Freud and Psychoanalytic Theory

So far I’ve found psychoanalytic theory to be much easier to grasp than most of the subject matter we’ve gone over so far. Maybe that’s because it focuses around concepts that I’m already familiar with, or maybe it’s because I’m actually getting better at this whole thing, but in any case things seem pretty good. I don’t really want to write about Derrida because I don’t think I would do him justice, which is a polite way of saying that I still don’t get a lot of his material. What I am starting to get a foothold on is Lacanian and Freudian theory, wherein the subconscious and other psychological factors are given some well deserved face time. I really like the idea proposed by Lacan that because language is the only way we can talk about the subconscious and the effects of the subconscious affect our language to the degree that it is impossible to accurately analyse the subconscious. But I might be getting that wrong.

Assuming that we can never completely understand the unconscious, it being the nature of the unconscious to never be completely 100% clear, we can only try to measure its effects on the world. Today in class this reminded me of how post structuralism worked, knowing from the start that we can’t know everything but it’s still good to try and question, being aware that the tools by which we try to dissect the system are compromised by the system itself. This felt a little like a self-defeatist attitude, where one could easily argue that if you’ll never really get it, then why even try. I believe that only after being upfront and honest about the fact that we are always compromised in some way in trying to learn about an academic subject can we truly gain deep understanding of it. It may not be possible to fully understand the unconscious mind, but knowing that (and how) it affects our language and ultimately our attempts to dissect it, puts us in a position where we can learn as much as possible.