023: Saturation Report

Saturation Report
[A day reading with Freud.]

When I first started to read on Freud, I didn't think the words or images placed on the paper before me would make my small hairs stand on end. I anticipated something interesting, fast-paced, and full of new doors to be opened in the recesses of my mind, causing me to tingle from head to toe. I got my wish. I read papers on Haitian Zombies, essays, web pages and all of them make me cringe and shake with excitement. My blood began to bubble and my heart began to beat faster as I read more and more, taking it in like a sponge. The book i bought the year before, "On A Darkling Plain. Journeys Into The Unconcious", opened my eyes to something greater. Something more fascinating then the Undead themselves.

As I read these essays in that book while sitting in math class, i felt tingles in my brain like little ants crawling against the creases. Massaging it to wake up and realize: This is your Thesis topic. Don't screw it up. My mind was right. I kept reading them, Oedipal Complex page after The Unconcious to Narcissism. "Incestuous Desire"...that image rang clear into my head while reading that first essay. Oedipus Complex, you did this to me. Causing me to wrack my brain with goregous words of ideas from psychologists, and Frued himself. Infantile love objects were in everything I read, saw and thought of. You were like a cancer I never wanted treatment from. A disease. I wanted to learn more. I wanted to fill my cranium to the top with these words. While reading the stained pages full of words, my eyes caressed each and every line like it was oxygen to my brain. Making my mind open wider and wider, gasping in each letter and syllable like it was rice to a starving mouth.

These soft, prickly pages fed my fingers and my curiosity. I turned page after page of the "Oedipus Complex", my fingertips danced of the purous edge of the thin, needle like page. Almost like they were dancing an intricate tango. My voice was as quiet as the midnight moon on a cloudless sky. Nothing came from those lips unless it was a sigh of warm breath or a sharp, rowdy cough. It was like a sugar rush to my brain.

And I did, as soon as this thesis was assigned. I couldn't get enough reading those lush, body shiver causing pages of Eros, the life theory. Sexualized words made me think more and more about our life force. Thanatos, the death drive. Cold and harsh. Anxiety. how even our sweat causing fears have a reason. The list goes on, and my head still spins and shivers at the thought of it. Freud was a cocaine addict. I can only picture the smell and his face after he snorted that line of snow white powder. His pulse racing faster then his breath. Beads of sweat rolling off his cheek....It's enough to make me want to faint.

Further into my studies, I found out more about Freud and his space-out-there theories, I began to notice a pattern: they all were sexualized to the point of no return. He was practically making love to his ideas and spurting them out of his cranimum like they were children themselves!! I was in a state of middle ground. I wasn't too freaked out by this, but at the same time, I was intrigued. Mentally disgusted by the infantile perversion my research topic gave me, I trudged onward and learned more, fed my brainchild of narcissistic, oedipal, anxious and lust infestation.

Yeah, Freud gets me going...In the brain.

022: Update

Anything with UPDATE as the title is a journal entry, as clarification.

Product:
I recorded my song and placed it up here. So, that is out of the way.

Essay:
I started my essay the past two days (4/25-4/26) and the first two paragraphs are completed.

Satruation Report:
I started this today, and I think I'm doing great so far. i am on the ball with everything, and I feel really good.

Vocab:
Need to finish this; I'm half way done with it and really want to get these out of the way.

Powerpoint:
Need to start.

Notes + Quotes:
Need to finish these as well.

Interview:
SET UP AND GOOD TO GO IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS!

Now that the show is done, I have no excuses to procrastinate.

021: Update

I got my interview set up and plan on doing it sometime this week. I'm interviewing Mr. Coppage. He told me he was a Psyche major for a while, so I am using that to my advantage. I can't wait to hear his stories about going through that time in his life!! It sounds really excited, fun and mysterious.

I also have been practicing my song for this project. I need to get some of the lyrics memorized. I started my essay, and started working some more on my personal vocabulary for this too. I got a lot of words from "ON A DARLKING PLAIN" while doing my reading.

020: Interview

Here is the interview transcripts with Keith Coppage, Drama Teacher At Mount Diablo & Previous Psyche Major:

019: Product.

"Ode To Freud", By Fey Absinthe.
(Copyright, 2010)
[note, please don't mind the itching & the coughs & the craptastic voice. recorded on the day after the show was over.]

018: Vocabulary #2

From "ON A DARKLING PLAIN: EDITIED BY IVAN WARD"

"Narcissism" Essay:

"Eros" Essay:

"Anxiety" Essay:

"Oedipus Complex" Essay:

017: Update/Journal

So, I have been slacking off in my research. Due to other things such as my upcoming show, other projects and forgetting to read the rest of these essays I need to finish so I can start work on MY essay, the rest of the vocabulary, the powerpoint and the rest of what I need to do to make this project a little better a day at a time.

I need to finish and turn in ASAP my interview workshop (which I haven't started.) so I don't get too behind and slack. I don't want to fail.

-Fey

016: Journal

Product:
I've finished my song for this project in five days in about 7.5 accumulative hours. It took two days (3 hours each day) to research theories for my essay and to practice the new chords. A total of 6 hours to write the whole thing, and twenty minutes to finish the ending. The rest of my hours will come from rehearsing and showing off my song to get it better.

Essay:
I plan on starting my essay this weekend. I have enough to start the first few paragraphs of it.

Interview workshop:
I need to finish this, so I can have my interview planned out when it happens. I have some connections to talking to psychotherapists from hospitals through a friend of mine. So that should be fun.

Research: total hours...6.5 over the past two weeks
I've been reading and highlighting information I can use for my essay, powerpoint and presentation. I'm almost done with reading the book. I have enough internet notes to keep me at bay and alright with info.

014: Notes.

Theory of Personality, 2 pages:
-"the psyche also is composed of three structures: the id, ego, and superego"; some operate unconsciously, others while we are fully aware.
-the human mind has an id when we are born and is our base of primitive instinct including the sexual and aggressive drives
-the id is illogical and tries to find pleasure without thinking of the negatives.
-the id influences our behavior and is not a "conscious" effort
-

013: Update

I found ON A DARKLING PLAIN a few nights ago and I plan on reading that. I have a couple essays bookmarked and want to finish them. The book has essays on Anger, Lust, the Oedipus Complex, Narcissism and a few other theories Freud had. I want to take a break from reading internet articles as well.

012: Vocabulary.

Haitian Zombies:
"...virtually all social scientists would agree that the impact of bereavement may be profound and manifest itself in unusually nonsensical behavior."
Words: Nonsensical, Bereavement

Nonsensical

Def. 1:absurd: incongruous;inviting ridicule
Def. 2:crazy; ridiculous

Bereavement
Def. 1:the state or fact of being bereaved; especially : the loss of a loved one by death
Def. 2:intense mourning of a lost dead loved one.

"Metraux, who talks about “how hard is the life of the average peasant and worker. Isolation, economic stagnation, administrative fecklessness, ignorance—all help to explain the misery which is to be found among the masses” (Metraux 1959: 60)."
Words: Stagnation, Fecklessness

Stagnation
Def. 1:a state of inactivity (in business or art etc)
Def. 2:inactivity in one way, shape or form

Fecklessness
Def. 1:*Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective.
*Careless and irresponsible.
Def. 2:insufficient

"...as long as they may be labeled as servile laborers, a tag with which the once-enslaved Haitians are quite familiar."
Word: Servile

Servile
Def. 1: *1. Abjectly submissive; slavish.
*2.a. Of or suitable to a slave or servant.
*2b. Of or relating to servitude or forced labor.
Def. 2: having the attributes of a slave.

"Hundreds of thousands of slaves were imported from West Africa and subjugated to extremely harsh treatment in Saint-Dominque."

Word: Subjugated
Def. 1:*1. To bring under control; conquer.
*2. To make subservient; enslave.
Def. 2: to make submissive and enslave

Bereft
Source: Indeed, it is not simply grieving individuals but the nation as a whole that is bereft
Definition 1:v.
A past tense and a past participle of bereave.
adj.
1.
a. Deprived of something: They are bereft of their dignity.
b. Lacking something needed or expected: "Today's graduates seem keenly aware that the future is bereft of conventional expectations" (Bruce Weber).
2. Suffering the death of a loved one; bereaved: the bereft parents.
Definition 2: Intense Need or lack of something

From Freud Wiki:

1)Caul
Source Sentence: Freud was born with a caul, which the family accepted as a positive omen.[3]
Def.1: A portion of the amnion, especially when it covers the head of a fetus at birth. Also called pileus.
Def. 2: something that covers the part of a fetus' head.

2)catalytic
Source Sentence: [Jean Martin Charcot] was later to remember the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology...
Definition: Of, involving or acting as a catalyst.
Definition 2: being a part of the catalyst

3)Amnion
(see caul definition)
Def 1: A thin, tough, membranous sac that encloses the embryo or fetus of a mammal, bird, or reptile. It is filled with a serous fluid in which the embryo is suspended.
Def 2: The sac that covers the baby inside of a animal, lizard or bird.

4) Serous
(from amnion definition)
def 1: Containing, secreting, or resembling serum.
def 2: Looks, feels, leaks serum.

Vocabulary from ON A DARKLING PLAIN, Edited by Ivan Ward
Source for all: "Narcissism By Jeremy Holmes"

"...If selfishness' persists into adult life, it is maladaptive and liable to be frowned upon. Here consideration for others and altruism are contrasted...."

Maladaptive:
Def. 1: Marked by faulty or inadequate adaptation
Def. 2: Unable to change

Altruism:
Def. 1: Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.
Def. 2: Generous to the human race

"...disregard for others, preoccupation with personal relationships...and lack concern about social cohesion."

Cohesion;
Def.1: the act or state of cohering; tendency to unite
Def.2: Coming together as one unit.

"People so described (no doubt not without a streak of puritanical envy) might be the 'me generation' ..."

Puritanical:
Def.1: Rigorous in religious observance; marked by stern morality.
Def.2: Strict guidelines to oneself.

"Ronald Britton calls this state of psychic withdraw into the self 'libidinal narcissism'."

Libidinal:
Def.1: Manifestation of the sexual drive.
Def.2: Revolving or based around sexual energies or drives.

"...Self-love and object-love not as lying on a continuum, but as two distinct developmental lines..."

Continuum:
Def.1: A continuous extent, succession, or whole, no part of which can be distinguished from neighboring parts except by arbitrary division.
Def.2: A forever, blending section.

011: Reading & Notes.

http://changingminds.org/disciplines/psychoanalysis/concepts/life_death_drives.htm
(Life & Death drives)

NOTES:
-Eros (the life drive/instinct, libido) is concerned with the preservation of life and the preservation of the species, It thus appears as basic needs for health, safety and sustenance and through sexual drives. It seeks both to preserve life and to create life.

-Thanatos (the death drive/instinct, mortido, aggression) appears in opposition and balance to Eros and pushes a person towards extinction and an 'inanimate state'.
Freud saw drives as moving towards earlier states, including non-existence.
‘The aim of all life is death...inanimate things existed before living ones’ (Freud 1920)
Thanatos is associated with negative emotions such as fear, hate and anger, which lead to anti-social acts from bullying to murder (perhaps as projection of the death drive).

-Eros and Thanatos interact and one can turn into the other, such a flipping of love and hate, crying and laughter. Eating preserves life but destroys that which is eaten.

-Freud's drives are often misunderstood. Eros is seen as simple sexuality and hence as morally perverse, casting the human as base and primitive. The death drive is also unacceptable as it opposes the idea of the sanctity of life and can be seen as excusing or even encouraging suicide.

-Melanie Klein disagreed with Freud in that she believed that we are born with a fragile, brittle, weak and unintegrated Ego, and that the most basic human fear is that of disintegration and deat


NOTES ON ID, SUPEREGO, & EGO:
(from a chat with my friend Max X., New York)
"Basically, the id represents the most base instincts and primal desires of the mind
(10:23:49 PM): the desire and thought processes that involve the desires for food, comfort and sex
(10:24:05 PM): The Ego is the mostly conscious capacity for logic and planning, "higher" thought, what have you
(10:24:21 PM): The Superego is the force that mediates between the two, and is the strongest force in the human mind."
(these will be looked up, but I needed his rough outline to know what I was looking for. He is keen on Freud.)