Typically at the end of the film, the repressed memory is recovered, the heroine is granted self-knowledge and the audience gets a satisfying narrative conclusion.
But even if Freud is widely misunderstood and misrepresented, and the Oedipus complexes portrayed in TV dramas are quite different from the Oedipus complex set out in The Interpretation of Dreams, there is little denying his concepts remain the subject of widespread public fascination.
It’s all the more remarkable given that much of what Freud wrote has been superseded by subsequent research, and that in some academic circles his theories have come under fierce attack – not least from feminists, who regard concepts such as penis envy as misogynistic, and accuse him of ignoring evidence that some of his patients had been victims of child abuse.
Freud still has his adherents – not least Oliver James, who says his writings about dreams, the unconscious and the role of early childhood are still valid. But Marianski concedes Freud is “mostly read in humanities departments today” rather than by scientists.
Most of this will have passed the layman by, however. What’s perhaps more significant, Marianski says, is that Freudian language was popularised during a particularly self-obsessed era.
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939
Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, regarded as one of most influential – and controversial – minds of the 20th Century Born in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor in Czech Republic). Family moved to Leipzig and then settled in Vienna, where Freud studied medicine Developed theory that humans have unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them His major work The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1900 in which dreams were explained in terms of unconscious desires and experiences In 1923, he published The Ego and the I’d, which suggested a new structural model of the mind, divided into the “id”, the “ego” and the “superego” In 1938, shortly after Nazi annexation of Austria, Freud left Vienna for London, where he died the next year
“From a historical perspective, he’s part of a general movement where people start to look more into themselves,” says Marianski. “There was a broad cultural shift in our culture – how you conceptualise the self?”
But there is much in Freud’s writing that makes the continued prominence of his terms appear incongruous. In particular, his theories of repression belong very much to a pre-sexual revolution world.
“Now that young people seem to be at liberty to do whatever they want and talk about whatever they want, it’s very interesting that Freud would still be very interesting to them,” says James.
No doubt this won’t stop people from picking and choosing Freudian terms as they see fit in the service of a great 21st Century activity – putting themselves and others on the proverbial couch.
As WH Auden wrote after Freud’s death, “To us he is no more a person / now but a whole climate of opinion”.
It’s more elegant than “pub Freud”.
(BBC News Magazine)[eap_ad_3]