Freud Response

Jeremy Kimmelstiel

In analyzing Freud’s work it is most common to explain his approach to psychology. While his writings have been considered groundbreaking because of his unique understanding of the human psyche it was not this that caught my eye in “Three Case Histories”. However, Freud’s ability to capture the reader in the story showed that he was indeed a master of psychology but also had immense lingual prowess.

Freud explains that language is one key factor in the psychoanalysis process. To explain this to the reader he uses case histories. This means the reader has the chance to sit in the seat of a psychologist, immerse him or herself in the story and examine the words of the patient. Without making clear his observations Freud allows the reader into the mind of both the patient and doctor.

While introducing his case histories Freud actually explains that he is attempting to give the reader an opportunity at analyzing particular stories. To contain the wherewithal to abstain from giving up the results of his investigations, Freud shows off his often unnoticed talent for writing.

Melding writing with psychology is something Freud did often, but is actually something that is present in all works of both fiction and non-fiction, admittedly, to a lesser degree. However, authors work diligently in sequencing words in a way that best touches upon emotions. Freud explains the idea of perception; it is perception-of-self that is the driving commonality between the cases. In fact, it is this perception that the author is trying to mold with his or her own words. A good book will make the reader feel like a part of the world, like they are sitting in the seat of the psychologist and analyzing what the characters are feeling.

Interestingly, “Three Case Histories” explains the idea of the reader perceiving an important role in the progression of a story. While doing so, Freud actually confirms his initiative by placing the reader in this exact position. Ultimately, Freud’s “Three Case Histories” was an analytical approach, unwrapping the ways in which words can capture the reader. Writing, as described by Freud, should take into account the ways in which the reader will perceive the material and how this perception will affect the reader. In doing so, the reader can create strong connections to the written works.

Yoong Min Kim 07/01/11
Prof. Rowan G. Tepper
Coli211Z

Freud Response
As we all know, Freud is very famous psychologist in the history of the world by far now. He loved to maintain and study on especially psychosexuality and eroticism related to people in mentally. Throughout of reading his book, Three cases history, of course, got my attention and interesting with cases of Rat man, Wolf man, and wife of god.
Case of Rat man could be simplified as two things; consciousness and unconsciousness. All human being have experienced with these things before, and they are so significant that makes your characteristic, trait, and personality; Consciousness and unconsciousness somehow interacts and influence us. For instance, I am not good listener. I used to be so distracted and do something else such as touching the phone, glancing around when my friends talk to me about their love stuffs no matter how serious they were. I consciously feel that I don’t want to hear uninterested things so that unconsciously do something else to appeal that I am not interested in. My friends don’t want to feel talking to me about their relationships in love.
The case of Wife of God could happen to most of human being. How pathetic it sounds if I live in lie or fictional life. However, all we have experienced this. For example, my friend had believed about his real identity. I mean, he strongly insisted that he was adopted in which he was an infant. He tried to find any evidences by searching on internet, asking around city hall and near adoption centers. However, it came out nothing. He was truly son of his present parents. I want to inform that this example is one of severe cases. There are such as belief in ghost, abduction by aliens, and being able to fly. In these days, we can reach to media that shows variety of fiction things; we can be affected unconsciously.
The last case is Wolf man. This case is how unwanted sexual experiences affect in your dream. This young guy had a dream of white wolf. He had been suffered to sleep in entire of his life since he had seen his parents having sex. All we do have scary dreams at least once in our lives; In fact, we were terrified of it. However, we forget about the dream after the moment we woke up and little later. Freud pointed that having fear dream is indicating something you were shocked at, sexuality stuffs, in which you were awake. For example, I saw an article about a woman had been sexual abused by her father. She always has a nightmare of being chasing by bunch of bees; it is mentally illness that a particular subject keeps showing up in your scary dream every time you think of what you saw from his parents.

Three case history response

Jennifer Abbate

Freud Response

Case History of the “Wolf Man”

The “Rat Man” better known as a military officer suffers from a couple of psychoanalytical issues, but I want to focus on the obsessive behavior. As Freud explains on page 29, “Obsessional ideas have an appearance of being either without motive or without meaning, just likes dreams do.” This caught my attention when he further explained the thoughts of suicidal impulses. Freud explains that these thoughts are just unconscious feelings that an individual struggles to cope with. For example, when the soldier’s young lady whom he is attracted to leaves him he struggles with rage, disappointment, jealousy, sadness, and guilt, which Freud easily analyzes in his studies. Freud argues, “ All of the products of his illness depended on a certain circumstance which at the time dominated his relations to his lady” (33). This explains his obsessional reactions through out his life.

This story of the “Rat Man” explains how we begin to interpret ourselves consciously and unconsciously. The world in which we live in as an individual and the experiences we are raised in completely shape our personality and obsessions that later develop in life. Experiences an individual encounters can change their whole life experience. For example, as a young child I went to Disney World and went on a ride that had to do with aliens taking over the world. As a young child I did not understand how this alien could possibly run around and swallow small animals (at the time I didn’t understand it was a high tech robot). I was always oddly fascinated in aliens because I did not understand nor even know if I believed in a life outside of human form, but at the same time I was terrified of them. Although my experience was not where as dramatically threatening to my state of mind as the “Rat Man” I still have random dreams about the experience.

The only thing I really don’t understand that Freud is well known for and constantly brings up is the sexual erotism associated with almost every experience explained. I have read previous Freudian interpretations and analysis, but I still don’t see the connection as he attempts to explain in many of his stories. In all I believe that experiences faced in our life, especially our childhood, have a tendency to be implanted in our unconsciousness, which helps define who we are as individuals and further explains our choices we as individuals make and do in this world.

Response Paper: Georges Bataille

Response Paper: Georges Bataille
As a Catholic, it is true that I did not feel very fascinate as I read the book. However, interestingly, this story was very addictive as a normal reader. The general storyline is exciting; furthermore, it reflects the dark sexual desire and instinct of human being through the main character, Charles. It looks fictional, but it eventually infers a real human life.
As I read the story, I felt like I am reading a written pornography. However, an interesting point of this pornography is that it does not directly appeal readers with dynamic or sexual expressions to describe bodies. Each word description of scenes was more likely to astonish and shock readers with psychological imagination. The writer’s way to describe leads readers to deeper level of mental orgasm by leading to a prohibited sexual affair, which is an ultimate sin, between characters. Breaking morality possibly has two results to the human; the human either feels guilty or feels an absolute amusement. In the case of this book, the writer means to show the fact that physical satisfaction is not the only way to fulfill human’s sexual desire.
The literature also provided me to think about a true form of enjoyment and desire humans look for during their entire lives. I thought economic success is the most important for human desires because it fulfills many other desires at once: physical happiness, psychological arrogance by standing upon people, or satisfaction. However, this literature shows that nothing could be stronger than the real instinct of human: sexual satisfaction. Furthermore, what humans really desire in sexual ways is never be clean. It should hurt others or even require deeper darkness of morality. Is it really worthy to be satisfied then? This is the question right after I finished the story.
Bataille points our darker sides of human’s morality through his literature. from Blumenberg’s book, I felt that real true form of happiness is intentionally ignored and hidden from us. It could be true, but the reason was not clear to me. Through Bataille, I found the reason. The reason is that our morality that is formed by our surrounding society could be defending ourselves from the evil and dark sides of us instinctively. We, ourselves are not willing to be evil.

Freud Response

Nikki Abesamis
June 23, 2011
Freud Response

I am a Psychology/HDEV double major, so needless to say I have learned of Freud’s theories in many of my classes and was looking forward to reading this book. When his five stages of psychosexual development first came out, Freud received a lot of criticism due to the fact that many people found it hard to believe that the way we developed could be related to anything sexual. As expected, I found a lot of what he said to be very intriguing yet I also found myself disagreeing with the way he related many things back to infantile sex, especially in the first case. However, by reading the case histories I was able to make some connections to the way we as humans interpret the world and how we ourselves fit into what we contribute to the world. 

In the beginning Freud says that it is easier to learn more about a patient through his/her secrets than small facts about him/her. I agree with this statement, in that we really can learn more about a person by delving into their intimate thoughts. Freud views the mind using an iceberg analogy. Our conscious thoughts are just the tip of the iceberg and our unconscious thoughts are the rest of the iceberg; underneath the “tip”, our unconscious reveals so much more about who we are and why we make the decisions we make. For example, on page 13 Freud says his patient breaks into a story, and creates a “defensive measure, which he was obliged to adopt in order to prevent the fantasy from being fulfilled.” I agree with Freud’s theories on defense mechanisms, which are brought upon by the unconscious in order to deal with our realities. Defense mechanisms are probably used more often than we realize. For example, even something as small as taking your anger out on somebody who does not deserve it is an example of a defense mechanism, particularly displacement. The way we interpret it, however, is by justifying that we are right and we do not believe we are using any defense mechanisms. I now realize I experienced this just the other day. It was late at night and I wanted Five Guys, so I went over there yet they were closed. I used a defense mechanism by saying, “Well, I didn’t really want a burger anyway and I have food at home” (this one is rationalization). Defense mechanisms can oftentimes have the potential to be legitimate excuses, yet they are usually just created by our unconscious to make us feel better. This relates to “idea versus wish or fear”: what you think is an idea you suppress/don’t realize it’s a wish or fear (another possible defense mechanism), and his patient is seen making this mistake.

On page 91-92 Dr. Weber is quoted with what I thought to be very interesting in relation to this particular assignment prompt: “The culminating point of the patient’s delusional system is his belief that he has a mission to redeem the world, and to restore mankind to their lost state of bliss. He was called to this task, so he asserts, by direct inspiration from God…”. We were asked to view how we interpret ourselves in relation to what we do in this world, and personally, I would have to say this is how I view myself: Although I am not very religious and do not feel “directly inspired from God”, I make my decisions and I have my beliefs based on internal motivation. I, like this patient, feel that I do have a mission to complete in the world, and I do set goals for myself to help mankind in some way, even if it’s by small actions such as volunteering at a hospital or raising money through charities. Although we are not all “delusional” and we were never Freud’s patients, I think we can still find ourselves having some things in common with the patients in this book. We may all interpret the world around us differently, but deep down I think we as humans all use defense mechanisms daily and we all feel we have set our own “missions” for ourselves.

Freud Response

SaeRom Sung
Professor Rowan Tepper
Coli 221Z Summer
6/26/11

Freud Response

The most well-known psychologist, Sigmund Freud, uses the case study genre to present his theory of reading and interpreting the complex language of the unconscious through the book, ‘Three case Histories’. Freud gives three cases for the readers; the Rat Man, the Wolf Man, and the wife of god case. First case, the Rat Man, has obsessions, which seems to be from his child memory. The second case, the Wolf Man, is about a Russian person who had a dream about white wolves when he was a kid. Third case is about Dr. Schreber, who suffered from mental disease, thinking god is going to change him to a woman.

I want to concentrate on the Rat Man and the Wolf Man case. As the Rat man’s case history begins with detailed accounts of the first seven sessions in the Rat Man’s treatment. Freud introduces analytic sections of the patient’s obsessional ideas such as the cause of Rat Man’s illness, the father complex, and solution to the illness. The Wolf Man case is more a common case we can experience in our lives or lives around us. The fear that he faced in his dream affected his whole life. Both cases’ patients have some bad memories from their childhoods. Because of their memories, they tend to be obsessional in certain things. Eventually, these illnesses took and controlled their lives. Fictional ideas can be very dangerous for certain people. As I mentioned earlier, these ideas can be easily in around our lives. For example, today’s media has been a big influence of today’s people. It seems like television shows and movies are trying to get more viewers by exposing sexual and violent contents. People that mature enough to know that these contents are just fictional will be fine because they will not confuse the reality and fictional contents from the media. However, for the kids, they have a higher chance to mix up the reality and fictional ideas. Unfortunately, the mix-up might take and control the kids’ lives.

I think the lesson is very obvious in the book. We cannot let the fictional ideas take over our lives. To do so, as the grown-ups, we have to have responsibility to protect the immature people from being exposed fictional ideas until they are old enough to understand. Another lesson is that it is important for any people to release their stress to prevent the fictional ideas to take over the lives. The life is short, and we cannot let the fictional ideas to take the advantage of our lives.

Freud the Rat Man

The way we interpret the world and ourselves is reflected in what we do in this world. Sigmund Freud’s Three Case Histories, topic of the obsession neurosis, or the rat man is a great example of a situation that can cause a person to act differently. Freud develops techniques of interpreting the rat man by using patient’s stories and explanation. An obsessed person interprets the world differently than a non obsessed person.

Obsession is an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind. In the case the patient is presented with obsessive thoughts and behaviors that Freud felt would compel the patient to carry out. Freud theorized that these obsessive ideas and similar thoughts were produced by conflicts consisting of the combination of loving and aggressive impulses relating to the people concerned.

People have obsessions with love and fear but always living in fear will drive a person crazy. Always worrying about the deaths of loved ones would haunt just about anyone. In the case of the rat man he was obsessed with the cruel method the military used for torture. The method included rats that are trapped and the only escape is to borrow through a person’s anus. The rat man would obsess about the torture happening to his father or fiancé. A person’s fear controls the view of the world and can change what they do in this world.

I believe that people have a natural instinct of fear. Evolutionarily people have fears for spiders due to the poisonous factors. The people who didn’t have the fear died from the spider bite and the people who did have the fear survived. Fear is only natural but obsessions leads to irrationality. A person with obsession interprets the world and themselves differently and acts differently in the world.