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Sigmund FreudA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
“Screen Memories”
“The Creative Writer and Daydreaming”
“Family Romances”
Part 1, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood”
Part 2, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood”
Part 3, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood”
Part 4, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood”
Part 5, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood”
Part 6, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood”
Part 1, “The Uncanny”
Part 2, “The Uncanny”
Part 3, “The Uncanny”
Key Figures
Themes
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
In this essay, Freud explicitly examines the relationship between literary analysis and psychoanalysis. The essay begins with the memorable and oft-quoted line: “We may perhaps say that every child at play behaves like a writer” (25). He then adds that “the opposite of play is not seriousness–it is reality” (26). Freud continues by explaining that rather than forgoing the pleasure we once took in playing in adolescence, humans replace play with fantasy. People’s fantasies are less easily observable than children’s play, and adults are generally ashamed of these secret desires.
In his psychoanalytic practice, Freud has learned that healthy and neurotic people both fantasize, but happy people do not, only dissatisfied ones, as “every fantasy [is] wish fulfillment, correcting the unhappy reality” (28). Fantasies are either ambitious or erotic. Fantasies also inhabit three time periods: the present impression, which has aroused the desire; the past memory of an earlier experience; and the future fulfillment of this desire. For instance, an orphaned youth might fantasize about gaining employment and marrying into a wealthy family to repossess themselves of a happy childhood. Fantasies proliferate prior to a lapse into neurosis or psychosis.
Freud also states that “our night dreams are nothing other than fantasies” (29).
By Sigmund Freud
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
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Civilization And Its Discontents
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Moses and Monotheism
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On Dreams
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The Freud Reader
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The Future of an Illusion
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The Interpretation of Dreams
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Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
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