Jacques Cartier

Danielle Ramsey (2000), in the course pack, described psychoanalysis’s presence in feminist theory, as mainly in the position of the enemy. With many feminist adopting the idea that Freudian theory based female sexual identity around the thought of “passivity and, in particular, penis envy” (Ramsey, 2000, p.168), the idea that women, of all races (to be more accurate), suffered inferiority, from both the psyche and physical body, became acknowledged as harmful to feminist and their work in…

Jacques Lacan’s theory of development explains how infants mature psychologically. The stages of his concept include the Imaginary, the Mirror, and the Symbolic. The first is where children begin to understand control. Babies learn to manipulate their environment as an extension of their own base needs and desires. There is no separation between the baby and the outside world. Following the discovery of control, infants undergo the Mirror stage, where they learn to recognize their own image…

Figurative language, as a core pillar of language, has played a major part in the development, discovery and creation of most, if not all the concepts in our real world today. Nietzsche, Plato and Aristotle, are three well noted philosophers who all believed that a great extent of our knowledge and everything that we know today and believe to be true is in someway metaphors and illusions. They all understood the strong bond that knowledge and metaphors had. However, they each viewed metaphors…

‘The Wasteland’ has been psycho-analytically studied to understand the poet’s psyche, the metaphor of images, symbols, etc. for new untouched and unexplored findings in the genre of practical criticism. The poem has been deciphered on the basis of three psychoanalytic models (a) Lacan’s ‘Language and Unconscious’ (b) C.G. Jung’s ‘Collective Unconscious’ and (c) Northrop Frye’s ‘Archetypal Criticism’. Lacan’s ‘Language and Unconscious’, attempts to read ‘The Wasteland’ in the likeness of…

In Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, Danny Saunders questions the value of raising children in silence. Ironically, due to the fact that Danny’s father has imposed silence upon their relationship, Danny comes to realize how valuable talking can be to his personal growth. By the end of the story, he no longer believes in his father’s strict Hasidic views. The silence between Danny and Reb Saunders forces Danny to find other people to talk to. These people expose him to new ideas, ideas that his father…

Does the word ‘phallus’ refer to the same concept in the writings of both Freud and Lacan? Does Freud’s “substitute for the woman’s penis” (Freud “Fetishism” 842) correlate with Lacan’s “privileged signifier?” (Lacan “Signification” 1187). In The Signification of the Phallus Lacan writes: “it is Freud’s discovery that gives to the signifier / signified opposition the full extent of implications,” crediting Freud with Lacan’s discovery of the phallus as a “privileged signifier” (Lacan…

Critical Reflection #3: Jane Flax (2004) In Flax’s What Is the Subject? Review Essay on Psychoanalysis and Feminism in a Postcolonial Time (2004), she questions whether or not psychoanalytic theory, which is heavily centred on sex and gender identity, would be able to withstand the inclusion of other factors like race. She argues that both feminism and psychoanalysis has been treated expressed through a white, Western, middle class view and has done little to include issues around race and…

Psychoanalytic analysis is an approach to analyzing media artifacts in order to understand how the human drives for pleasure and desire play a role within them (Ott & Mack, 2014). The main premise of psychoanalysis is that people are behaving in a certain way due to the unconscious desires, needs and fears. One of the psychoanalytic elements important to the mass media communication is the male gaze theory. In this paper, I will explore how the male gaze is challenged and why are there…

In this essay I will critically review chapter three: Sharing Suffering, Instrumental relations between laboratory animals and their people by Donna Haraway from her book “When Species Meet”. I will be analyzing the main arguments that Haraway presents throughout the chapter. I will identify the evidence used to support her argument and also identify the limits of the chapter. I intend to identify connections between this chapter and the article “Cyclone Pam from the field, Adapting to climate…

Lacanian theory is controversial almost everywhere it goes. Agree or disagree, there is no shortage of discussion on the validity of Lacan’s work. His concept of the “mirror stage” (or phase) is one of the most significant theories in film study. However, the theory itself opens some interesting doors in terms of its definition. In an age where self-definition has become more important than ever, it must be discussed that Lacan’s mirror phase is no longer just one moment in the development of…