nice change of pace to see that this is not the case with our class. Part of it is that everyone in here has enough academic pelts on the wall so to speak for the Professor to be able to invest a geater amount of trust into the class; this results in more freedom for Prof. Tougaw to be able to do things that he or anyone else in his shoes wouldn't have otherwise been able to do. The interpretation of the music is something that was very eye opening in light of the 4 aspects of psychoanalysis. I really was able to look on things in a new light because of it. All in all it was a nice first class and it made me look forward to not only the rest of the semester, but the rest of the year as well.

I once had a dream where I wasn't able to perform any voluntary muscular actions upon waking up from a dream I had. I felt like I was sinking into my friend's couch---the fact that I slept over my friend's house while he was having a house party might have had something to do with it I guess (choose the recreational substance of your choice...I was Bill Clinton though, if you know what I mean). I found myself unable to move upon beginning to arouse from my truncated slumber. The fact that I wanted to scream out loud but couldn't terrified me. For the first time in my life I wasn't in total control of my bodily actions, and it terrified me more than I imagined it ever could have. I don't even remember the dream, it was my paralysis that stayed with me since it happened about 3 years ago. I've posted an interesting link below if anyone is interested. It'd be interesting to know if anyone else has ever experienced this. Please let me know.

This element of Freud's cocept of the "Dream Work," stood out to me because of how the conscious mind intrudes upon the dreaming mind. Freud was ambiguous about whether or not it was part of the "dream work," though. This might be because of the fact that it is so unlike the other 3 aspects of this concept (Condensation, Representational Resources, and Displacement being the other three). Secondary Revision functions as recoiling mechanism of sorts, in which the conscious mind actually exerts a limited form of control in order to retain some sort of control on the dreaming mind. This process actually reversed the paradigm that Freud established previously in which he said that dreams fulfilled wish fulfillment: the catch here being that this didn't have anything to do with the waking mind intruding on the dreaming mind, making this "dream work" element truly unique form the other three.

I vividly recall a recurring dream from my childhood when I would be running from a huge rolling pin of some kind and always escape at the last second but would always somehow be pricked by these huge needles. I know that it doesn't make much sense, but I've had this dream so many times over the years as a child that I can't seem to forget it. The pain felt so REAL. I would roll over in agony and wake up and be surprised that my surroundings were different from what I had seen in my sleep only moments earlier. This always made me wonder what could possibly insitigate such a distinct nightmare over the years. Till this day I can't really explain it. I know that Freud would have a field day--particularly with the sexual imagery of the needles :-), but I often wonder what could have made me always react in such a shell shocked manner upon awakening every time I had this same dream? All I could chalk it up to was being overactive as a child and this was my psyche's way of "curbing my enthusiasm," so to speak.

I give both men credit for putting as much thought and work into the field of psychoanalysis but I have to say that Freud was too out there for me. Not everything could be attributed to mommy and sexual frustration/imagery. Jung had a great deal of respect for his mentor but surpassed him by embracing huge parts of the subconscious that Freud didn't explore as satisfacorily as his pupil did. Frued and his ego--or is it id ;-) took this to heart.

I also can't help but think the about the two brothers, Niles and Frasier Crane, from the popular show Frasier. Both men were psychiatrists, as many people already know. Niles was a Jungian, while his elder brother Frasier was a Freudian. The idea of the Collective Unconscious and the Oedipus Complex stood in stark contrast to one another and would always seem to remind viewers of that show about the respective stances that each man had on the field of psychology. I didn't even remember this until we started discussing and reading about Jung and Freud over the past 2 weeks. I think I might need to go back and watch some more of those shows from a Jungian perspective after having read about Freud.

I found the passage on page 60 to be very significant. Here Georg talks about how “he had firmly made up his mind to watch closely every least movement (of his father) so that he should not be surprised by any indirect attack, a pounce from behind or above. At this moment (in which his father unexpectedly stood up and kicked his legs out while resting upon his bed) he recalled this long-forgotten resolve and forgot it again, like a man drawing a short thread through the eye of a needle.” This simile used by Kafka is one that struck me due to the fact that I myself have experienced that same thought when it came to watching how my own father dealt with me, thereby making me more observant of his every action so that I could anticipate what he was going to do and say to me at any given moment, in order to be prepared for his wrath or praise. Often times however, it was his wrath that I dealt with and not his praise, just like the relationship Georg has with his father and I’m assuming Franz Kafka had with his own father, Hermann.

The concept of wish-fullfillment , associated with Frued (or "Siggy" as he is referred to as in the film "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.") highlights the father-son relationship/dynamic that is at work here in this story. This story is in essence a vehicle that Franz Kafka uses to describe his own relationship with his father, Herrmann Kafka, through the characters in the story.

The aforementioned universal Oedipal theme (reminds me of some Harold Bloom stuff as well) of the son surpassing the father (i.e. Luke Skywalker surpassing his father, Anakin), for the pop-culture buffs out there, like myself) has a mass appeal that I’m sure has struck a cord with many other male readers who have undergone a similar relationship with their own fathers. One could ask if this theme that is explored by Kafka in this short story as exciting and pertinent today as it was in Kafka's time or does it somehow bore the reader in the manner in which it is presented? I for one find extrememly engaging, yet that's only one dude's opinions, and we all know what they say about opinions, they're like #$$@#%*#$, everyone has one...

P.S. clcik here for some more information regarding Franz Kafka's relationship with his father Herrmann

My now ex-fiance still tortures me--only it's in my dreams, which is ironic considering that she no longer does so in real life, since we no longer speak, but that's another story. She once had a dream in which she spoke of seeing herself marrying another man and actually went ahead and described him to me (taller than me, brown hair, fairer skin). Now I normally would consider this as being psycho-babble and did so at the time, except it always haunted me. Why would she go ahead and say something like that to me? What's funny is that I would actually be on the lookout for guys who fit that description! Now, I do admit, that made me more than a bit paranoid, but this dream of hers certainly had a profound effect on me. This dream of hers could have easily been an example of wish-fulllment at work in her psyche, and this was justified to her through her dream. We actually had arguments over this, funny as it sounds! My way of making sense of this was to actually have a dream of my own in response to what she told me: In this dream I saw her with a little girl in her lap, while she was sitting and watching me play soccer, that seemed to be our daughter. Now when I relayed the dream to her see seemed to want to believe it but was hesitant to accept it. Now was this my own "dream-self's" response to her dream about the other man? I certainly thought it was, considering the timing. Shame I won't know...