Freuds Concept of the Unconscious Hitchcocks Psycho

Freuds Concept of the Unconscious Hitchcocks Psycho In this essay I have analysed the famous Hitchcock film psycho using Freuds concept of the unconscious. The bleak, monochrome film is made more effective by Bernard Herrmanns sparse, but driving, recognisable score, first played under the frantic credits. The criss-crossing patterns, like mirror-images, are correlated to the split, schizophrenic personality of a major protagonist. The initial usage of staccato chords immediately provides us with a hint of detachment of a character to be involved, this along with the titles created by Saul Bass, (who was known for his style reminiscent of 1920s Soviet poster art) immediately provide the audience with apprehension. The screech of the violins is representative of birds, which we later see depicted throughout the film. Many of Hitchcocks recurring images are important in Freudian dream interpretation. It is apparent right from the beginning what lies ahead is no ordinary story, and a strange feeling of anxiety swells with the visual and musical intro. Screenwriter Joseph Stefano adapted Robert Blochs novel Psycho into what would become one of Alfred Hitchcocks influential works and one of the classic films of all time. We are led to believe Psycho is a film about cloak-and-dagger affairs, misappropriation, murder, secrets, and mental struggle; although in the darkness, there lies an examination of the temptations of wealth, sexual identity, gender roles, sexual expression, it depicts the appalling events which can occur with the departure of normal advancement. Psycho reiterates to its viewers that people sometimes provide a visual falsity of who they are and stories we have read as children of a bad person visually representative of their character traits in life are not often the case, and when the personal development has not reached an expected level that immoral crimes may occur. Sigmund Freud wrote about the human psyche in the 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and fully elaborated upon it in The Ego and the Id (1923). Freuds theory of the subconscious consists of three parts, the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego and the interaction between them all. The Id is considered to be chaotic, the center for animalistic impulses, and is governed by the pleasure principle, otherwise known as instant gratification. It is also the location of the libido, which is our life force or our sexual drive. The Ids driving instinct is for self-preservation. The Ego is quite different from the Id, it is the broker between the Id and the Super Ego. The Ego is also the personality we show others, founded upon the reality formula. The Super Ego represents our conscience or moral standards, ideas of right and wrong which are permanently instilled in our minds by our parents or other authority figures. Freud regarded the mind to be like an Iceberg (see Figure 1) where the uncon scious lies below the surface, and the conscious above. To conclude: the Id demands gratification, the Ego responds to reality (civilization), and the Superego which is our moral code and also is dictated by the demands of society. The storyline of this film involves a young woman who through the pleasure principle of the id steals $40,000 from her employer. Marion is motivated by her desire to settle down and have a family with her lover Sam and to have financial freedom. Her super ego and the moral side have been outbalanced by her personal desires to live the perfect life with her lover. She ends up on a personal odyssey towards terror when she encounters a disturbed young hotel proprietor who is dominated by his mother. Throughout the film is a parallel to psychoanalysis as it attempts to piece together limited parts to understand as a coherent whole. Even the films cinematographic techniques reinforce individual images as being composed of fragmentary pieces. Part of Psychos visual appeal comes from Hitchcocks use of montage. James Naremore quotes Hitchcock describing montage as puttinglittle bits and pieces of film together Marion drives to her lover and a curtain of rain leads her to check into the Bates Motel. Paths and steps and roads are prevelant in Pyscho , the path between the motel and house which symbolises a path between the normal and the insane, in Psycho stairs lead to madness. In his documentary The PervertHYPERLINK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perverts_Guide_to_CinemaHYPERLINK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perverts_Guide_to_Cinemas Guide to Cinema, Slavoj Ã…Â ½iÃ…Â ¾ek remarks that Norman Bates mansion has three floors, paralleling the three levels that psychoanalysis attributes to the human mind: the first floor would be the superego (Figure 2a), where Bates mother lives on; the ground floor is then Bates ego (Figure 2b), where he functions as an apparently normal human being; and finally, the basement would be Bates id (Figure 2c). For Freud, most repressed memories relate to sexuality. One type, for example, derives from the primal scene, where the child witnesses his parents having sex, then represses the memory of the scene. In Psycho, Norman Bates is said to have murdered his mother and her lover after finding them in bed together. Freud identified the tendency of a person who has experienced a traumatic event to re-live the negative event over and over, in action, in memory, or in dreams. A key aspect of the theory is the urge to put oneself into situations where the traumatic experience is likely to recur. Some forms of sexual dysfunction are interpreted as examples of repetition compulsion for example, an individual spanked as a child may seek out masochistic sexual experiences The best known of Freuds theories about childhood sexuality is named from the mythological king Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother. As Freud described the complex, a young boy is sexually attracted to his mother, and as a result desires to kill his father in order to possess the mother. This forbidden desire is then repressed, only to return later in neurotic form. In popular Freudianism, mothers are often seen as encouraging the Oedipal complex through possessive or flirtatious behavior toward sons. As Norman Bates tells Marion Crane, a boys best friend is his mother. (But also: A son is a poor substitute for a lover.). Freud believed the purpose of psychoanalysis is to recover these repressed memories so that the patient can deal with them in the conscious mind. In Freudianism, a successfully integrated personality is under control of the Ego. We see Norman engage in a discussion with Marion in the parlour where he reveals a desire to escape from mothers tyrannical grip, but cannot gain the will to do so. Norman fails to achieve the self-mastery which Freud claimed psychoanalysis may provide. At this stage Marion retires to her room and decides to return to her old life. In the parlour adjacent to Marions room we see Norman remove a painting to reveal a spy-hole. The audience is forced into Normans secret world as he watches her undress. Normal develops masculine and sexual feelings towards Marion. Bates alter ego of his mother is not happy about the prospect of an attractive young woman disrupting the love affair between mother and son. He even holds conversations with himself thinking hes speaking to his mother. While dressed as his mother, Bates with knife in hand murders Crane while she is taking a shower in one of the Bates motel rooms. During the shower scene the piercing violin strings play a large part in creating sheer terror during the horrific scene, screaming begins before Marions own shrieks. The murder during the shower scene destabilises the audience as the blade is pointed at her abdominal womb area, attacking the site of motherhood is perhaps a gesture to prevent her giving birth to men like himself see Figure 3a and 3b. From Freud we learn Normans id becomes the core of the psyche and determining force causing the mother half of Norman Bates to commit murder. Normans psyche represses this information causing the fear of reappearance. The compulsion to repeat is a manifestation of the power of the repressed (Freud, 1920), illustrating the strength of the influence of the repressed and the unconscious.ÂÂ   After the murder of Marion and Norman disposing of her in the swamp next to the house, the spectators turn to Norman to replace Marion as its main focus in its subjective role. Later on, when Sam and Lila search for evidence regarding Marions disapparance, Sam Loomis distracts Norman as Lila quietly walks up to the house to talk to Normans mother. She finds in the lower floor Normans mothers dead body which has been removed from its grave and preserved. At this point we realise Norman is two people. Norman is metamorphosised and revealed as his Mother when as he attempts to kill again his disguise is stripped away and ripped off. The Norman self completely dies, while his macabre Mother self is brought to life, shown by his mothers hysterically-laughing face, animated and resurrected by the light. Normans restricted personal growth this can be linked with the Oedipus complex. During the development of the Oedipus Complex the child develops a strong sense and powerful urges for sexual possession of the opposite sex parent. This urge gives rise to serious problems. The boy identifies with his father, and in doing so, internalises the fathers moral standards consequently the boy takes on the morals from his father, forming the superego. In Normans case, the absense of his father has resulted in an unresolved oedipus complex which results in a weak superego. Perhaps its this reason why he struggles with identity disorder as he houses his mothers superego in attempt to compensate for the one which he never developed as a result of his fathers absence. At the end of the film the psychiatrist explains: When reality came too close, when danger or desire threatened that illusion, he dressed up, even to a cheap wig he bought. Hed walk about the house, sit in her chair, speak in her voice. He was never all Norman, but he was often only Mother. Freud believed that traumatic events, usually from childhood, are repressed by the conscious mind. However, these destructive memories remain in the subconscious, where they are the source of neuroses and psychoses. The purpose of psychoanalysis is to recover these repressed memories so that the patient can deal with them in the conscious mind. The audience, although they had received an explanation for Normans actions, is left terrified and confused by the last scene of Norman and the manifestation of his split personality. Faced with this spectacle, Hitchcock forces the audience to examine their conscious self in relation to the events that they had just played a role in. Psycho creates a fear not necessarily from the brutality of the murders but from the subconscious identification with the films characters. To conclude, Hitchcock enforces the idea that all the basic emotions and sentiments derived from the film can be felt by anyone as the unending battle between good and evil exists in all aspects of life. The effective use of character parallels and the creation of the audiences subjective role in the plot enables Hitchcock to entice terror and convey a lingering sense of anxiety within the audience through a progressively intensifying theme. Freuds concept of the unconscious is so explicitly mirrored throughout the film. We have a seemingly normal woman whose balance is offset by a desire and which drives her to commit a financial crime. At the other end of the spectre we have again a man who most would think was harmless enough but due to his childhood and developmental restrictions has for other reasons allowed his unconscious to take full control of his conscious. According to Freud the essence of repression lies simply in the turning something away, and keeping it at a distance f or the conscious; Freud believed traumatic memories usually of childhood events are repressed as a defence mechanism which keeps the ego free of conflict and tension, however something can induce the momentary retrieval of a repressed memory and in the case of Norman Bates this triggered a psychotic in his mother psyche episode.

Gambling and the Brain Essay -- Biology Essays Research Papers

Gambling and the Brain Why do gamblers bet more after they just lost a hand? Why do investors throw good money after bad? Why do people believe that a string of losses makes a win more likely? Why do so many people say that they will win their money back in the next hand? Is part of the appeal of gambling its unpredictability? Or do we just look at it as a way to "get rich quick"? The answer to these questions may lie in the science of the brain. Some studies indicate that gamblers bet more after a loss because they are induced to fix an error. Their brains are telling them they've made a mistake and that they need to correct it (1). These studies could possibly explain other risky acts. If you ask many people why gamble, their response is "it is like a drug" (5). Compulsive gambling is a behavior which may rely on brain circuits that evolved to help animals assess rewards important to their survival. Researchers have found that those same circuits are used by the human brain to assess social rewards. They found that the brain systems that detect and evaluate such rewards generally operate outside of conscious awareness. The study said that much of what happens in the brain goes outside of conscious awareness. There are automatic brain circuits which affect activities such as gambling (2). However, this challenges prior notions which say that people make conscious choices about their everyday decision making. If people can get themselves to work unconsciously, how does the brain really know what it must pay conscious attention to? Also, how did evolution create a brain which makes such distinctions? Experiments performed on animals and humans are showing that the brain has evolved to shape itself according to what it e... ...times.com/ 3)Gambling has drug-like effect on brain,USA Today Newspaper article http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2001-05-24-gambling.htm 4)Gambling—Like Food and Drugs—Produces Feelings of Reward in the Brain , Scientific American http://www.sciam.com/missing.cfm 5)You Bet Gambling Is Addictive , Business Week Online http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2001/nf20010531_176.htm 6)The Good, the Bad, and the Anterior Cingulate, Science Journal, Science Magazine http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/5563/2193a?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Gambling&searchid=1017881463081_295&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&fdate=3/1/2002&tdate=3/31/2002 7)The Medial Frontal Cortex and the Rapid Processing of Monetary Gains and Losses, Science Journal, Science Magazine http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/5563/2279

Instructions for Blockbuster

Effective 2005, Blockbuster began a new policy of no late fees. In late 2005, Blockbuster was experiencing financial distress and needed emergency financing to stay afloat. The stock price dropped from $12 to $4, and the debt traded as junk.Question 1: Analyze the soundness of the decision, given the contribution that late fees made to prior years’ results. Does an analysis of the company’s cash flows support or refute the company’s decision?What you need to do is as follows: Get the data from 2002-2004, which should all be in the 2004 10-k, compute what free cash flow would have been without the late fees during 2002-2004, and project what 2005 free cash flow would be if the no late fee policy stays in place and business doesn’t improve. Late fees are referred to by the euphemism â€Å"extended viewing fees†.Question 2: Is there any evidence that the 2005 results benefited from the no-late fees policy? If so, quantify the specific amount you believ e that the basic business improved due to the no late fees.Compare your projected 2005 free cash flow to the actual (from the 2005 10-k). Consider the known reasons that 2005 results differed from the no-late expectation from question 1: i) there were some large fees actually collected, ii) interest costs were higher than expected, iii) Capex was way lower than any reasonable expectation, and iv) a lot of cash went into working paper to replace the trade credit that was withdrawn. Use these four ‘known unexpecteds’ to form an adjusted expectation for 2005, and then compare that number to the actual.Notes: 1. It is important to remember the effects of tax. In particular, free cash flow should change by the after-tax amount of late fees, not by the gross amount of late fees. 2. Late fees are referred to in the income statement by the euphemism â€Å"extended viewing fees†. 3. Focus on Blockbuster’s data and  don’t get distracted by an analysis of Ne tflix. Avoid making testimonials about how much better Netflix is than Blockbuster, or vice versa.

Network Database Model A Network Model - 1599 Words

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