Dans ses écrits, Freud a employé une seule fois le terme athéisme. Pour autant, il est devenu un des plus illustres contempteurs de la religion et l'opinion commune a facilement retenu le caractère athée de la psychanalyse. Des psychanalystes de toutes obédiences se sont eux-mêmes volontiers qualifiés d'athées. Ils ont évoqué le problème de l'athéisme et se sont appropriés les références philosophiques, politiques et théologiques portant sur cette question. Cette appropriation a-t-elle aboutit à la formation d'une notion restreinte et psychanalytique d'athéisme ? Pour répondre à cette question, nous avons recensé les usages du terme athéisme dans les écrits psychanalytiques. Nous nous sommes penchée sur la manière dont les psychanalystes ont constitué des savoirs à propos de l'athéisme.Notre lecture précise des publications nous a permis de mettre en évidence l'absence d'une acception proprement psychanalytique de l'athéisme. Toutefois, nous avons pu extraire au moins deux acceptions principales. La première concerne la pensée athée. Les psychanalystes ont couramment pointé ses incohérences et l'ont analysé comme résultant de conflits psychiques. La seconde acception se réfère à la perspective athée de la psychanalyse, c'est-à-dire à la séparation inaugurale entre la psychanalyse et le théisme.

The Road to Los Angeles, the first novel written by Italian-American author John Fante, is most often recognized as a tale concerned with Italian-American alienation, xenophobia and existence on the periphery of mainstream society. This essay, however, aims to analyze the novel from the viewpoint of fetishism. Fetishism, a motif that constitutes a vast theoretical field in itself, will be analyzed using the lens of Freudian theory and more recent works by critics such as Louise J. Kaplan and Johanna Malt. While fetishism unproblematically can be defined as the misdirection of libidinal energy, and the objectification of a sexual object’s seductive powers, this essay also aims to throw light on the intricate nature and general applicability of fetishism. Fante depicts fetishism as essentially oxymoronic in its presence-absence duality, as instrumental in animating the inanimate and dehumanizing  the sexual object. Fetishism, which in many ways shares an affinity with scopophilia and voyeurism, is essentially semiotic and instrumental in projecting the will onto the external world. Moreover, read through the lens of the inherent death drive, as theorized by Sigmund Freud, manifestations of brutal violence and self-torture are seen as  direct counterparts to fetishism.

From W.H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety to Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, modernists have frequently attested to the anxiety permeating members of modern civilisation. While critics have treated anxiety as a consequence of the historical circumstances of the modernist period—two World Wars and the disintegration of European empires—my aim is to view anxiety in both a psychoanalytical and political light and investigate modernist anxiety as a narrative ploy that diagnoses the modern condition. Defining modernist anxiety as feelings of fear and alienation that reveal the uncanny relation between self and ideological state apparatuses which themselves suffer from trauma, perversion, and neurosis—I focus on the works of four key modernist writers—Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and Gertrude Stein. These authors have repeatedly constructed the mind as an open system, making the psyche one of the sites most vulnerable to the power of colonial ideology but also the modernist space par excellence to narrate the building and falling of empire. While the first part of my dissertation investigates the neurosis of post-war London in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the second part of my thesis discusses the perverse demands of the colonial system in Forster’s A Passage to India and Woolf’s The Waves, arguing that Woolf and Forster extend Freud’s understanding of repetition compulsion by demonstrating that the colonial system derives a “perverse” pleasure from repeating its own impossible demands. The concluding section of my dissertation discusses Woolf and Stein’s queer primitivism as the antidote to anxiety and the transcendence of perversity. My dissertation revives Freud’s role in the modernist project: Freud not only provides avant-garde writers with a theory of consciousness, but his construction of the fragmented psyche—a construction which had come to dominate modernist renditions of internality by the early-twentieth century—functions as a political stratagem for an imperial critique. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2013-03-11 16:48:57.865

The novel Animal Farm was primarily written as a satire on the Russian revolution, with the underlying intention to actively warn readers what happens when a totalitarian regime takes power. Manipulation and propaganda play a central role in the novella, but the ways in which the regime abuses its people psychologically appears to be of even greater importance. This essay examines and analyzes, from a psychoanalytical perspective, how Orwell portrays the characters that take part in the revolution and the psychology behind their behavior and the choices they make. The aim of the essay is to examine what the underlying factors are that enable a totalitarian leader to take hold of a community as this can be analyzed in Animal Farm. The character of Boxer the horse is central in the novel and of immediate interest, and is therefore analyzed in greater depth. The defense mechanisms denial and sublimation are examined closely in order to see what role they play in a totalitarian regime. Orwell delivers a serious message in Animal Farm, even though it is written as a satire with comic elements. By choosing to write it that way the novel is accessible to a wider audience than it would have been otherwise.

As is evident from the title of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), the protagonist of the play, the salesman Willy Loman, will die. This essay will investigate what role Ben, Willy’s deceased brother, plays in Willy’s suicide. The thesis is that Willy needs Ben’s support in order to commit suicide and therefore needs to bring Ben’s values, at the possible expense of his wife Linda’s, into his superego. Ben is, to Willy, a true example of the American Dream, as he was a very successful businessman. Willy’s ego (or rational mind) seems to realize that his superego (or conscience) needs to replace the humane values of Linda with the economic values of Ben, in order to justify his motivation of an “economically beneficial” suicide. When Willy arrives at his final conclusion of how his favorite son Biff would financially benefit from his “accidental” suicide and thereby being able to attain Willy’s version of the American Dream, the evidence brought forth may suggest that Willy, at that point, allows Ben full access into his mind.        Willy’s mind will be investigated via Freud’s triple model of the psyche; the id, the ego and the superego.

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Psychology and theatre have a remarkable amount in common. In using the basic concepts and theories of psychology, actors can develop more concrete, logical approaches to characters. This thesis is a summation of the course I developed, "Psychology and the Theatre," which was an attempt to teach students introductory psychology and then experiment with translating those concepts to character analysis and stage performance. Students were taught eight units of psychology: Sensation, Perception, and Memory; Learning; Motivation and Emotion; Development; Freud and Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality; Adlerian Individual Psychology; Love and Social Cognition; and Psychological Disorders. Students were given reading quizzes and written tests on the material from the psychology texts. In addition, students wrote journals and papers to help work through potential uses of the material. They also performed contemporary scenes, attempting to put the material into practice. This course was an overall success; most students felt that this was a unique and helpful set of tools they could use to analyze and perform characters. Students found uses for each unit of the material, allowing more depth and logic to their character choices. With further development, this material has the potential to enhance the techniques of many actors.

Jan Havel Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx - theit vision of human and their legacy Abstrakt: This paper is about how Marx and Freud see a human being. Besides introduction, methodology and cunclusion there are three main parts. These are the chapters "Genesis of Marx's and Freud's vision of human", Evolution of marxism and psychoanalysis" and "Comparison of the vision of human". "Genesis of Marx's and Freud's vision of human" speaks about predecessors of both authors and about things that had an impact on their work. Chapter "Genesis of Marx's and Freud's vision of human" shows how were both ideas changing during history. In the chapter "Comparison of the vision of human" are examined ideas and thoughts of other authors and connections between their work and the work of Marx and Freud are shown. This paper also includes attachements that include short biographies of chosen authors and also a list of qutations from primary sources of literature.

This essay explores how James Baldwin’s short story Going to Meet the Man depicts racist attitudes toward African-Americans in American society. Further, this essay also shows how racism is linked to a circulation of emotions that unconsciously generates a xenophobic nation affecting even those who implicitly are regarded as genuine citizens of that community. By using two theoretical perspectives, Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies and some of Freud’s concepts from psychoanalysis, this essay analyzes Baldwin’s text and discovers how the American nation needs to accept and recognize its racist history, just as a child needs to acknowledge his or her fear when experiencing traumatic events. Baldwin’s narrative reinforces racist stereotypes while at the same time using the text to write back to a society that at the time of writing had not expected, but indeed needed, an African-American man to publish a book from a white man’s perspective.