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.
I have had that same issue, why is sexual erotism brought up in not only every story in this book, but also much of his other work. It seems like he can get the same points across without relating them to sex. I would say that the majority of experiences that shape us in life do not necessarily have anything to do with sex.
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