The Interpretation Of The Freduian Theories And Its Reflections On The ‘social Media’ And ‘black Swan’
According to Sigmund Freud under every step that we take or any human behaviour there is always an underlying reason. Therefore, he divided the human mind into three stages in terms of the conscious mind, preconscious and the unconscious mind. The concscious mind refers to our thoughts and actions as we decide to do delibrately. However, sometimes we can’t fully understand the reasons of our actions, this is where the unconscious mind comes to life. While we can decide when to move our hands through our conscious mind, we can’t understand why we really fall in love with someone. We can’t control our feelings, habits and personality and all these ‘hidden desires’ which lies under the unconscious mind forms our personality. According to Freud, when we try to understand our actions, we can’t fully explain our intention, this is not because we try to lie, it’s beucase we as the humankind tend to be self-deceptive. For instance, when you walk on the road you see an advertisement of coke, after a few hours when you are having lunch and when the waiter comes and asks you what you would like to drink, you reply as the ‘coke’. Drinking coke may not be something you do everyday but the advertisement you saw settles in your mind and takes over the control of your desires. The intention of the advertisement is to settle in your unconscious and makes you wish for it.
Freud extended his researches by introducing the terms of Id, Ego and the Superego which created the structural model of the mind. The Id acts at an unconscious level of the mind according to our desires and it consists of two kinds of insticts which are called Eros and Thanatos. The ego is formed by the Id during infancy and its main purpose is to fulfill the needs of the Id. We can examine this fullfilment through the usage of the social media. In our daily lives, we have become addicted to social media and to our phones. We used to use our phones only for communication purposes but in our former century we use the social networks for the satisfaction of our hidden desires. I have come to realise that the more likes i get, the more messages i get from my social media accounts the more satisfied i have become. I didn’t think of using the social media in order to get attention, love or satisfaction but the underlying reason in my unconscious mind was to satisfy my Ego. On social networks sites we share our accomplishments success, we show off our professional qualifications in the hope of being seen as a professionally valuable person in order to satify our Super Ego. The Super ego seeks for success and it motivates us to behave socially responsible; the ego also seeks for admiration. Although we don’t always come to realise these hidden desires we satisfy them through the usage of social media unconsciously.
Freud stated that our behaviours are formed based on our fears and desires. Our lives are shaped based on the forces that we are not aware of. By the time the technology developed we became more lonely. Because of this fear of loneliness we became more addicted to the social media. In social media you communicate people who you wouldn’t even turn your head back when you are passing by. You talk to a stranger and tell him all your life story. When you come across to a negativity you share it with the people you don’t even know. We try to improve the number of our followers. However we never question why we put so much effort for people we don’t even know. What lies under this is our fear of loneliness. Gaining friends in real life requires puttinh a lot of efforts, however in social media it only requires only one ‘click’. What lies under our addiction of the social media is our being afraid of loneliness unconsciously.
‘‘Two factors seem to play a part in bringing to consciousness the substitutive names: first, the effort of attention, and second, and inner determinant which adheres to the psychic material’’. According Freud a speech error or a slip of a tongue is motivated by repression. For example when call your boyfriend with name of your ex-boyfriend, you may think that it was only an accident, but from Freud’s perspective nothing is said accidently, therefore your misspoke might be caused due to your unresolved feelings towards your ex-boyfriend. During a slip of a tongue it’s not your conscious mind but it is your unconscious mind that is revealed. The slips of the tongue can be seen as a proof of the existence of the unconscious.
Freud believes that any step that you decide to take does not happen by chance; every action and thought is already determined by your mind at some level. Dreams are the stages when the unconscious level manifests itself and gains an awareness. The main purpose of a dream according to Freud is to fulfill the one’s wishes. When you are in the stage of sleeping your conscious goes to sleep and your unconscious is exposed. Freud stated that, he once had a patient -Irma- who wasn’t doing well through the treatments. One day he saw a dream in which Irma was given another drug with a dirty syringe from another doctor which caused Irma’s condition. Through this dream Freud realised that deep inside in his mind he was blaming himself for the condition of his patient and the dream he had was his wish coming true, not being guilty for the patient’s condition. Freud called this dream as the ‘‘wish-fullfilment’’.
Sometimes when I try to sleep the last thing I think of is the thing that I dream of during my sleep, sometimes the things I go through during a day, the things that disturb me in my daily life hunts me in my dreams. When I feel a lot of pressure, I constantly see the same dream, if I need to wake up early in the morning in order to catch an important exam or an important occasion I dream of getting late and not waking up on the right time, I see the same dream repeatedly until I wake on the morning. Sometimes i dream of what I desire, especially after the mid-term week, I dream of getting high grades from my exams that I thought I wouldn’t get good grades. The dreams i have exposes my fears and sometimes they fulfill my desires. The things that lie under my ‘iceberg’ are exposed through my dreams.
We can also examine the significance of the dreams in the ‘Black Swan’ movie. Nina who is a sexually suppressed ballerina lives under the control of her Superego which is personified by her mother. Her mother puts her to sleep, feeds her, dresses her and her daughter never breaks the rules to please her mother. Nina’s role also as the black swan embodies her Superego because the white swan symbolizes the purity, love and gracefulness. Nina’s suppressed sexual insticts are reflected thorugh the movie. The ballet instructor embodies her sexual desires. He constantly forces Nina to express her sexual desires. He tries to expose the black swan inside of her by sexually abusing her both physically and psychologically. Throughout the movie Nina goes through hallucinations in which she dreams of having sexual interactions with her friend on stage Lily, her mind unknowingly desires to have a sexual relationship with her so her desire comes to life through her dreams.
By the end of the movie Nina transforms and herself to the black swan from the white swan. Although she is not aware of it, the black swan is always inside of her in other words, in her unconscious. Through her halucinations and the pressure put by the ballet instructor on her repressed sexuality, she explores the black swan in her.
