Oedipal Allen
Week 2

Reading: Sigmund Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, “The Relation of Jokes to Dreams and to the Unconscious.” pg. 197 – 223.

In this chapter of Freud's book, “The relation of jokes to dreams and to the unconscious is discussed. Thought transformation with a view to the possibility of representation, condensation and displacement are the 3 major achievements that may be ascribed to the dream work. The characteristics and effects of jokes are linked with certain forms of expression or technical methods, among which the most striking are condensation, displacement, and indirect representation. Processes, however, which lead to the same results have become known to us as peculiarities of the dream work. Jokes are formed as a preconscious thought is given over for a moment to unconscious revision and the outcome of this is at once grasped by conscious perception. The characteristics of jokes which can be referred to their formation in the unconscious are presented: 1) the peculiar brevity of jokes; 2) displacements; 3) representation by the opposite; and 4) the use of nonsense. Dreams serve predominantly for the avoidance of unpleasure, jokes for the attainment of pleasure; but all our mental activities converge in these 2 aims.” - Carrie Lee Rothgeb, Editor, “Abstracts of the Standard Edition of the Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. The New York Freudian Society.

We read, in class, an excerpt from Sander M. Gilman's Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews In this excerpt, we were given information revealing how many Jews dislike themselves because of their culture; how they were brought up, what their history is, etc. This point is really driven home in the rest of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, which we finished discussing this week. The first part of the book explains what the title of the book means.

“Portnoy's Complaint. A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism, and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's “morality,” however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship. “

Here is even more evidence that we can successfully attempt to psychoanalyze Woody Allen through his jokes, and through his works. Even though Allen did not explicitly state a lot of the things that we are inferring, there is enough evidence so that we can really get a good sense of how Allen was raised and how it affected the way he sees the world, and therefore, the way that he makes movies. Allen interprets the world and puts it on film, wrapped in the comedic hue that always surrounds anything in Allen's eyes (or at least it seems to!).

Continuing from the first day of the week on the Jewish self-concept, we received an essay to read by the University of Oregon's Martha A. Ravits called “The Jewish Mother: Comedy and Controversy in American Popular Culture.” This essay by Ravits, which was released in the scholarly journal MELUS in the Spring of 2000 goes into the negative light that American society has shone onto the stereotypical Jewish female. Ravits condemns things like Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint because of how harshly they criticize the women that put their heart and soul into raising them. Both Philip Roth and Woody Allen are prodigal and successful Jewish sons that now, in adulthood, choose to deject the women and mothers in society by imposing unfair critiques and stereotypes on them. This less-than-kind way that mothers of Jewish children are shown ties in directly with the excerpt from Sander M. Gilman's Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews; if there wasn't such a negative image that was being portrayed to the American people and society, then maybe the Jewish women would have a higher self-esteem, and this would cause everyone in the Jewish community to have better self-esteems and thoughts on self-worth.

There was a group presentation today on Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, but it was executed poorly, it wasn't very well put together, it wasn't very captivating, and due to all of these things, I don't remember anything else about it.