Freud's Journey on Acheron-A Reading of the Epigram of The Interpretation of Dreams

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  • フロイトの冥界めぐり --『夢解釈』の銘の読解--
  • フロイト ノ メイカイ メグリ : 『 ユメ カイシャク 』 ノ メイ ノ ドッカイ

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Abstract

This paper will try to shed a new light onto Freud's thoughts that mark the birth of psychoanalysis, by rethinking the epigram of his The Interpretation of Dreams, Lectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo. In the first section, it will be argued that Freud's renouncement to write a book on the topic of neurosis allowed him to engage in another project, a philosophical work about dreams. According to the original context of the epigram, Virgil's Aeneid, this book could be thought of as revenge as well as a subversion of general neurological discourse of that era. Here we can find Freud disrupting the division between normality and abnormality, and constituting a surface of plural conflicts. In the second section we reconsider the notion of "repression" in his Studies on Hysteria, in order to clarify the significance of this notion as a force circulating on the continuous surface. In the third section, we take a closer look to Freud's discursive style in The Interpretation of Dreams, which would be parallel to that of clinical procedure of interpretation of dreams, featured by overdetermination. In the fourth section, we examine several passages from Studies on Hysteria illustrating psychical arrangement like labyrinth, as well as another type of organization considered opposed to the former. Finally, in the fifth section we consider the problem of paternity in order to see how it would make it possible to reorganize the absurdity of dreams as undergroundness. We will thus find two alternating figures of Freud theorizing "the depth".

Journal

  • 人文學報

    人文學報 109 1-32, 2016-07-30

    THE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN HUMANITIES, KYOTO UNIVERSITY

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