Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud believed that man's behavior and personality derive from the constant... more Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud believed that man's behavior and personality derive from the constant and unique interaction of conflicting psychological forces that operate at three different levels of awareness: the preconscious, the conscious, and the unconscious. According to Freud the unconscious influences our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences. The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that lie outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. Freud described the phenomenon of repression, in which the conscious mind turns away from a painful thought or memory, pushing it down into the unconscious, because it is socially unacceptable. The thought does not go away, however, and energy from the libido (life energy) is consumed by keeping it repressed. This energy can be released, Freud thought, when a repressed memory is re-admitted to consciousness. 1 Everyone represses some things: bad childhood memories or traumas, for example. But some people repress so much that repression becomes a major component of mental disorders, affecting a person's day-today activities: " He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips ; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. " 2 The quote demonstrates Freud's conviction that despite repression, unconscious desires eventually work their way to the surface. A common example of this phenomenon is what is now known as the Freudian slip or parapraxis. A person will make a verbal mistake that reveals an unconscious thought or emotion. A person may call his spouse by a different name, exposing his attraction for another woman. Unconscious desires are also expressed by nonverbal communication. The present paper seeks to establish that the heroine of Margaret Atwood's Surfacing violates standards of behavior, represses her bad memories and suffers as a consequence, learns her lesson and resolves to live in light of it, unembittered by her pain. A character without a name is hardly a character at all. The nameless narrator who appears at the beginning of Surfacing is a voice rather than a person, and presents through her narrative involving two time spans–past childhood juxtaposed with present adulthood–the eternal dilemma of man-woman relationship. While the protagonist attempts to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of her botanist father on a remote island in northern Quebec, along with her lover Joe and another young couple, David and Anna, the reader struggles to make sense of the often conflicting stands of her story about her marriage, her husband and her child.
Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud believed that man's behavior and personality derive from the constant... more Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud believed that man's behavior and personality derive from the constant and unique interaction of conflicting psychological forces that operate at three different levels of awareness: the preconscious, the conscious, and the unconscious. According to Freud the unconscious influences our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences. The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that lie outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. Freud described the phenomenon of repression, in which the conscious mind turns away from a painful thought or memory, pushing it down into the unconscious, because it is socially unacceptable. The thought does not go away, however, and energy from the libido (life energy) is consumed by keeping it repressed. This energy can be released, Freud thought, when a repressed memory is re-admitted to consciousness. 1 Everyone represses some things: bad childhood memories or traumas, for example. But some people repress so much that repression becomes a major component of mental disorders, affecting a person's day-today activities: " He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips ; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. " 2 The quote demonstrates Freud's conviction that despite repression, unconscious desires eventually work their way to the surface. A common example of this phenomenon is what is now known as the Freudian slip or parapraxis. A person will make a verbal mistake that reveals an unconscious thought or emotion. A person may call his spouse by a different name, exposing his attraction for another woman. Unconscious desires are also expressed by nonverbal communication. The present paper seeks to establish that the heroine of Margaret Atwood's Surfacing violates standards of behavior, represses her bad memories and suffers as a consequence, learns her lesson and resolves to live in light of it, unembittered by her pain. A character without a name is hardly a character at all. The nameless narrator who appears at the beginning of Surfacing is a voice rather than a person, and presents through her narrative involving two time spans–past childhood juxtaposed with present adulthood–the eternal dilemma of man-woman relationship. While the protagonist attempts to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of her botanist father on a remote island in northern Quebec, along with her lover Joe and another young couple, David and Anna, the reader struggles to make sense of the often conflicting stands of her story about her marriage, her husband and her child.
Uploads
Papers by Dr. Leena Pundir