From: kyee@caesar.mit.edu (Kenneth Yee)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Re: [SOC] Freud, sex, Jeez folx: figger it out
Date: 15 Aug 92 17:36:08 GMT
Reply-To: kyee@mtl.mit.edu
Organization: Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology

Check out the subject line: I'm (attempting) resurrecting the  
classification system that Theresa Vaughn proposed shortly after this  
group was formed.

In article <BsvHpt.4n4@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> 
stcmille@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Stephen C. Miller) writes:
> 
> As a footnote to the discussion of biblical stuff that's appeared here
> recently, I think it is important to note that FREUDIAN ANALYSIS DOES
> NOT MEAN "EVERYTHING IS SEX".  Most of what passes for "Freudian"
> analysis is more like a sort of crude folk explanation in terms of sex.

That's right!  There's also anal and oral dimensions as well!  :)
By the way, could you clarify what you mean by "folk explanation"?  More  
of this later, but some of Freud's ideas of dream analysis was "confirmed"  
by "folk explanations."

> A truly Freudian analysis of myth pays more attention to family
> dyynamics than it does to sex - witness his work on the primal horde.

My understanding of the primal horde is that it is an attempt to link the  
Oedipus complex to an event way back in history.  I haven't read _Totem  
and Taboo_ where I believe this is discussed... could you please elaborate  
on this?

> Which is a very interesting thing to contemplate while remembering the
> importance of dreams and fantasies to psychoanalysis.  At any rate,
> Freud never developed a sociology, which is what is screwed about his
> whole project.  And what is screwed about most attempts to do a
> "Freudian" analysis of myth.
> 
> What do I mean by no sociology?  I mean that there's no attempt to
> relate a myth to the larger social world.  I mean there's no account of
> the social construction of a myth.  There's only a concern for how the
> myth, in whatever form it reaches us and without regard to means of
> transmission, translation, etc, how the myth reflects the psyche of some
> idealized or imagined teller of the myth.  Or the "collective psyche" of
> the entire culture that produced it.  I challenge anyone to show me a
> collective psyche.
> 
> 
> Good to get all that off my chest!  Whew!  I'll see you next week
> doctor?  DOctor?  (I'm afraid he doesn't like me.  I want to kill
> him...)
> -- 
> --------------------
> =
> (former rock star turned grad student)
> Steve Miller	 		    stcmille@copper.ucs.indiana.edu

OK, OK, these are all very good points.  Certainly my (pro-Freud) postings  
don't examine societal dynamics and are therefore lacking.  But I would  
like to assert that using Freudian concepts to analyze tales is a valid  
approach.  On top of that, I'm going to assert that they are empirically  
verifiable.  But first some background.

  Freud, who was untrained in folklore, collaborated D.E. Oppenheim, who  
was a trained in folklore but untrained in psychoanalysis.  Their  
collaborative work involved using Freud's symbolic methods to analyze  
dreams found in folktales.  When they looked at tales in which characters  
had dreams that were explained within the tale by other characters, it  
turns out that those explanations were consistent with Freudian theory.
   Geza Roheim, a student of Freud who was also trained in folkloristic  
methods, noted the similarity between myth and dreams, and explored this  
in his book _Gates of the Dream_.

  Freudian theory, in its original conception, tended to be a universal  
theory that failed to account for cultural variations.  The theory was  
revised by Kardiner and Linton to accomodate cultural relativism.  They  
assumed that tales remained relatively constant in time and analyzed  
culture in terms of its mythology. (It turns out that tales do change, but  
it's assumed that these changes can be correlated to cultural changes.)

   In opposition to these symbolic theories was anthropologist Franz Boas.   
He held that view that the tales of a society were a literal one-to-one  
"cultural reflector" of that society.  He believed that one could derive  
ethnographic data from looking at a culture's mythology.  His monumental  
work _Tsimshian Mythology_ consisted of a collection of Pacific  
Northwestern Indian tales, followed by a section on the kinship patterns  
of these Indians as derived from the tales.  Ruth Benedict later pointed  
out that there were inconsistencies with ethnographic information derived  
from the mythology and ethnographic data collected first-hand.  For  
example the folklore was reporting a higher incidence of incest than was  
observed by ethnographers in the field.  The current thought is that tales  
can serve as a "cultural reflector" but one can't take the tale literally.   
Other factors are at work here... symbolism, inversion, projective  
inversion, displacement, etc.
    Another anthropologist who attempted to debunk Freudian theory was  
Bronislaw Malinowski.  One of Malinowski's big contributions to the study  
of anthropology was the idea of "participant observation."  This was  
developed in opposition to the "armchair anthropologist" approaches of  
scholars such as James G. Frazer.  The idea here is to examine folklore in  
its cultural context.  Anyways, he attempted to debunk the claimed  
universality of the Oedipus complex by looking at matrilineal societies.   
He argued that in such societies, it is the mother's brother, not the  
father, who disciplines his nephews and possesses the wealth to be  
inherited.  The father and the son are not related, according to this  
societal view (someone please correct me if I'm wrong here).  He argued  
that these societies should have an "avuncular complex."  In rebuttal,  
Ernest Jones and Geza Roheim indicated that the uncle was not a sexual  
rival for the mother.  It turns out that Malinowski's own fieldwork  
contains evidence that supports the Oedipus complex... there are tales  
that are clearly Oedipal in nature, and in some, the protagonists can be  
identified as the father and son, not uncle and nephew.  For more  
information on this debate, see Ingham, "Malinowski:  Epistemology and  
Oedipus," Papers of the Kroeber Anthropological Society 29 (1963) p. 1-14.   
Also, Melford E. Spiro, _Oedipus in the Trobriands_ (Chicago, 1982)

  Now, to respond to the claim that Freudian analysis of myth (or tales)  
are concerned only with the tale itself and not its transmission,  
translation, teller, audience, etc., I can only say that this is not true.   
To analyze a tale without such considerations is analogous to analyzing a  
dream without knowledge of the dreamer (I don't remember who first said  
this, but I think it's very apt).  Again, this is the idea of cultural  
relativism.  I would assert that the Oedipal complex is present in the  
folklore of all cultures, but I would be a fool to assert that its  
expression is universal and culturally independent.  The idea of symbolism  
is universal, but the symbols themselves are not.
   So how does one understand symbols and their meanings found in tales?   
One could attempt to look cross-culturally, but this will only work if the  
cultures under examination are related.  What one could do is to look at  
the culture's tales comparatively.  There are often many variants and  
cognates to a given tale in a given culture (or among many cultures, for  
that matter).  What one can do is look at a particular detail in a tale  
and see how that varies among the variants and cognates.  If we assume  
some sort of "functional equivalence," it's reasonable to assume also  
"symbolic equivalence." (I should probably explain what I mean by  
"functional equivalence," but I'll save this for another post.  See  
_Morphology of the Folktale_ by Vladimir Propp).  As an example, Vance  
Randolph in his study of Ozark folktale, writes about one of his  
informants who will tell a certain tale (the Rabbit Herd) differently  
depending on the audience.  There's a part of this tale in which the King  
gets punished.  In a mixed audience, the King is beheaded.  In an all-male  
audience, the King is castrated.  This would suggest some symbolic  
equation between decapitation and castration (at least in Ozark folklore).   
As an aside, this tale is found throughout Europe.  It's interesting that  
the character of the King is retained in the Ozark version.  Something  
about the constancy of folktale...

    With regards to "collective psyche" could you please elaborate on what  
you mean by this?  Is this is related to the Jungian archetype?   I've  
found Jung's explanation of the archetype (as found in "The Psychology of  
the Child Archetype") to be completely incomprehensible, and any  
clarification would be helpful.

    
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