FREUD QUOTES

ME• he question now arises: How could the very body of Hughes 痴 verse that Filatova 痴 Marxist critique

admonished for its 途omantic illusions� serve the communist ideology to which L駻o subscribes? While there is no easy answer to this question, Kesteloot points to two key factors that help to untangle the web created by this collision of aesthetic regimes. First is the182fact that almost all of the French surrealists were, at some point, members of the Communist Party. Second, and more to the point, is the role occupied by the primitive in Freud 痴 thought. Kesteloot argues that Freud 痴 砺 ision of a world of children and primitive people� was specially significant to the surrealists, and points to Breton 痴 1946 appraisal of surrealism to support her assertion:In the twentieth century, the European artist, swept along by the reasonable and the useful, can guard against the drying up of his sources of inspiration only by returning to a so-called primitive vision, the synthesis of sensorial perception and mental image. (39)Kesteloot further argues that this reevaluation of primitive vision 電 id not pass unnoticed among representatives of races still considered inferior because of their nonrational cultures,� as 甜v]alues had, in effect, been reversed; it was now the most 祖 ivilized� man who was the most 創aked,� the least pure� (39-40). Surrealism, therefore, provided 殿n excellent brake to cultural assimilation� (40). We can now begin to see how Hughes 痴 primitivist poetry represented, for L駻o, the very material of communist revolt and anti-colonial protest. Given that primitivism was conceptualized as an integral part of surrealism, and surrealism was seen as a weapon of communist revolt, L駻o 痴 assertion that Hughes 痴primitivist vision of Africa could both 田 leanse the Antilles of the abortive fruit of an obsolete culture� and unshackle the black proletariat makes perfect sense.L駻o 痴 depiction of Hughes as a poet primarily concerned with bringing African notions of love, joy, life, and death to his readers is not simply one of convenience. Rather, it is the result of the translation and dissemination of Hughes 痴 poetry in the Francophone world from1831928-36 wherein Hughes 痴 primitivist poetry predominates, precisely because French language translators, perhaps possessed with colonial anxiety, paid special heed to his primitivist poetry. In fact, one is hard pressed to find 擁n either the limited number of articles written about Hughes or in the precious few translations of his verse預rguments and poems that do not speak to the issues of primitivism, assimilation, and revolt.

Freud COD

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Freud COD

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Freud COD

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ME• It is here I would like to suggest that trauma comes, paradoxically, fully into the picture. The

symbol of an empty house of the �stare," of a stare that gleans no knowledge, is remarkably akin to Freud’s conception of the traumatic flashback. In 1920, Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle asserted that �traumatic neuroses� have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back to �the situation of the accident, a situation he wakes up from in another fright� (Freud 11). For Freud the traumatic neurosis was the consequence of an extensive breach made in the shield of the cognitive apparatus, and any stimuli which breached the protective shield was a potential �origin of projection" (Freud 32, 37). Freud also noted a tendency in the traumatic neurosis to return the victim unwillingly to the scene of the accident, a tendency he labeled the �compulsion to repeat� (Freud 37). In recent years, revisiting these theories, Cathy Caruth remarked that what was For Freud most extraordinary about the �neurosis� was �the surprising literality and non-symbolic nature of traumatic dreams and flashbacks� (Caruth 5). In essence, what is most interesting about Freud’s and Caruth’s formulations is the claim that the traumatic accident, having overwhelmed the mind’s protective shield, is therefore never fully integrated into conscious knowledge, lying instead just outside of conscious recall, of memoire voluntaire. In this sense, it is not the accident victim who possesses the traumatic memory, but the memory that possesses the accident victim, exterior to her will, in flashbacks that, because they were never fully and consciously assimilated, retain their full literality. In this, the traumatic flashback is a symptom, as Caruth (building on Shoshanna Felman's arguments) points out, precisely of history, and perhaps even a model for it (Caruth 5).

ME• In 1920, Freud asserted that �traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of repeatedly

bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident, a situation which he wakes up from in another fright� (Beyond the Pleasure Principle 11). It is worth noting that Freud uses the word fright, in German schreck, to denote a state of fear without any reference to the future. For Freud saw the traumatic neurosis as a �consequence of an extensive breach being made in the protective shield� of the mental apparatus, as a past event the patient may be �most concerned with not thinking about� (Beyond the Pleasure Principle 32). Somewhat paradoxically, however, Freud also observed in the traumatic neurosis a �compulsion to repeat� encouraged by �suggestion� and—as with any stimuli that breeches the �protective shield�—an �origin of projection� (Beyond the Pleasure Principle 37, 32)

– James Strachey, in a footnote, asserts that Freuds use of shreck was far from consistent, �Freud is very far indeed from always carrying out the distinction he makes here. More often than not he uses the word Angst to denote a state of fear without any reference to the future. It seems not unlikely that in this passage he is beginning to adumbrate the distinction drawn in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety (1926d) between anxiety as a reaction to a traumatic situationprobably equivalent to what is here called Schreck and anxiety as a warning signal of the approach of such an event� (Beyond the Pleasure Principle 11).