Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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bert
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Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

I had often thought about freud before meeting him. I think he would have been the only man who could talk as an equal to my paranoia. He admired my painting greatly. I would have liked to dazzle him. When I met him in london, introduce by stefan Zweig, I made great efforts to appear to him as I immagined he immagined me: a Beau Brummel of universal caliber. but I failed.

he lisetend to me talk with great attention and finally exclaimed to Zweig: "what a fanatic!What a perfect Spanish type!" To him I was a case, not a person. His snail's skull had not sensed my intuitions or my intimate strenght. But I did make a deep impression on him, since the next day he wrote to Zweig:

"I must really thank you for the introduction that brought me yesterday's visitors. For until then, it seems, I had tended to think the surrealists, who apparently have chosen me as their patron saint, were completely crazy (or let us say 95 percent so, as in the case of pure alcohol).The young Spaniard, with his candid fanatic's eyes and his undeniable technical mastery, led me to reconsider my opinion. It would indeed be most intresting to study analytically the genesis of a picture of his type.From a critical viewpoint, it could however always be said that the notion of art does not lend itself to any extension when the qualitative relationship, between unconscious material and preconscious elaboration, does not remain within determined limits. At any rate, these are serious psychological problems."

But what intrested him obviously was his own theory, not my personality. He was no longer really in the running. I sketched him on a blotter. This was in 1938, ayear before his death.

Two geniuses had met without making sparks. his ideas spoke for him. To me ,they were useful scrutches that reinforced my confidence in my genius and the authenticity of my freedom, and I had more to teach him than I could get from him.

I am convinced that our meeting was a turning-point in Freud's artistic conception. I am persuaded that I forced the great master of the subconscious to rethink his attitude. Before me - Dali - Freud had never met any really modern artist. Before our meeting, he thought - as he wrote - that the surrealists were "crazy"; after me, he "reconsidered" his opinion. Freud had a hunch that the surrealists, and the Expressionalists along with them, took the mechanics of art for art itself. My work - my technical mastery - and my person showed him that his concept had been foolhardy. Yes, I am convinced that bif we had met earlier, or several times, some of his views on art might have been modified. My paranoical-critical method would have opened new vistas to him. Freud thought that the unconscious was a psychic content which can no longer return to the consciousness when it has been driven out. he brought about the psychology of depths - as compared to formal psychology, which in this domain is a superficial geography of the mind - he puts his finger on the reality of reason, man's invention for realizing himself in a world perpetually in confrontation and conflict. With him, we found out that the psyche is not the conscious alone, but I could have been his living and fundamental proof that paranoia, which is one of the most extraordinary forms of the irrational unconscious, can perfectly well give impetus to rational mechanisms and fertilize the real with an efficacity as great as experimental logicParanoiac- critical delirium is one of the most fascinating formulas of human genius.freud was probably too old to re-open his theses and make way for new experiments.
any comments?
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by Leyla Shen »

Freud thought that the unconscious was a psychic content which can no longer return to the consciousness when it has been driven out.
No, this does not represent Freud's thinking. It is a very bad expression of it, at the very least.

Freud dealt with symptoms of the unconscious. There is nothing else to deal with. I think his notion of the unconscious is similar to the notion of the totality in that it is not a thing-in-itself. By definition, it cannot exist in consciousness and, therefore, never had (or has) any possibility for "return."
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

[edit] The psychoanalytic unconscious
Probably the most detailed and precise of the various notions of 'unconscious mind' — and the one which most people will immediately think of upon hearing the term — is that developed by Sigmund Freud and his followers. It lies at the heart of psychoanalysis.

Consciousness, in Freud's topographical view (which was his first of several psychological models of the mind) was a relatively thin perceptual aspect of the mind, whereas the subconscious was that merely autonomic function of the brain. The unconscious was considered by Freud throughout the evolution of his psychoanalytic theory a sentient force of will influenced by human drive and yet operating well below the perceptual conscious mind. For Freud, the unconscious is the storehouse of instinctual desires, needs, and psychic actions. While past thoughts and memories may be deleted from immediate consciousness, they direct the thoughts and feelings of the individual from the realm of the unconscious.

Freud divided mind into the conscious mind or Ego and two parts of the Unconscious: the Id or instincts and the Superego. He used the idea of the unconscious in order to explain certain kinds of neurotic behavior.

In this theory, the unconscious refers to that part of mental functioning of which subjects make themselves unaware [28].

Freud proposed a vertical and hierarchical architecture of human consciousness: the conscious mind, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind - each lying beneath the other. He believed that significant psychic events take place "below the surface" in the unconscious mind.[29], like hidden messages from the unconscious - a form of intrapersonal communication out of awareness. He interpreted these events as having both symbolic and actual significance.

For psychoanalysis, the unconscious does not include all that is not conscious, rather only what is actively repressed from conscious thought or what the person is averse to knowing consciously. In a sense this view places the self in relationship to their unconscious as an adversary, warring with itself to keep what is unconscious hidden. The therapist is then a mediator trying to allow the unspoken or unspeakable to reveal itself using the tools of psychoanalysis. Messages arising from a conflict between conscious and unconscious are likely to be cryptic. The psychoanalyst is presented as an expert in interpreting those messages.

For Freud, the unconscious was a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized by its effects — it expresses itself in the symptom.

Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but are supposed to be capable of being "tapped" and "interpreted" by special methods and techniques such as random association, dream analysis, and verbal slips (commonly known as a Freudian slip), examined and conducted during psychoanalysis.

Freud's theory of the unconscious was substantially transformed by some of his followers, among them Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan.
have this passage of the symptoms:
For Freud, the unconscious was a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized by its effects — it expresses itself in the symptom.
wthin this passage is the passage: emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression.
again the driven-out content.

you said that these symptoms in the unconsciousness can not exist in the consciousness because their is no possibility for return, for the unconsciousness is not a thing-in-itself.
Freud told us in another passage:"He believed that significant psychic events take place "below the surface" in the unconscious mind.[29], like hidden messages from the unconscious - a form of intrapersonal communication out of awareness."
so, like Dali said, Freud thought that the unconscious was a psychic content which can no longer return to the consciousness when it has been driven out.

not?

Dali said that he can drive out this psychic content (at least partly)through the Paranoiac-Critical method and become aware of these things through art - surrealism.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

my comment on a Freudian technique:

schools of psychology always have had their passing fashions and phobias: the Freudian 'free association' technique of interpreting dreams and mental ills, always on a sexual basis, grew stale, gained stimulus by the (then)'as new and latest' oedipus complex(found out to be very rare in families), and solutions were claimed for that theory or a variant of it. the absurdity of the 'free merthod' is self-evident. if I dream of washing dirty dishes, it means that I desire intimacy with my mother or failing that, my sister, cousin, in-laws, and so on until they found someone they care to nominate. but they will also give much the same interpretation of any other dream, however opposite or diverse the symbols and situation. in fact, they can make any dream mean anything that conforms to their purpose. nearer the truth: there are many types of dream, each needing a different technique of translation.
Logically, by accurate co-relating, anything may be proved derivative, as 'one from another' - which does not prove anything.Take your phobia (or what have you) to a psychiatrist for the real dirt... expensive amusement for something you can do better yourself.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by Leyla Shen »

The unconscious was considered by Freud throughout the evolution of his psychoanalytic theory a sentient force of will influenced by human drive and yet operating well below the perceptual conscious mind. For Freud, the unconscious is the storehouse of instinctual desires, needs, and psychic actions.
I disagree completely with this idea/expression. But, I have to say, this largely comes from an understanding of Lacan and a keen interest in linguistic theory. The drives (from which the death drive and the pleasure principle find representation for Freud as such in the symbolic register (see Lacan), not in the/an unconscious) ARE unconsciousness ‘itself.’ He calls them the Id.

Truly, trying to find ‘the’ unconscious is like trying to hold a piece of empty space in your hand. It just does not exist in such a fashion. Therefore, when you (collective) think that the unconscious can be “driven out…never to return,”---well, the metaphor and irony in such a statement are just so utterly breathtaking I can hardly bring myself to speak. :)

Symptoms are not “in” “the” unconscious; they betray unconsciousness, and the preconscious (past memories and thoughts easily prompted into consciousness/the now). To see a symptom is to be conscious of the symptom, not “the” unconscious.

Freud certainly understood this, or else he would not have bothered with a distinction between ego and consciousness.

To resolve a symptom is to resolve the symptom, which may only arise again with exactly the same cause/s.
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Leyla Shen
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by Leyla Shen »

Take your phobia (or what have you) to a psychiatrist for the real dirt... expensive amusement for something you can do better yourself.
Logically, then, it follows that there would be no phobias (or what-have-you's) at all...
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

Truly, trying to find ‘the’ unconscious is like trying to hold a piece of empty space in your hand. It just does not exist in such a fashion. Therefore, when you (collective) think that the unconscious can be “driven out…never to return,”---well, the metaphor and irony in such a statement are just so utterly breathtaking I can hardly bring myself to speak. :)
I know not what you mean with 'driven out... never to return', but the driven out content is within the Vision, manifested through the Hand, which brings about Dali's delirium and lucidity.

'the empty space in your hand' as you call it, I understand as the noumenal of things, unrelated truth;because when related cognition becomes relative, creaturely, un-universal.
Truth manifests manifoldly an our own Truth manifets by complex refractions, reverse-inverse, always diverse, not as it is.
more or less, that is what I understood what Dali said about the irrational unconsciousness giving impetus to rational mechanisms...
Last edited by bert on Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

Leyla Shen wrote:
Take your phobia (or what have you) to a psychiatrist for the real dirt... expensive amusement for something you can do better yourself.
Logically, then, it follows that there would be no phobias (or what-have-you's) at all...
in your logicality, yeah why not..

most people, all average, have their own form of assuagement by abreacting to each other, what they call 'spilling their guts'.. the exceptional psychopath is always with us.

my main technique for interpreting the mental cloaca is by 'free association' and 'abreaction'.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by Jamesh »

assuagement, abreaction, cloaca
All nice words that I have no recollection of ever hearing.
Fine, appropriate words though.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by xerox »

...
Last edited by xerox on Wed Jun 17, 2009 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bert
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

yes, there must be loads of fakes around. Dali was a hype, the paintings were 'different'. from the 50's on, imposters were making loads and loads of cash. famous figures were taken of the originals and just thrown on a sheet with a new combination. easy.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

this speaks volumes:

"repugnance is the sentry standing right near the door of those things we desire the most" - S. Dali
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

Jamesh wrote:
assuagement, abreaction, cloaca
All nice words that I have no recollection of ever hearing.
Fine, appropriate words though.
I made a list of inspiring words. nonetheless, ability is deserved the hard way; the way of techniques and effort.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by Leyla Shen »

Firstly, the right ambience.

OK, let me attempt express the problem I see with this idea thus: I don’t agree that the unconscious is a storehouse of such things. Rather, it is entirely the “animal impulse,” so to speak. I think the storehouse notion comes from the idea of repression. In Freud, this is the activity of the Ego negotiating between the Superego (morality--unconscious and preconscious) and the Id (drives--unconscious). These things are called unconscious and preconscious strictly in relation to Freud’s notion of consciousness, which is what one is aware of at any given now.

So, as I am sitting here, writing my reply to you, smoking a cigarette, sipping on a cup of tea and thinking about the subject matter, it’s fair to say that all those things I mention are in consciousness. It is also fair to say that what Freud would likely deem symptom worthy, probably among other things, would be the smoking and tea drinking (oral fixation), for example. Incidentally, the most erotic act in my intimate relationships was kissing. Loved it. Truly, it is my favourite, privately indulged art form, albeit retired in recent years.

I don’t think the intent, in Freud or psychoanalysis, is to imply that the wish/desire back of such symptoms is literally to suck on Mum’s tit; only that it is from there that the impulse is born and, in some preconscious sense, identified, recalling that whereas the Superego (morality) “moves” between the unconscious and preconscious, the Id remains only in the domain of the unconscious---and the Ego is the meat between this three-tiered sandwich.

Same with the Oedipus Complex, which is as much a mythology as it is anything else. The wish, the drive, is unconscious, but in humans is intimately related to the event known as “castration”--separation of the child from the mother by “the father.” “The father,” though, is the symbolic father, since the act of this “castration” can, and does, sometimes come from the mother. So, the kid wants to kill “the father” to unite with the “mother.”

Thus, when Dali (or anyone) says/thinks (and I quote):
…that the unconscious [is] a psychic content which can no longer return to the consciousness when it has been driven out.
It makes no sense. You can never know the unconscious; only its symptoms.

Having said all that, I now have to investigate Dali’s “critical delirium” before I comment on him as I know nothing of the man’s art or thoughts.

Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the Grail; now that your rose is in bloom, a light hits the gloom of the grey...
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

Dreams, which he called the "royal road to the unconscious," provided the best access to our unconscious life and the best illustration of its "logic," which was different from the logic of conscious thought. Freud developed his first topology of the psyche in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) in which he proposed the argument that the unconscious exists and described a method for gaining access to it. The preconscious was described as a layer between conscious and unconscious thought—that which we could access with a little effort. Thus for Freud, the ideals of the Enlightenment, positivism and rationalism, could be achieved through understanding, transforming, and mastering the unconscious, rather than through denying or repressing it.

Crucial to the operation of the unconscious is "repression." According to Freud, people often experience thoughts and feelings that are so painful that they cannot bear them. Such thoughts and feelings—and associated memories—could not, Freud argued, be banished from the mind, but could be banished from consciousness. Thus they come to constitute the unconscious. Although Freud later attempted to find patterns of repression among his patients in order to derive a general model of the mind, he also observed that individual patients repress different things. Moreover, Freud observed that the process of repression is itself a non-conscious act (in other words, it did not occur through people willing away certain thoughts or feelings). Freud supposed that what people repressed was in part determined by their unconscious. In other words, the unconscious was for Freud both a cause and effect of repression.

Later, Freud distinguished between three concepts of the unconscious: the descriptive unconscious, the dynamic unconscious, and the system unconscious. The descriptive unconscious referred to all those features of mental life of which people are not subjectively aware. The dynamic unconscious, a more specific construct, referred to mental processes and contents which are defensively removed from consciousness as a result of conflicting attitudes. The system unconscious denoted the idea that when mental processes are repressed, they become organized by principles different from those of the conscious mind, such as condensation and displacement.

Eventually, Freud abandoned the idea of the system unconscious, replacing it with the concept of the Ego, super-ego, and id (discussed below). Throughout his career, however, he retained the descriptive and dynamic conceptions of the unconscious.

-------

In his later work, Freud proposed that the psyche could be divided into three parts: Ego, super-ego, and id. Freud discussed this structural model of the mind in the 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and fully elaborated it in The Ego and the Id (1923), where he developed it as an alternative to his previous topographic schema (conscious, unconscious, preconscious).
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

same source:

Freud hoped to prove that his model was universally valid and thus turned to ancient mythology and contemporary ethnography for comparative material. Freud named his new theory the Oedipus complex after the famous Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. "I found in myself a constant love for my mother, and jealousy of my father. I now consider this to be a universal event in childhood," Freud said. Freud sought to anchor this pattern of development in the dynamics of the mind. Each stage is a progression into adult sexual maturity, characterized by a strong ego and the ability to delay gratification (cf. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality). He used the Oedipus conflict to point out how much he believed that people desire incest and must repress that desire. The Oedipus conflict was described as a state of psychosexual development and awareness. He also turned to anthropological studies of totemism and argued that totemism reflected a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

this hierarchy with its categories, techniques, matrical tenets and arbitrary theses is established and fortified by every pretentious argument. Psychologists (those days at least) have been converted into vehicles of enthousiasm for there own theories, with a labyrinth of dialectic meanings overloaded with a complex and transferred vocabulary that can mean anything - and yet not mean that to which their words commit them.
they are as neurotic as their creed, and their fear of deviating from their self-imposed criteria confirms their estimate of the psychopathic.
psychology is relatively true for certain types and periods only. whereas one admits to some of its truths , most of it need not be true, and the remainder is mainly untrue. analysis may be applied to particular individuals, whether diseased or not, but little of it is applicable to a majority outside the 'chronic' category.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

psychology has in the 1920-30's become the equal of any other dogma in as much as it demands the full acceptance of rigid conclusions from undefined premises and qualities.
psychology has no dominant thesis or definition of such fundamentals as 'consciousness','intelligence','thought','purpose',etc. we know that there are no exact or final definitions [i]of anything[/i], but we are also aware that certain correct hypostheses n- viz., the ether - have rendered us certain other facts and thus indirectly proved themselves. but the offer of such very shaky nominalism - which begins nowhere and ends in an excusing pathology - presents a worse gamble than that of any religion. psycho-ism has no standard of morality, behaviour, or normality with which it mainly deals, so must be based on the common mean, the "average" - an inelastic average at that. thus anything 'abnormal' or 'sub-normal' could or might be pathological. and when the common denominators are realized from the Ids of Greed - then where are we? the Zombie our level? Genius a madness? no, for [i]civilation[/i] there must be a more arbitrary ethical-intelligent standard. above the 'normalities', an Ideal that is [i]tactual[/i] that is directly related to reality - with its integral precisions determined by social motivation. convention,whether of morals or behaviour may be as wise as everything man has ever invented.
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by Leyla Shen »

Wow. Now that reminds me of Hitler. Bold, impassioned, but ultimately devoid of substance.
no, for civilation there must be a more arbitrary ethical-intelligent standard. above the 'normalities', an Ideal that is tactual that is directly related to reality - with its integral precisions determined by social motivation. convention,whether of morals or behaviour may be as wise as everything man has ever invented.
A something-else that is a more arbitrary ethical-intelligent standard, above "normalities" and tactual---conventional...

Such as?

How do you get a standard from arbitrary ethical-intelligence?

(I think we've already got what you're talking about, though. It's called postmodernism, no?)
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by bert »

one thing at a time, Leyla.
be patient for a while, for what follows might enlighten:

better for most to unknown what they think they know... it doesn't need a psychologist or biologist to tell us that the mind has strata of atavistic remnants which in suitable ground may degenerate into the foulest anomalies and freakishness. we also know that we may subdue our greedy appetites by re-direction and the placing of our real values outside of them, thus cultivating our best potentials.
Yes! fundamentally, everything is as simple as that, and there is little need for doctor witches. without 'this' psychology-equipment one could go on laying these hideous ghosts of patho-psychology. that which is appropriate to normality is so ungeneralizable, frivolous and transitory as to be almost worthless. different environment - different selection; but our mutation now is a choice.

______
it is not very likely that I will have much time for replies the following days, and can grow to weeks...
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by Leyla Shen »

Darling, I think you are engaging in wishful thinking.

Voila! Things are so simple everybody's managing to fuck it up! Can't get any simpler than that, eh?

More later, when I've caught up on some sleep and the energy to keep up with you. :)
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by rpl »

It's called survival and the ones who survive are the fittest! It's as simple as that, but it brings about hatred and all. Think of this, you have a bunch of the fittest humans in a building. Someone who is unfit gets angry and blows then up. No one survives, is that the way?
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Re: Dali on Freud : Dali vs Freud

Post by Leyla Shen »

At this stage of the thread, I'm seriously wondering whether I truly am thick. Instead of becoming clearer, the subject matter sinks deeper into a thick word soup. For instance:
bert wrote:that which is appropriate to normality is so ungeneralizable, frivolous and transitory as to be almost worthless. different environment - different selection; but our mutation now is a choice.
What on Earth is the meaning of this?

"That which is appropriate to normality is so ungenerali[s]able, frivolous and transitory as to be almost worthless."

Why not say there's no such thing as normal?

For a mutation to occur, however, it must occur as an abnormality (from some perspective of normal), no? I mean, in the context of this conversation, you might as well be saying that there is no such thing as sanity. Is that your position?

~

rpl:
It's called survival and the ones who survive are the fittest! It's as simple as that, but it brings about hatred and all. Think of this, you have a bunch of the fittest humans in a building. Someone who is unfit gets angry and blows then up. No one survives, is that the way?
"The way"? What does "the way" have to do with survival of the fittest?
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