Wilhite: What Objects Mean: Chapter Two: Freudian Psychoanalytic Approach

analyze material culture in terms of the way artifacts reflect various unconscious needs and desires and relate to our psychological make up (44)
1. psychoanalytic theory as an interpretive art (31)
  1. it is the hidden meanings and symbolic significance of various artifacts of material culture that a psychoanalytic approach to the subject attempts to discover (32)
    1. Can understanding the meanings we invest in our surroundings and objects give us clues to mental illnesses/nuerosis and perhaps the help/cures thereof?
  2. There will be myriad interpretations; be open to all - be aware of others insights and ready to both explain (not defend) and change your own
  3. Who should be trusted as best authority?
2. advertisers and the political machine are light years ahead of the general populace
3. Purpose of focus groups in product research and development
much of our thinking is based on ‘significant’ symbols and that we use symbols to impose meaning on things (42)
1. our understanding of symbols is connected to the communities in which we are born (42)
2. Our understanding/projected meaning of symbols is often unconscious and always social
  1. Matches part of P's classification in Chapter Three
Levels: Classifications of artifacts
1. Consciousness: What an artifact does (33)
  1. Collective projection on an object
2. Preconsciousness: Other aspects of the artifact's functionality of which we may be aware (33)
  1. At this level we can make a symbol take on our own idiosyncratic meaning
3. Unconscious: Unrecognized symbolic meanings connect to the artifact (33)
  1. How deeply ingrained are our responses?
4. Helpful in organizing the intention of the object and ethos of the culture that makes/gives meaning to the artifact
Typology o' Freud
1. Id: provides energy, but is unfocused and dissociated (37)
  1. psychic representatives of the [motivational] drives (36)
    1. shadow energies?
      1. root of Spoonerisms and "Freudian slips"
2. Superego: provides restraint, but if too strong, it inhibits us too much and we become overwhelmed by guilt (37)
  1. moral precepts of our minds as well as our ideal aspiration
    1. Our completely impossible standards: our + projections on objects and people
3. Ego: stores up experiences in memory...guides us and mediates between id and superego (37)
  1. Channel energy in to appropriate activity
  2. Keep Mom at bay
  3. individual’s relationship with environment (36)
    1. Make your life your own- what symbols make you YOU?
Stages of life
1. oral
2. anal
3. phallic
4. genital
5. This categorization is where Jung and Freud differed and split
  1. Freud is one way of interpretation- there are others; remember, working with any framework limits and expands
While more inclined towards Jungian analysis; I give Papa Freud his due

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Wilhite: What Objects Mean: Chapter Two: Freudian Psychoanalytic Approach

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	Created by Jennifer Wilhite over 7 years ago