Freud..

After reading excerpts from Freud’s ‘The Dream Work’ of 1916, I couldn’t help to think about the relationship between the writer and its reader. The writer/artist produces a work, and the readers/audience makes sense of it. The question is: where do we fit in Freud? Does Freud allow or help us (the audience) make sense of the message put forward by the author/artist? Through interpretation, can we truly seek to translate the symbols put forward in front of out eyes, where in the end all we see is the truth about the author/artist?

In any case Freud has a lot to do with literature and literary theory. For the most part, whenever anyone thinks of the word psychology, they begin to ponder about Freud. A great example that demonstrates the significance of Freud (psychology) in literary theory is our own very class and assignments. The professor asks us to do a Marxist reading of a short story, or a novel. ‘Read A, and B like a Feminist would’. It is a great task, and it encourages an individual to really get into the psyche of that person. How are we supposed to do that? What is really left of that person(s) (Marx, Cixous…)? Oh yeah, it makes great sense now. We should study the work they left behind. The solution to the assignment would entail a heavy reading of all the works produced by some famous author/artist, and only then can we truly read another work from a different perspective. – (one can write a dissertation about this…).