1 00:00:00 --> 00:00:01 2 00:00:01 --> 00:00:02 The following content is provided by MIT OpenCourseWare 3 00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 under a Creative Commons license. 4 00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 Additional information about our license at MIT 5 00:00:08 --> 00:00:16 OpenCourseWare in general is available at ocw.mit.edu. 6 00:00:16 --> 00:00:18 PROFESSOR: Good afternoon. 7 00:00:18 --> 00:00:25 I want to do two things today and they involve two 8 00:00:25 --> 00:00:28 sets of Freudian jargon. 9 00:00:28 --> 00:00:33 I want to talk about Freud's so called structural psychology 10 00:00:33 --> 00:00:39 that involves the terms id, ego, and superego and will give 11 00:00:39 --> 00:00:44 me a brief chance to talk about Freud's theory of 12 00:00:44 --> 00:00:46 civilization as a whole. 13 00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 And then I want to talk about Freud's developmental 14 00:00:48 --> 00:00:52 psychology which is where we get these notions of an oral, 15 00:00:52 --> 00:00:56 anal, phallic, and then onto latency in adult stages 16 00:00:56 --> 00:00:58 of development. 17 00:00:58 --> 00:01:02 And that'll give me a chance to talk about fairy tales or more 18 00:01:02 --> 00:01:09 broadly about the practice of using Freudian ideas to 19 00:01:09 --> 00:01:14 interpret literary texts. 20 00:01:14 --> 00:01:18 The second part may well run into next Tuesday 21 00:01:18 --> 00:01:19 as I think about it. 22 00:01:19 --> 00:01:23 23 00:01:23 --> 00:01:30 Freud thought that babies came into the world thinking that 24 00:01:30 --> 00:01:34 they were co-extensive with the universe. 25 00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 That they were everything. 26 00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 Not that they were looking out in space saying, look, 27 00:01:39 --> 00:01:40 the stars-- they're me. 28 00:01:40 --> 00:01:46 But that what the initial experience of being a conscious 29 00:01:46 --> 00:01:50 entity was thinking that you're it, you're everything. 30 00:01:50 --> 00:01:52 It's not as though that's new with Freud. 31 00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 I won't attempt to do a reading of the piece of Tennyson that I 32 00:01:55 --> 00:01:57 put on the handout because I discover I'm a bad 33 00:01:57 --> 00:01:58 reader of Tennyson. 34 00:01:58 --> 00:02:04 35 00:02:04 --> 00:02:08 But if you read that you will see Tennyson saying very 36 00:02:08 --> 00:02:09 much the same thing. 37 00:02:09 --> 00:02:15 That the job of an infant is to learn the use of I and me and 38 00:02:15 --> 00:02:18 finds, I am not what I see other than the 39 00:02:18 --> 00:02:19 things I touched. 40 00:02:19 --> 00:02:23 You've got to figure out what's you and what's not you. 41 00:02:23 --> 00:02:30 Freud thought this little bundle of-- that this universe 42 00:02:30 --> 00:02:34 of a baby wanted one thing, which talked about last time. 43 00:02:34 --> 00:02:38 The kid wants pleasure and the kid wants pleasure now, 44 00:02:38 --> 00:02:40 anyway he/she can get it. 45 00:02:40 --> 00:02:45 That collection of unbridled desires is what 46 00:02:45 --> 00:02:47 Freud called the id. 47 00:02:47 --> 00:02:50 Now this all looks like very fancy or not very fancy-- looks 48 00:02:50 --> 00:02:53 like jargon, but in Freud's original writing it's not 49 00:02:53 --> 00:02:53 particularly jargony. 50 00:02:53 --> 00:02:57 It is just a Latinization of the word for it, the 51 00:02:57 --> 00:02:59 animal piece of you. 52 00:02:59 --> 00:03:07 The it that wants stuff and wants it now. 53 00:03:07 --> 00:03:13 The id is essentially unconscious. 54 00:03:13 --> 00:03:16 And well, actually to combine the two bits of the -- where 55 00:03:16 --> 00:03:19 does the id get its pleasures? 56 00:03:19 --> 00:03:25 Freud's series of developmental stages were driven by a notion 57 00:03:25 --> 00:03:29 of where the sources of pleasure were in the kid's 58 00:03:29 --> 00:03:34 life and so initially for instance, it's all oral. 59 00:03:34 --> 00:03:41 The fact that this all has a sexual overrun to it is in 60 00:03:41 --> 00:03:47 fact, probably more problem for Freud than useful for Freud. 61 00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 62 00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 All right, so the kids get some-- oral stuff-- that what's 63 00:03:53 --> 00:03:55 giving the kid pleasure. 64 00:03:55 --> 00:03:56 That's sort of interesting. 65 00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 What really is important in this early stage of development 66 00:03:59 --> 00:04:04 though is well, one of the things is figuring 67 00:04:04 --> 00:04:06 out who I am. 68 00:04:06 --> 00:04:08 How much of this universe belongs to me? 69 00:04:08 --> 00:04:12 And is this universe a safe place? 70 00:04:12 --> 00:04:16 The real force behind Freud's stages of development are these 71 00:04:16 --> 00:04:20 stages where particular issues emerge really for 72 00:04:20 --> 00:04:21 the first time. 73 00:04:21 --> 00:04:24 Issues that will then turn out to be important for the 74 00:04:24 --> 00:04:25 rest of people's lives. 75 00:04:25 --> 00:04:31 So the initial issue that comes up in this oral stage of 76 00:04:31 --> 00:04:33 development is safety. 77 00:04:33 --> 00:04:35 Am I going to be fed when I need to be fed? 78 00:04:35 --> 00:04:37 Am I going to be warm enough? 79 00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 Am I going to be taken care of? 80 00:04:39 --> 00:04:44 That's newborn stuff, but it's not stuff that goes away. 81 00:04:44 --> 00:04:50 You know that concerns about, is the world a safe place is 82 00:04:50 --> 00:04:54 the sort of things that can occupy your mind now too. 83 00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 How you understand the world, how you understand those 84 00:04:57 --> 00:05:01 problems says Freud -- not unreasonably -- are likely to 85 00:05:01 --> 00:05:05 be shaped by these early experiences. 86 00:05:05 --> 00:05:10 If your early experiences is of a safe, comfortable world 87 00:05:10 --> 00:05:13 you're going to treat later challenges differently than if 88 00:05:13 --> 00:05:16 your early experiences-- who knows if mom's ever going to 89 00:05:16 --> 00:05:18 get around to feeding me again. 90 00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 That's going to be a different kind of experience. 91 00:05:21 --> 00:05:23 The anal stage-- all right, why is it anal? 92 00:05:23 --> 00:05:27 Well, it's anal because Freud had some notion that there's 93 00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 certain pleasures in the elimination process 94 00:05:30 --> 00:05:31 and things like that. 95 00:05:31 --> 00:05:36 But the real issue here, the life-long issue that emerges 96 00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 is who's in control? 97 00:05:39 --> 00:05:43 And the reason that's an anal stage issue is because this is 98 00:05:43 --> 00:05:49 the point at which if you're an infant it's not just 99 00:05:49 --> 00:05:51 anything goes anymore. 100 00:05:51 --> 00:05:56 Up to this point the first great crisis of control in a 101 00:05:56 --> 00:06:00 little child's life is very often toilet training. 102 00:06:00 --> 00:06:02 Up to this point you could do whatever you wanted, 103 00:06:02 --> 00:06:04 wherever you want to do it. 104 00:06:04 --> 00:06:08 Now all of a sudden somebody's saying, do it there, now. 105 00:06:08 --> 00:06:10 Don't play with it. 106 00:06:10 --> 00:06:15 Don't do any of the various-- it wasn't disgusting before. 107 00:06:15 --> 00:06:19 Back when I was very little they looked at it-- oh, 108 00:06:19 --> 00:06:20 great [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 109 00:06:20 --> 00:06:22 Now it's disgusting and I gotta put it over there. 110 00:06:22 --> 00:06:24 What's this about? 111 00:06:24 --> 00:06:28 And you got to figure out how much control do you 112 00:06:28 --> 00:06:30 have over yourself? 113 00:06:30 --> 00:06:37 And how much are you in the control of somebody else? 114 00:06:37 --> 00:06:43 Here the issue is identity. 115 00:06:43 --> 00:06:44 Who am I? 116 00:06:44 --> 00:06:46 Identity. 117 00:06:46 --> 00:06:47 Who am I? 118 00:06:47 --> 00:06:51 And more specifically, what does it mean to 119 00:06:51 --> 00:06:54 the male or female? 120 00:06:54 --> 00:06:59 I'll come back to the details of that a little later on 121 00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 because it gets me a little ahead of the story. 122 00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 Presently we're still back here with little Mister Id. 123 00:07:05 --> 00:07:13 This unbridled collection desires who wants everything 124 00:07:13 --> 00:07:15 and wants it now. 125 00:07:15 --> 00:07:20 At some point the id runs up against what Freud called the 126 00:07:20 --> 00:07:24 reality principle, which is you can't get what you want all the 127 00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 time, exactly when you want it. 128 00:07:26 --> 00:07:30 If you haven't noticed this at this point that's 129 00:07:30 --> 00:07:31 probably a little grim. 130 00:07:31 --> 00:07:35 The ego, which is just the Latinization of the 131 00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 word for I or the self. 132 00:07:38 --> 00:07:45 The ego grows out of the collision of this little 133 00:07:45 --> 00:07:48 Miss Id with reality. 134 00:07:48 --> 00:07:56 So the ego has to check the desires of the id. 135 00:07:56 --> 00:08:01 And the ego is sort of the embodiment of this effort to 136 00:08:01 --> 00:08:04 figure out how much of the universe really is me. 137 00:08:04 --> 00:08:08 So the sort of thing you can imagine a kid discovering is 138 00:08:08 --> 00:08:10 all right, I'm an oral stage baby. 139 00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 I like sucking on stuff. 140 00:08:13 --> 00:08:17 There are some things that I can suck on anytime I want. 141 00:08:17 --> 00:08:20 You know there's this thumb thing-- anytime 142 00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 I want it it's there. 143 00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 There's other things, like the bottle or the breast or 144 00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 whatever, they're different. 145 00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 I like them, but they're fundamentally different. 146 00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 They're not me. 147 00:08:33 --> 00:08:37 At the most basic level you have to figure out how 148 00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 much of the world is you. 149 00:08:39 --> 00:08:46 Now this again, ramifies through the rest of your life. 150 00:08:46 --> 00:08:51 If you grow up considering that you are co-extensive with the 151 00:08:51 --> 00:08:56 universe and that you make the planets turn in their orbits, 152 00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 you're going to be an odd adult, right? 153 00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 You've got to shrink it down from that. 154 00:09:01 --> 00:09:05 If you shrink down too far-- I'm not in control of anything. 155 00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 This didn't work out well for me. 156 00:09:07 --> 00:09:08 I'm not in control of everything. 157 00:09:08 --> 00:09:11 I'm just a little worm pushed around by force-- you know, 158 00:09:11 --> 00:09:13 that's not going to be very healthy either. 159 00:09:13 --> 00:09:16 So the job of this emerging ego is to come up with some 160 00:09:16 --> 00:09:21 reasonable estimate of what your powers are and what it is 161 00:09:21 --> 00:09:26 that you might be in some sort of control over. 162 00:09:26 --> 00:09:30 So now the ego's busy there fighting with the id. 163 00:09:30 --> 00:09:33 So that the id is saying I want to kill my little brother. 164 00:09:33 --> 00:09:34 The ego says, you can't do that. 165 00:09:34 --> 00:09:36 The id says, how come? 166 00:09:36 --> 00:09:41 The ego says, well because mom would whack us. 167 00:09:41 --> 00:09:42 And the id says, I don't care. 168 00:09:42 --> 00:09:43 I still want to kill him. 169 00:09:43 --> 00:09:46 And the ego at this point starts to say things 170 00:09:46 --> 00:09:47 like forget it. 171 00:09:47 --> 00:09:49 We're going to repress that idea. 172 00:09:49 --> 00:09:50 This is where you get the beginnings of ideas of 173 00:09:50 --> 00:09:54 repression that I was talking about last time. 174 00:09:54 --> 00:09:57 All of these Freudian bits of theories attempt to 175 00:09:57 --> 00:10:00 interlock in some fashion. 176 00:10:00 --> 00:10:04 So the ego is busy taking the more unacceptable bits of the 177 00:10:04 --> 00:10:10 id and stuffing them away in that unconscious reservoir 178 00:10:10 --> 00:10:11 of the repressed. 179 00:10:11 --> 00:10:14 Now you'll see that that's gotten you from an id who 180 00:10:14 --> 00:10:16 just was ruled by pleasure. 181 00:10:16 --> 00:10:18 This really essentially amoral id. 182 00:10:18 --> 00:10:22 You've now got the beginnings of a sense of morality here. 183 00:10:22 --> 00:10:25 It's not very sophisticated, but it's on the one 184 00:10:25 --> 00:10:27 hand, this would be fun. 185 00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 On the other hand, we can't do it because we 186 00:10:30 --> 00:10:31 might get punished. 187 00:10:31 --> 00:10:32 So it's sort of a reward and punishment. 188 00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 Why not rob the bank? 189 00:10:34 --> 00:10:35 Because you'll get arrested and thrown in jail. 190 00:10:35 --> 00:10:42 It's that sort of crime and punishment kind of morality. 191 00:10:42 --> 00:10:47 Morality gets more complicated when you reach this oedipal 192 00:10:47 --> 00:10:52 stage of development. 193 00:10:52 --> 00:10:58 To explain that I need to say a little more about that stage, 194 00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 which I can see that on the handout I promised I would. 195 00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 196 00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 I'll do the male version of this. 197 00:11:06 --> 00:11:11 If this is about identity and particularly, sexual identity-- 198 00:11:11 --> 00:11:14 there's going to be a male story and a female story. 199 00:11:14 --> 00:11:15 Let's do the male story and we'll come back 200 00:11:15 --> 00:11:16 to the female story. 201 00:11:16 --> 00:11:25 202 00:11:25 --> 00:11:28 The large scale notion that makes some degree of sense is 203 00:11:28 --> 00:11:31 that you've got to figure out what does it mean to be a male? 204 00:11:31 --> 00:11:38 That's an important thing to figure out and it's likely that 205 00:11:38 --> 00:11:42 Dad or other adult males in the immediate vicinity are going to 206 00:11:42 --> 00:11:47 be sort of a model for what that's going to mean. 207 00:11:47 --> 00:11:55 The difficulty for Freud or the start of the conflict in an 208 00:11:55 --> 00:12:00 oedipal conflict is that the child starts very much 209 00:12:00 --> 00:12:02 attached to Mom. 210 00:12:02 --> 00:12:05 It's Mom who provides nourishment. 211 00:12:05 --> 00:12:09 It's Mom who gave birth to you and so on. 212 00:12:09 --> 00:12:10 How are you going to get an attachment or 213 00:12:10 --> 00:12:12 identification with Dad? 214 00:12:12 --> 00:12:16 Well, what Freud proposed was that little kids, little boys-- 215 00:12:16 --> 00:12:20 stick with boys here-- little boys initially see themselves 216 00:12:20 --> 00:12:22 in competition with Dad. 217 00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 They like Mom. 218 00:12:24 --> 00:12:25 Mom is great. 219 00:12:25 --> 00:12:27 They want Mom. 220 00:12:27 --> 00:12:31 All right, it's called oedipal because Freud saw a parallel 221 00:12:31 --> 00:12:33 with the Greek Myth of Oedipus. 222 00:12:33 --> 00:12:37 Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother. 223 00:12:37 --> 00:12:41 So you get this weird notion that somehow Freud thought 224 00:12:41 --> 00:12:44 little boys wanted to sexually possess their mothers and that 225 00:12:44 --> 00:12:47 sounds both weird and icky. 226 00:12:47 --> 00:12:51 227 00:12:51 --> 00:12:53 Freud didn't do himself any help here, he was talking 228 00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 about infantile sexuality. 229 00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 Everybody heard the sexuality bit and sort of left 230 00:12:57 --> 00:13:00 off the infantile bit. 231 00:13:00 --> 00:13:02 Freud is not thinking in any sort of adult 232 00:13:02 --> 00:13:03 sexual terms here. 233 00:13:03 --> 00:13:06 He's saying look, the little kid likes Mom. 234 00:13:06 --> 00:13:07 Mom's a good thing. 235 00:13:07 --> 00:13:09 He wants Mom all to himself. 236 00:13:09 --> 00:13:12 Now it turns out that there's Dad. 237 00:13:12 --> 00:13:17 Dad mysteriously seems to have some claim on Mom, too. 238 00:13:17 --> 00:13:20 And so the little kid in this infantile kind of way figures, 239 00:13:20 --> 00:13:23 I'm going to have it out with Dad. 240 00:13:23 --> 00:13:26 We're going to have a fight here man because there's only 241 00:13:26 --> 00:13:30 one Mom and I want her. 242 00:13:30 --> 00:13:34 I've still got a lot of id going on here, I want Mom and-- 243 00:13:34 --> 00:13:36 all right, that's Stage One. 244 00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 That's the conflict stage. 245 00:13:38 --> 00:13:40 I can't remember what buzz word I used for the second stage. 246 00:13:40 --> 00:13:43 Oh, the second stage is capitulation. 247 00:13:43 --> 00:13:45 Well, there's a problem with this conflict. 248 00:13:45 --> 00:13:49 OK, I'm going to have a big fight with Dad. 249 00:13:49 --> 00:13:50 Dad. 250 00:13:50 --> 00:13:53 Oh man, like Dad's really big. 251 00:13:53 --> 00:13:57 If Dad ever figures out that I want to have a fight with 252 00:13:57 --> 00:13:59 him Dad is going to kill me. 253 00:13:59 --> 00:14:01 Maybe he's going to castrate me, I'm not sure. 254 00:14:01 --> 00:14:03 But it's something really, really bad is going to happen 255 00:14:03 --> 00:14:09 here and so I better deny that I was ever interested in this. 256 00:14:09 --> 00:14:13 In fact, what I'm going to do is I'm going to reject, 257 00:14:13 --> 00:14:19 suppress my desire for Mom and I'm going to idealize Dad. 258 00:14:19 --> 00:14:27 I'm going to come to take Dad, in response to this perceived 259 00:14:27 --> 00:14:33 threat, perhaps to my very life I'm going to idealize Dad. 260 00:14:33 --> 00:14:36 And in some sense incorporate Dad into me. 261 00:14:36 --> 00:14:41 And that act of incorporation is the beginnings of 262 00:14:41 --> 00:14:45 development of what Freud called the superego. 263 00:14:45 --> 00:14:48 Another Latinization, this time of a term that just 264 00:14:48 --> 00:14:50 means sort of over I. 265 00:14:50 --> 00:14:53 You know, the thing that is above the self. 266 00:14:53 --> 00:14:57 It's not quite your conscience. 267 00:14:57 --> 00:15:01 It's not unrelated to your conscience, but it initially 268 00:15:01 --> 00:15:05 for Freud starts out as the voice of the father 269 00:15:05 --> 00:15:06 for a little boy. 270 00:15:06 --> 00:15:08 Well, let's just say voice of parent. 271 00:15:08 --> 00:15:11 272 00:15:11 --> 00:15:18 And will eventually become the voice of society as a whole 273 00:15:18 --> 00:15:21 telling you how to live. 274 00:15:21 --> 00:15:26 Not necessarily consciously, not necessarily explicitly, but 275 00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 telling you what the rules are. 276 00:15:29 --> 00:15:34 Now again, you might think that this whole business of a 277 00:15:34 --> 00:15:40 conflict with Daddy over Mommy and the notion that you have 278 00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 some internalized voice of the parent that is going to be sort 279 00:15:43 --> 00:15:46 of the roots of your morality, your more sophisticated 280 00:15:46 --> 00:15:47 adult morality. 281 00:15:47 --> 00:15:49 That that all sounds a little strange. 282 00:15:49 --> 00:15:54 You can get a feeling for where such thoughts might come from 283 00:15:54 --> 00:15:56 again, if you hang around with kids. 284 00:15:56 --> 00:16:00 Remember last time we were talking about you know, 285 00:16:00 --> 00:16:02 hugging your little brother till he turns blue. 286 00:16:02 --> 00:16:08 Well look, I've now raised three sons through the oedipal 287 00:16:08 --> 00:16:10 stage of development. 288 00:16:10 --> 00:16:15 I think every last one of them at some point in the ages 289 00:16:15 --> 00:16:18 of around three, four the appropriate Freudian age has 290 00:16:18 --> 00:16:21 hopped into bed some Sunday morning or something like 291 00:16:21 --> 00:16:25 that-- into our great, big, huge, king-sized bed and 292 00:16:25 --> 00:16:28 asserted this bed isn't big enough for the three of us. 293 00:16:28 --> 00:16:32 Why doesn't Daddy get out? 294 00:16:32 --> 00:16:35 And mostly what you're sitting there thinking is, no kid 295 00:16:35 --> 00:16:36 should never be born to a psychologist. 296 00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 What's he doing, reading the books on the side here? 297 00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 And then I thinking, what am I supposed to do now? 298 00:16:41 --> 00:16:44 You know, am I suppose to like threaten to kill them or 299 00:16:44 --> 00:16:47 something because that develops morality? 300 00:16:47 --> 00:16:50 301 00:16:50 --> 00:16:57 So you can really see these sorts of seemingly oedipal 302 00:16:57 --> 00:17:02 comments in kids of that age and you can also sometimes here 303 00:17:02 --> 00:17:08 this voice of the parent as it gets internalized, like a 304 00:17:08 --> 00:17:16 little kid who's been told, the cake's over here. 305 00:17:16 --> 00:17:18 It's for dinner, don't mess with it. 306 00:17:18 --> 00:17:22 Don't go sticking your finger in the chocolate icing again. 307 00:17:22 --> 00:17:27 So no, no, no, you hear the kid say it. 308 00:17:27 --> 00:17:30 The nice thing about little kids is that the superego 309 00:17:30 --> 00:17:35 will verbalize itself for you-- no, no. 310 00:17:35 --> 00:17:38 311 00:17:38 --> 00:17:45 So the idea is that the stress or the trauma of this oedipal 312 00:17:45 --> 00:17:50 conflict is what drives the superego down into the psyche 313 00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 almost like a spike from the outside. 314 00:17:53 --> 00:17:56 Well, I would be remiss if I didn't say something about 315 00:17:56 --> 00:18:01 Freud's theory about how this works out for women. 316 00:18:01 --> 00:18:04 Now I might be remiss, but you wouldn't be missing anything in 317 00:18:04 --> 00:18:07 terms of-- people have all sorts of problems with this 318 00:18:07 --> 00:18:09 oedipal theory business. 319 00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 Because for instance, what happens if you get raised 320 00:18:12 --> 00:18:14 in a single-parent family with just Mom? 321 00:18:14 --> 00:18:16 Is there any evidence that your development comes 322 00:18:16 --> 00:18:17 out differently? 323 00:18:17 --> 00:18:19 No, in fact. 324 00:18:19 --> 00:18:21 So you don't need Dad there. 325 00:18:21 --> 00:18:23 You do need to figure out what it means to be male. 326 00:18:23 --> 00:18:29 Let me say a quick word about homosexuality. 327 00:18:29 --> 00:18:35 Freud regarded homosexuality seemingly as a variant 328 00:18:35 --> 00:18:37 of an outcome to this. 329 00:18:37 --> 00:18:41 He did not seem to regard it as a pathology. 330 00:18:41 --> 00:18:45 So he's got a very interesting letter written to the 331 00:18:45 --> 00:18:48 mother of a gay man. 332 00:18:48 --> 00:18:50 The mother was worried about this and he says basically, 333 00:18:50 --> 00:18:53 there's a bunch of ways this plays out. 334 00:18:53 --> 00:18:58 The mainline one is in the words of the old song you grow 335 00:18:58 --> 00:19:01 up to, I want a girl just like the girl who married 336 00:19:01 --> 00:19:02 dear old Dad. 337 00:19:02 --> 00:19:05 That's the sort of ultimate goal of this. 338 00:19:05 --> 00:19:08 In sort of the mainstream version you reject your 339 00:19:08 --> 00:19:11 desire for Mom, you go into this latent period. 340 00:19:11 --> 00:19:15 You go and you do math for awhile and then you wake up as 341 00:19:15 --> 00:19:18 a sexually mature adult, not looking for your mother, but 342 00:19:18 --> 00:19:23 looking for an appropriate object of your desires. 343 00:19:23 --> 00:19:25 Freud thought that there were other possible outcomes. 344 00:19:25 --> 00:19:27 That they were just other possible outcome. 345 00:19:27 --> 00:19:32 Subsequent generations of American psychology declared 346 00:19:32 --> 00:19:37 homosexuality to be a pathology and it was only in the '70s 347 00:19:37 --> 00:19:42 that American psychology returned in a sense to 348 00:19:42 --> 00:19:48 this view that it's a variant, not a problem. 349 00:19:48 --> 00:19:49 So women-- how did we get to women. 350 00:19:49 --> 00:19:51 What's the problem with women? 351 00:19:51 --> 00:19:56 The problem is you need the same fight thought Freud. 352 00:19:56 --> 00:19:58 He's got himself sold on this oedipal thing. 353 00:19:58 --> 00:20:00 And you need the same fight, but now you need a fight 354 00:20:00 --> 00:20:05 between the daughter and Mom for Dad. 355 00:20:05 --> 00:20:08 And the problem is that the initial bonding of the 356 00:20:08 --> 00:20:10 daughter is also to Mom. 357 00:20:10 --> 00:20:14 So that's no good because you can't fight with the person 358 00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 you're bonded too, so he's got to get the bond to flip. 359 00:20:17 --> 00:20:22 And so he came up with one of his less credible constructs-- 360 00:20:22 --> 00:20:25 the one that even good Freudians don't really believe 361 00:20:25 --> 00:20:27 in, which is penis envy. 362 00:20:27 --> 00:20:28 What is that? 363 00:20:28 --> 00:20:31 Well, he figured that little girls at some point figured 364 00:20:31 --> 00:20:36 out that they did not have something that little boys had, 365 00:20:36 --> 00:20:38 and that this was a disaster. 366 00:20:38 --> 00:20:40 This was very bad and they figured out that Mom 367 00:20:40 --> 00:20:41 didn't have one either. 368 00:20:41 --> 00:20:44 And therefore, Mom was defective and we ought 369 00:20:44 --> 00:20:47 to admire Dad instead. 370 00:20:47 --> 00:20:48 And then we can go and fight with Mom. 371 00:20:48 --> 00:20:52 372 00:20:52 --> 00:20:54 This was traumatic, this discovery. 373 00:20:54 --> 00:20:58 But it wasn't so traumatic, so Freud also theorized that since 374 00:20:58 --> 00:21:01 it was that trauma that was creating the superego and as a 375 00:21:01 --> 00:21:04 result, adult morality that it followed that women were 376 00:21:04 --> 00:21:06 simply less moral than men. 377 00:21:06 --> 00:21:11 A conclusion born out anytime you open the newspaper, right? 378 00:21:11 --> 00:21:14 It's not one of the more successful pieces of Freud, 379 00:21:14 --> 00:21:18 but it is the source of my favorite, really bad 380 00:21:18 --> 00:21:20 experiment in this realm. 381 00:21:20 --> 00:21:25 Which was an experiment where somebody gave a paper and 382 00:21:25 --> 00:21:27 pencil test to a group like you. 383 00:21:27 --> 00:21:29 One of these sort of SAT things where you're filling in 384 00:21:29 --> 00:21:33 the little things with the golf pencils and stuff. 385 00:21:33 --> 00:21:36 And then you hand the thing back and the experimenters 386 00:21:36 --> 00:21:39 don't care a bit about the test at all. 387 00:21:39 --> 00:21:43 All they care about is who returned the little pencils. 388 00:21:43 --> 00:21:46 And more guys returned the pencils than women. 389 00:21:46 --> 00:21:49 390 00:21:49 --> 00:21:53 Anyway, it's really lame. 391 00:21:53 --> 00:22:02 So look, the broad issue of what does it mean to be a boy 392 00:22:02 --> 00:22:07 or a girl, a man or a woman-- who is going to turn out to 393 00:22:07 --> 00:22:11 be an appropriate object for my sexual desire and so on? 394 00:22:11 --> 00:22:14 Those are interesting questions. 395 00:22:14 --> 00:22:18 There is considerable question about whether this actual 396 00:22:18 --> 00:22:22 oedipal conflict-- actually there's very little doubt 397 00:22:22 --> 00:22:26 that the strict form of it is not required. 398 00:22:26 --> 00:22:29 The single parent family thing is one good bit of 399 00:22:29 --> 00:22:30 evidence against that. 400 00:22:30 --> 00:22:34 And the woman story-- it's just kind of whack. 401 00:22:34 --> 00:22:38 402 00:22:38 --> 00:22:45 In any case, around this time you do get this development of 403 00:22:45 --> 00:22:49 a more sophisticated morality. 404 00:22:49 --> 00:22:54 And in Freud's view what you had was this poor ego here that 405 00:22:54 --> 00:22:58 was on the one side, assailed by the desires of the id that 406 00:22:58 --> 00:23:01 wanted to do all sorts of unspeakable and stupid things 407 00:23:01 --> 00:23:04 that you couldn't do in the face of reality and then 408 00:23:04 --> 00:23:08 there's the demands on the other side of the superego 409 00:23:08 --> 00:23:11 mostly, that doesn't want you to do stuff too. 410 00:23:11 --> 00:23:13 But anyway, it's got its own demand. 411 00:23:13 --> 00:23:17 And the ego has to somehow thread a path through here. 412 00:23:17 --> 00:23:21 Now how does the superego let you know what 413 00:23:21 --> 00:23:24 you're supposed to do? 414 00:23:24 --> 00:23:25 Well, it says on the handout, does it? 415 00:23:25 --> 00:23:27 Where'd I put it on the handout? 416 00:23:27 --> 00:23:28 Oh, no, I put a blank. 417 00:23:28 --> 00:23:29 Look at that. 418 00:23:29 --> 00:23:36 The superego has a weapon that lets you know when you've done 419 00:23:36 --> 00:23:39 what it does not approve of. 420 00:23:39 --> 00:23:43 To figure out what that weapon is you can invoke your 421 00:23:43 --> 00:23:44 own introspection. 422 00:23:44 --> 00:23:49 What you need to do is imagine some activity that your 423 00:23:49 --> 00:23:54 parents would disapprove of. 424 00:23:54 --> 00:23:57 It can be society as a whole if you like, but parents will do. 425 00:23:57 --> 00:24:00 So think of something that your parents would deeply disapprove 426 00:24:00 --> 00:24:04 of if you phoned up and said, guess what I did. 427 00:24:04 --> 00:24:09 And ask yourself, how would you feel the next day? 428 00:24:09 --> 00:24:12 429 00:24:12 --> 00:24:12 AUDIENCE: Guilty. 430 00:24:12 --> 00:24:13 PROFESSOR: Guilty, thank you. 431 00:24:13 --> 00:24:17 432 00:24:17 --> 00:24:22 Guilt is the weapon of the superego in this view. 433 00:24:22 --> 00:24:26 So when you feel guilty a good Freudian would say, you're 434 00:24:26 --> 00:24:29 feeling guilty because you've done something that 435 00:24:29 --> 00:24:32 transgressed the boundaries set by the superego. 436 00:24:32 --> 00:24:36 Now look, I went out and I committed murder and I feel 437 00:24:36 --> 00:24:37 really bad about that. 438 00:24:37 --> 00:24:40 Yeah, all right that's not too terribly interesting. 439 00:24:40 --> 00:24:42 The more interesting case is where patients who 440 00:24:42 --> 00:24:44 said, I feel guilty. 441 00:24:44 --> 00:24:45 I don't really know why. 442 00:24:45 --> 00:24:49 I just feel this sense of guilt. 443 00:24:49 --> 00:24:51 And a Freudian would say, well look. 444 00:24:51 --> 00:24:55 This isn't all conscious stuff. 445 00:24:55 --> 00:24:59 You've apparently transgressed some boundary that you don't 446 00:24:59 --> 00:25:02 quite recognize yourself consciously, but it's there. 447 00:25:02 --> 00:25:05 448 00:25:05 --> 00:25:07 If you want to get over this guilt we need to figure 449 00:25:07 --> 00:25:09 out what that problem is. 450 00:25:09 --> 00:25:13 Now, how many people here enjoy feeling guilty? 451 00:25:13 --> 00:25:18 All right, so it follows that the ego, which is not eager to 452 00:25:18 --> 00:25:21 sit around feeling guilty is going to have some 453 00:25:21 --> 00:25:24 defense against that. 454 00:25:24 --> 00:25:27 So introspection oughta work here, too. 455 00:25:27 --> 00:25:29 Let's go back to that, whatever it was that you were 456 00:25:29 --> 00:25:33 going to do that would be really, really wrong. 457 00:25:33 --> 00:25:37 Now let's suppose you haven't done it yet. 458 00:25:37 --> 00:25:39 But you're going to do it. 459 00:25:39 --> 00:25:41 It's right over there. 460 00:25:41 --> 00:25:45 You can just go in and do it. 461 00:25:45 --> 00:25:49 How will you feel? 462 00:25:49 --> 00:25:51 AUDIENCE: Anxious. 463 00:25:51 --> 00:25:52 PROFESSOR: Anxious. 464 00:25:52 --> 00:25:53 I heard an anxious over there somewhere. 465 00:25:53 --> 00:25:56 Thank you for the anxious, wherever anxious is. 466 00:25:56 --> 00:26:05 Anxiety is considered to be the defense mechanism of the ego 467 00:26:05 --> 00:26:10 against the predations of the superego. 468 00:26:10 --> 00:26:16 So when you feel anxious in this context the answer is 469 00:26:16 --> 00:26:18 well, you're pushing up against something that the superego 470 00:26:18 --> 00:26:19 doesn't want you to do. 471 00:26:19 --> 00:26:22 472 00:26:22 --> 00:26:26 Now let's go back to the case where I feel anxious, 473 00:26:26 --> 00:26:29 but I don't know why. 474 00:26:29 --> 00:26:35 Classic Freudian view would have been there's some chunk 475 00:26:35 --> 00:26:38 of your superego that you're getting close to there, it's 476 00:26:38 --> 00:26:43 rules and it's not happy with you. 477 00:26:43 --> 00:26:48 Any reasonable more modern view would include the possibility 478 00:26:48 --> 00:26:52 that you are just having an anxiety attack that we might 479 00:26:52 --> 00:26:55 consider to be more biological than psychological. 480 00:26:55 --> 00:26:59 That there are chunks of the brain that if they are 481 00:26:59 --> 00:27:03 overactive-- the experience is being anxious. 482 00:27:03 --> 00:27:07 If they're overactive for essentially neurochemical 483 00:27:07 --> 00:27:11 reasons you may feel a sort of a disembodied anxiety that's 484 00:27:11 --> 00:27:14 got nothing to do with whether or not you're about to do 485 00:27:14 --> 00:27:18 something that Mother doesn't approve of, but has everything 486 00:27:18 --> 00:27:22 to do with the balance of your chemicals. 487 00:27:22 --> 00:27:28 The current position in the pendulum that swings back and 488 00:27:28 --> 00:27:34 forth on how to handle essentially psychiatric issues 489 00:27:34 --> 00:27:39 would be to treat free-floating anxiety as essentially 490 00:27:39 --> 00:27:43 biological problem that we might want to medicate. 491 00:27:43 --> 00:27:46 And we tend to undervalue the possibility that you're feeling 492 00:27:46 --> 00:27:49 anxious for underlying psychological rather 493 00:27:49 --> 00:27:52 than for underlying neurochemical reasons. 494 00:27:52 --> 00:27:54 And of course, you can feel anxious for things that don't 495 00:27:54 --> 00:27:57 have anything particular to do with the superego or the 496 00:27:57 --> 00:28:01 imbalance of your neurotransmitters. 497 00:28:01 --> 00:28:05 If I stand on the lectern on one foot I might feel a 498 00:28:05 --> 00:28:08 certain amount of anxiety for this because there's a 499 00:28:08 --> 00:28:12 straightforward threat to my personal safety. 500 00:28:12 --> 00:28:17 So there are multiple roots into anxiety, but within this 501 00:28:17 --> 00:28:23 context anxiety is the warning sign that you are embarking on 502 00:28:23 --> 00:28:26 a course that mother would not approve of or maybe dad 503 00:28:26 --> 00:28:30 or maybe the broader society as a whole. 504 00:28:30 --> 00:28:40 So the result here for Freud is that with this collection of 505 00:28:40 --> 00:28:43 psychological structures-- again, psychological 506 00:28:43 --> 00:28:44 structures, nobody thinks you're going to go into it an 507 00:28:44 --> 00:28:49 MRI machine and find the locus of the superego. 508 00:28:49 --> 00:28:53 But the result of this is that we don't end up raping 509 00:28:53 --> 00:28:57 and pillaging our way across the landscapes. 510 00:28:57 --> 00:29:00 We sublimate our aggressive urges into things 511 00:29:00 --> 00:29:03 like sports or work. 512 00:29:03 --> 00:29:05 513 00:29:05 --> 00:29:12 The unbridled sexual desires of the id get redirected into 514 00:29:12 --> 00:29:17 courtship or into literature or into some other appropriate 515 00:29:17 --> 00:29:20 kind of realm. 516 00:29:20 --> 00:29:24 517 00:29:24 --> 00:29:27 From this Freud ends up generalizing a theory of 518 00:29:27 --> 00:29:29 civilization as a whole. 519 00:29:29 --> 00:29:31 He wrote a very interesting book late in his life called 520 00:29:31 --> 00:29:33 Civilization and Its Discontents. 521 00:29:33 --> 00:29:35 Why its discontents? 522 00:29:35 --> 00:29:41 Freud believed that in order to be civilized you were going 523 00:29:41 --> 00:29:47 to have to fight against the desires of your id. 524 00:29:47 --> 00:29:49 Your id was going to be unhappy with you and you were going to 525 00:29:49 --> 00:29:53 have to fight against the whacko strictures of the 526 00:29:53 --> 00:29:55 superego, which were going to be too strict for any normal 527 00:29:55 --> 00:29:57 person to hold onto. 528 00:29:57 --> 00:30:00 You were necessarily going to be repressed, 529 00:30:00 --> 00:30:04 dissatisfied, and so on. 530 00:30:04 --> 00:30:08 That was the price you paid for being civilized. 531 00:30:08 --> 00:30:12 Or one way to think about this, one line from the book is that 532 00:30:12 --> 00:30:16 "the first man to hurl a spear-- sorry, to hurl an 533 00:30:16 --> 00:30:21 insult rather than a spear is the founder of civilization." 534 00:30:21 --> 00:30:25 The first man who can redirect that sort of id like desire 535 00:30:25 --> 00:30:28 into something that's consistent with maintaining a 536 00:30:28 --> 00:30:31 civilized world, that's where you start to get the 537 00:30:31 --> 00:30:33 possibility of civilization. 538 00:30:33 --> 00:30:39 Now I recommend book to you in part because some of it is 539 00:30:39 --> 00:30:44 extremely entertaining, for all the wrong reasons. 540 00:30:44 --> 00:30:47 541 00:30:47 --> 00:30:50 As you may have gathered by now, not all of Freud's 542 00:30:50 --> 00:30:53 detailed ideas have stood the test of time. 543 00:30:53 --> 00:30:58 So I cannot resist the urge to give you Freud's account of 544 00:30:58 --> 00:30:59 the domestication of fire. 545 00:30:59 --> 00:31:02 546 00:31:02 --> 00:31:05 Here's the problem as Freud saw it. 547 00:31:05 --> 00:31:08 Fire happens out in the world. 548 00:31:08 --> 00:31:12 What did primitive man do when he saw fire? says Freud. 549 00:31:12 --> 00:31:15 550 00:31:15 --> 00:31:17 AUDIENCE: Burned himself. 551 00:31:17 --> 00:31:17 PROFESSOR: Burned himself. 552 00:31:17 --> 00:31:20 Well, that would be one possibility. 553 00:31:20 --> 00:31:23 Well, we can follow with this line, if you weren't going to 554 00:31:23 --> 00:31:25 burn yourself, what might you want to do to that fire? 555 00:31:25 --> 00:31:26 AUDIENCE: Put it out. 556 00:31:26 --> 00:31:27 PROFESSOR: Put it out. 557 00:31:27 --> 00:31:29 If you're a guy, how you going to put it out? 558 00:31:29 --> 00:31:31 559 00:31:31 --> 00:31:32 AUDIENCE: Smack it. 560 00:31:32 --> 00:31:34 PROFESSOR: Smack it? 561 00:31:34 --> 00:31:37 No, that's if you're a dumb guy. 562 00:31:37 --> 00:31:41 No, Freud proposed that you would urinate on it. 563 00:31:41 --> 00:31:45 And that this was an essentially sexual act-- 564 00:31:45 --> 00:31:47 don't ask me why. 565 00:31:47 --> 00:31:52 But that the first man to renounce that desire, that 566 00:31:52 --> 00:31:57 apparently id like desire to go and urinate on fire-- he could 567 00:31:57 --> 00:32:00 bring the fire home and that again, would be a building 568 00:32:00 --> 00:32:01 block of civilization. 569 00:32:01 --> 00:32:06 Not only that, said Freud, this explains why in many cultures 570 00:32:06 --> 00:32:09 women are the keeper of the hearth. 571 00:32:09 --> 00:32:11 Why is that? 572 00:32:11 --> 00:32:15 Well, it's a great deal more difficult if you're a woman 573 00:32:15 --> 00:32:16 to urinate on the fire. 574 00:32:16 --> 00:32:19 It's just not going to work out well for you. 575 00:32:19 --> 00:32:22 576 00:32:22 --> 00:32:26 No, you don't have to believe that. 577 00:32:26 --> 00:32:29 It's on page 37 apparently of my copy of Civilization 578 00:32:29 --> 00:32:30 and its Discontents. 579 00:32:30 --> 00:32:33 580 00:32:33 --> 00:32:36 I mean, the book is a beautiful example of exactly why I think 581 00:32:36 --> 00:32:39 it's still worth teaching Freud. 582 00:32:39 --> 00:32:42 There's a lot of whacko stuff in there about peeing on the 583 00:32:42 --> 00:32:47 fire, but the broader, large scale thought that repression 584 00:32:47 --> 00:32:55 of infantile urges is a price that we pay for civilization 585 00:32:55 --> 00:32:59 is, it seems to me, a worthwhile thought 586 00:32:59 --> 00:33:01 to rattle around. 587 00:33:01 --> 00:33:05 That as you become more civilized in a sense, you end 588 00:33:05 --> 00:33:07 up becoming more repressed. 589 00:33:07 --> 00:33:09 590 00:33:09 --> 00:33:13 That the id's going to sit there trying to escape and you 591 00:33:13 --> 00:33:18 fill more and more walls around it and you live with more 592 00:33:18 --> 00:33:22 anxiety and more guilt as the price for being in some 593 00:33:22 --> 00:33:24 sense more civilized. 594 00:33:24 --> 00:33:26 Now that's sort of a dark view. 595 00:33:26 --> 00:33:31 It's interesting that this dark view crops up-- later 596 00:33:31 --> 00:33:35 in his life he had to flee Austria from the Nazis. 597 00:33:35 --> 00:33:40 He was a sick and dying man when he wrote Civilization 598 00:33:40 --> 00:33:41 and its Discontents. 599 00:33:41 --> 00:33:44 It's a rather dark view of civilization. 600 00:33:44 --> 00:33:52 601 00:33:52 --> 00:33:56 Suppose this is all true, in some fashion. 602 00:33:56 --> 00:33:59 Well, as it says on the handout, how you going to talk 603 00:33:59 --> 00:34:01 to the children about this? 604 00:34:01 --> 00:34:04 If these are important issues and your kid is hopping into 605 00:34:04 --> 00:34:09 bed with you and saying, Daddy get out of bed. 606 00:34:09 --> 00:34:11 I want Mommy and stuff like that. 607 00:34:11 --> 00:34:14 How do you talk to-- I'll tell you how you don't 608 00:34:14 --> 00:34:14 talk to your kids. 609 00:34:14 --> 00:34:21 You don't say, I recognize that at this stage in your life that 610 00:34:21 --> 00:34:25 you are thinking that you're in conflict with me, but what you 611 00:34:25 --> 00:34:27 need to realize is that I'm much bigger than you and if you 612 00:34:27 --> 00:34:31 pursue this much further-- see the scissors? 613 00:34:31 --> 00:34:34 You're in very big trouble here. 614 00:34:34 --> 00:34:36 That's not a conversation you want to have with 615 00:34:36 --> 00:34:38 a four year-old kid. 616 00:34:38 --> 00:34:40 Even if you're a psychologist. 617 00:34:40 --> 00:34:42 This is not a good idea. 618 00:34:42 --> 00:34:47 But you could imagine that these issues, which not 619 00:34:47 --> 00:34:51 explicitly understood by parents or children, but 620 00:34:51 --> 00:34:56 that these issues about, is the world safe? 621 00:34:56 --> 00:34:57 Who runs the show? 622 00:34:57 --> 00:34:58 What am I? 623 00:34:58 --> 00:35:00 You know, these sort of issues are issues that you're going 624 00:35:00 --> 00:35:03 to want to talk about. 625 00:35:03 --> 00:35:07 And if there's this sort of psycho-sexual development thing 626 00:35:07 --> 00:35:11 running underneath it those are the issues you're going to want 627 00:35:11 --> 00:35:14 to talk about in those terms. 628 00:35:14 --> 00:35:18 Bruno Bettelheim, following up on ideas in Freud's own 629 00:35:18 --> 00:35:22 writings wrote a very interesting book called The 630 00:35:22 --> 00:35:28 Uses of Enchantment in which he argued that among other things, 631 00:35:28 --> 00:35:35 fairy tales or more precisely, folk tales serve the role of a 632 00:35:35 --> 00:35:39 hidden language or a way to talk into your children 633 00:35:39 --> 00:35:42 in hidden language about these issues. 634 00:35:42 --> 00:35:44 Fairy tales is an English term. 635 00:35:44 --> 00:35:47 It's a little misleading because fairy tales don't 636 00:35:47 --> 00:35:50 necessarily have fairies in them, but folk tales is 637 00:35:50 --> 00:35:52 the more accurate term. 638 00:35:52 --> 00:35:57 So something like the Tales of the Brothers Grimm, the 639 00:35:57 --> 00:36:01 brothers did not write those stories, they collected them. 640 00:36:01 --> 00:36:03 They were early 19th century anthropologists wandering 641 00:36:03 --> 00:36:08 around northern Germany getting Grandma to tell them stories. 642 00:36:08 --> 00:36:11 And a folk tale is a story that's not explicitly written 643 00:36:11 --> 00:36:14 down for literary purposes, it's a story that has a grownup 644 00:36:14 --> 00:36:17 organically from parents telling children and children 645 00:36:17 --> 00:36:20 saying, tell me the one about the witch with the candy 646 00:36:20 --> 00:36:22 house and stuff like that. 647 00:36:22 --> 00:36:25 And these stories-- the good ones-- get passed on and 648 00:36:25 --> 00:36:28 Bettelheim says the good ones get passed on because they 649 00:36:28 --> 00:36:30 do this kind of work. 650 00:36:30 --> 00:36:39 They allow you to talk about these kinds of issues. 651 00:36:39 --> 00:36:43 I see that I said, what are the characteristics of fairy tales? 652 00:36:43 --> 00:36:46 So I better say a word about that. 653 00:36:46 --> 00:36:51 Characters in fairy tales are typically good or bad. 654 00:36:51 --> 00:36:55 You don't get-- in the woods there was a witch. 655 00:36:55 --> 00:36:58 She wasn't really, like really a horrible person, she was kind 656 00:36:58 --> 00:37:01 of misunderstood and she'd been abused as a child. 657 00:37:01 --> 00:37:03 No, she's a bad witch. 658 00:37:03 --> 00:37:06 659 00:37:06 --> 00:37:10 And there was a boy. 660 00:37:10 --> 00:37:12 Very schematic chara-- oh, that's the second 661 00:37:12 --> 00:37:12 point actually. 662 00:37:12 --> 00:37:14 Very schematic characters often with names like 663 00:37:14 --> 00:37:17 the boy, the girl. 664 00:37:17 --> 00:37:20 Or just a simple descriptor like Snow White, which is 665 00:37:20 --> 00:37:22 just telling you something about how she looks. 666 00:37:22 --> 00:37:27 667 00:37:27 --> 00:37:28 She's good, right? 668 00:37:28 --> 00:37:34 It's not that she's got issues or something, she's good. 669 00:37:34 --> 00:37:38 And they're figures that a kid could identify with typically. 670 00:37:38 --> 00:37:43 This is in contrast for instance, to myth. 671 00:37:43 --> 00:37:46 Oedipus is not a folk tale in this sense. 672 00:37:46 --> 00:37:51 You don't, at age four say, let me tell you about this cool 673 00:37:51 --> 00:37:54 story where this guy goes off and kills his dad and then 674 00:37:54 --> 00:37:56 marries his mom and he blinds himself in the end, 675 00:37:56 --> 00:37:59 it's really neat. 676 00:37:59 --> 00:38:01 But you say, ooh, that's really gross. 677 00:38:01 --> 00:38:04 But ask yourself-- we're going to do Hansel and Gretel 678 00:38:04 --> 00:38:05 in a minute here. 679 00:38:05 --> 00:38:08 How many people know the story of Hansel and Gretel? 680 00:38:08 --> 00:38:11 Think about Hansel and Gretel in those terms. 681 00:38:11 --> 00:38:14 Or think about the headlines, poverty parents 682 00:38:14 --> 00:38:17 ditch kids in wood. 683 00:38:17 --> 00:38:20 Girl, five, cooks old lady in oven. 684 00:38:20 --> 00:38:25 I mean, this stuff is just as gruesome in it's own way as 685 00:38:25 --> 00:38:28 king of Thebes finds out he's married to Mom, blinds himself 686 00:38:28 --> 00:38:31 and wanders off into three more plays by Sophocles. 687 00:38:31 --> 00:38:37 688 00:38:37 --> 00:38:42 It's not immediately obvious that it's just grossness that 689 00:38:42 --> 00:38:46 somehow differentiates myth and folk tale. 690 00:38:46 --> 00:38:49 But the characters are typically something that a 691 00:38:49 --> 00:38:51 kid could identify with. 692 00:38:51 --> 00:38:54 They have optimistic endings, that clearly distinguishes you 693 00:38:54 --> 00:38:57 from Greek tragedy or something like that. 694 00:38:57 --> 00:39:03 At the end of a classic fairy tale good things happen to 695 00:39:03 --> 00:39:05 good people and bad things happen to bad people. 696 00:39:05 --> 00:39:08 Witches get killed. 697 00:39:08 --> 00:39:12 Good little girls and boys go home and live happily ever 698 00:39:12 --> 00:39:14 after and stuff like that. 699 00:39:14 --> 00:39:17 But at the same time, while they're optimistic in their 700 00:39:17 --> 00:39:21 ending they do not typically have overt morals on them 701 00:39:21 --> 00:39:24 like Aesop's Fables or something like that. 702 00:39:24 --> 00:39:28 You don't get fairy tales that say, they came home after 703 00:39:28 --> 00:39:31 having cooked the witch and they said, we'll never go into 704 00:39:31 --> 00:39:35 the woods again or eat any candy, ever, ever, ever. 705 00:39:35 --> 00:39:37 It's good things happen to good people, bad things happen 706 00:39:37 --> 00:39:39 to bad people and [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 707 00:39:39 --> 00:39:43 No overt punchline at the end. 708 00:39:43 --> 00:39:47 An important point is that even if Bettelheim is correct, that 709 00:39:47 --> 00:39:50 these are somehow talking in this sort of coded Freudian 710 00:39:50 --> 00:39:54 language, parents don't know the language and kids don't 711 00:39:54 --> 00:39:58 know the language or don't know that they're doing this all 712 00:39:58 --> 00:40:06 again, sort of implicitly rather than explicitly. 713 00:40:06 --> 00:40:09 Nobody, except somebody who took too many notes in Intro 714 00:40:09 --> 00:40:16 Psych says, let's see-- the kid's three and he was making 715 00:40:16 --> 00:40:21 these cracks about the bed and Dad and stuff like that. 716 00:40:21 --> 00:40:23 Let's see, I need an oedipal fairy tale. 717 00:40:23 --> 00:40:27 Jack and the Beanstalk that'll work tonight. 718 00:40:27 --> 00:40:31 But the notion is that the kid will be requesting stories that 719 00:40:31 --> 00:40:34 address issues that he wants to hear about and that the parents 720 00:40:34 --> 00:40:40 may find themselves choosing stories to read or to tell that 721 00:40:40 --> 00:40:44 serve the issues that are arising in their 722 00:40:44 --> 00:40:47 minds at the time. 723 00:40:47 --> 00:40:51 Now a lot of this has been somewhat diluted in our era 724 00:40:51 --> 00:40:57 because we tend to read fairy tales or watch them on videos 725 00:40:57 --> 00:41:01 where they have been turned into literary constructs in 726 00:41:01 --> 00:41:04 ways that they weren't in northern Germany in the 19th 727 00:41:04 --> 00:41:07 century or something like that. 728 00:41:07 --> 00:41:09 We'll talk a little later about some of the ways that 729 00:41:09 --> 00:41:13 Disney has modified some of the great fairy tales. 730 00:41:13 --> 00:41:17 They're wonderful things, but Bettelheim is very mad about 731 00:41:17 --> 00:41:23 the ones where the revisions that make nice at the end-- 732 00:41:23 --> 00:41:27 Cinderella stories where you do something nice to the step 733 00:41:27 --> 00:41:31 daughters, stepsisters-- you're not supposed to do anything 734 00:41:31 --> 00:41:32 nice to the stepsisters. 735 00:41:32 --> 00:41:35 They're supposed to get their eyes pecked out by crows 736 00:41:35 --> 00:41:40 because they're bad and bad stuff happens to bad people. 737 00:41:40 --> 00:41:43 Cinderella isn't supposed to arrange for them to mary some 738 00:41:43 --> 00:41:45 duke or something like that. 739 00:41:45 --> 00:41:48 That makes Bettelheim very agitated. 740 00:41:48 --> 00:41:53 All right, let's talk fairy tales here. 741 00:41:53 --> 00:42:03 So Hansel and Gretel is in this way of thinking about things 742 00:42:03 --> 00:42:05 an oral stage fairy tale. 743 00:42:05 --> 00:42:09 Oh, let me say something about that-- oral stage, 744 00:42:09 --> 00:42:11 that's like year one. 745 00:42:11 --> 00:42:14 And you're sitting there saying, I like Hansel and 746 00:42:14 --> 00:42:19 Gretel, does that mean I never got out of the oral stage? 747 00:42:19 --> 00:42:19 No. 748 00:42:19 --> 00:42:23 Remember the idea here is that the issues that arise in the 749 00:42:23 --> 00:42:27 oral stage about, is the world a safe place, for instance, 750 00:42:27 --> 00:42:29 are issues that will persist for the rest of your life. 751 00:42:29 --> 00:42:33 So you're a seven year-old kid in this view or something 752 00:42:33 --> 00:42:36 having a certain amount of concern about whether the world 753 00:42:36 --> 00:42:38 is safe and if you walked down the street to school you're 754 00:42:38 --> 00:42:40 going to get hit by a car or something like that. 755 00:42:40 --> 00:42:46 And maybe Hansel and Gretel would appeal on those terms. 756 00:42:46 --> 00:42:50 Another example would be, Beauty and the Beast. 757 00:42:50 --> 00:42:55 A female oedipal story, we will see, if and when I get to it. 758 00:42:55 --> 00:42:58 You're saying, I'm a guy. 759 00:42:58 --> 00:42:58 I'm a guy. 760 00:42:58 --> 00:43:01 I like Beauty and the Beast. 761 00:43:01 --> 00:43:03 Is this a problem? 762 00:43:03 --> 00:43:04 No. 763 00:43:04 --> 00:43:07 Part of this is not only do you have to figure out what it 764 00:43:07 --> 00:43:09 means to be a guy, you also have to figure out what 765 00:43:09 --> 00:43:09 it means to be a woman. 766 00:43:09 --> 00:43:12 You don't happen to be a woman, but it would be really 767 00:43:12 --> 00:43:14 interesting to understand what it might mean. 768 00:43:14 --> 00:43:18 And so again, you might be interested in that particular 769 00:43:18 --> 00:43:24 story not because some strange path is going on 770 00:43:24 --> 00:43:25 [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 771 00:43:25 --> 00:43:26 These are interesting questions. 772 00:43:26 --> 00:43:29 773 00:43:29 --> 00:43:30 Hansel and Gretel. 774 00:43:30 --> 00:43:34 775 00:43:34 --> 00:43:35 Let's step back. 776 00:43:35 --> 00:43:37 What's the family situation here? 777 00:43:37 --> 00:43:39 Who we got at the characters in Hansel and Gretel? 778 00:43:39 --> 00:43:41 Well, there's Hansel and Gretel. 779 00:43:41 --> 00:43:42 Who else do we have? 780 00:43:42 --> 00:43:42 AUDIENCE: Father. 781 00:43:42 --> 00:43:43 PROFESSOR: Father and? 782 00:43:43 --> 00:43:45 AUDIENCE: The mother. 783 00:43:45 --> 00:43:46 PROFESSOR: The mother? 784 00:43:46 --> 00:43:47 AUDIENCE: Stepmother. 785 00:43:47 --> 00:43:49 PROFESSOR: The stepmother. 786 00:43:49 --> 00:43:50 She a good stepmother? 787 00:43:50 --> 00:43:51 AUDIENCE: No. 788 00:43:51 --> 00:43:52 PROFESSOR: Or a bad stepmother? 789 00:43:52 --> 00:43:56 There are an awful lot of bad stepmothers in fairy tales. 790 00:43:56 --> 00:43:58 Now that's a little mysterious. 791 00:43:58 --> 00:44:01 There are a couple of ways to understand this. 792 00:44:01 --> 00:44:06 That one of them is to say that in the days when childbirth was 793 00:44:06 --> 00:44:11 a much riskier proposition many more people had stepmothers 794 00:44:11 --> 00:44:13 because Mom had died in childbirth. 795 00:44:13 --> 00:44:16 As indeed happens in any number of fairy stories. 796 00:44:16 --> 00:44:19 And in fact, you can come up with an evolutionary psych 797 00:44:19 --> 00:44:23 argument that says that the stepmother that systematically 798 00:44:23 --> 00:44:31 favors her own genetic children over the step- children, but 799 00:44:31 --> 00:44:33 that's not the Freudian account here. 800 00:44:33 --> 00:44:37 The Freudian account is look, the initial mother who you 801 00:44:37 --> 00:44:42 encounter when you're a baby is a really good mommy. 802 00:44:42 --> 00:44:48 She does everything for you and she says yes all the time. 803 00:44:48 --> 00:44:49 You cry, she jumps. 804 00:44:49 --> 00:44:51 It's great. 805 00:44:51 --> 00:44:56 Eventually Mom gets tired of this and Mom starts saying no 806 00:44:56 --> 00:44:59 and Mom starts saying things like it's time to go poop in 807 00:44:59 --> 00:45:03 the bucket and not in your pants and all this other stuff. 808 00:45:03 --> 00:45:10 And that, in this view is the transition between good Mommy 809 00:45:10 --> 00:45:13 and bad Mommy and there are so many fairy tales where you get 810 00:45:13 --> 00:45:18 born to a good mommy and then the bad mommy shows up. 811 00:45:18 --> 00:45:22 Way outside of the range of what would be probable 812 00:45:22 --> 00:45:24 in the population. 813 00:45:24 --> 00:45:28 That you can imagine that it's a stand-in for something else. 814 00:45:28 --> 00:45:31 Maybe for a stand-in that you're coming out of this 815 00:45:31 --> 00:45:35 oral stage of development in this story. 816 00:45:35 --> 00:45:39 All right, so what's the problem that's faced by our 817 00:45:39 --> 00:45:42 lovely little family unit? 818 00:45:42 --> 00:45:45 What's the issue here? 819 00:45:45 --> 00:45:46 AUDIENCE: Poor. 820 00:45:46 --> 00:45:46 PROFESSOR: Poor. 821 00:45:46 --> 00:45:50 We're out of money, so what's the specific result of 822 00:45:50 --> 00:45:51 being out of money? 823 00:45:51 --> 00:45:53 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 824 00:45:53 --> 00:45:56 PROFESSOR: A few hands would be handy rather than the 825 00:45:56 --> 00:45:58 general purpose muttering. 826 00:45:58 --> 00:45:59 No? 827 00:45:59 --> 00:45:59 We've scared them off. 828 00:45:59 --> 00:46:03 What have we run out of here? 829 00:46:03 --> 00:46:03 Food. 830 00:46:03 --> 00:46:06 We don't have any food. 831 00:46:06 --> 00:46:08 The natural thing to do when you've run out 832 00:46:08 --> 00:46:10 of food is do what? 833 00:46:10 --> 00:46:11 AUDIENCE: Gather some. 834 00:46:11 --> 00:46:12 PROFESSOR: Gather some. 835 00:46:12 --> 00:46:13 Well, that didn't work apparently or at least that 836 00:46:13 --> 00:46:15 was a really boring story. 837 00:46:15 --> 00:46:18 You know, once upon a time there was a mother, a father, 838 00:46:18 --> 00:46:21 and a little boy and girl and they got hungry and they went 839 00:46:21 --> 00:46:24 in a field and they gathered mushrooms and unfortunately 840 00:46:24 --> 00:46:25 they were poisonous and they all died. 841 00:46:25 --> 00:46:28 842 00:46:28 --> 00:46:30 That was one of those stores that didn't get repeated. 843 00:46:30 --> 00:46:34 You know, tell me the story about the poison-- no. 844 00:46:34 --> 00:46:37 So what happens in Hansel and Gretel? 845 00:46:37 --> 00:46:39 AUDIENCE: Get rid of the kids. 846 00:46:39 --> 00:46:40 PROFESSOR: You get rid of the kids. 847 00:46:40 --> 00:46:43 You stick the kids out in the woods. 848 00:46:43 --> 00:46:46 But Hansel hears the plan, mom and dad are busy 849 00:46:46 --> 00:46:50 discussing this at night. 850 00:46:50 --> 00:46:52 Hansel hears about it, he does what? 851 00:46:52 --> 00:46:53 AUDIENCE: Runs away. 852 00:46:53 --> 00:46:55 PROFESSOR: No, he doesn't run away. 853 00:46:55 --> 00:46:57 That's the Russian version. 854 00:46:57 --> 00:46:59 AUDIENCE: Kills the parents. 855 00:46:59 --> 00:47:00 PROFESSOR: Kills the parents, no. 856 00:47:00 --> 00:47:04 Wait a second guys, I thought you said you knew this story. 857 00:47:04 --> 00:47:06 Let's get this straight. 858 00:47:06 --> 00:47:09 He goes out into the garden, he collects a bunch 859 00:47:09 --> 00:47:10 of white stones. 860 00:47:10 --> 00:47:15 He leaves the white stones behind as a trail and-- 861 00:47:15 --> 00:47:15 AUDIENCE: Bread. 862 00:47:15 --> 00:47:16 AUDIENCE: Bread crumbs. 863 00:47:16 --> 00:47:20 PROFESSOR: No, that's the second time. 864 00:47:20 --> 00:47:23 You guys are all going to flunk the final. 865 00:47:23 --> 00:47:25 This is very bad. 866 00:47:25 --> 00:47:31 So first time it's white rocks and when the moon rises 867 00:47:31 --> 00:47:33 so you can see the white rocks, they come back. 868 00:47:33 --> 00:47:36 So you've got an oral stage problem. 869 00:47:36 --> 00:47:39 There ain't no food. 870 00:47:39 --> 00:47:44 And the initial crisis where the kids get left in the woods 871 00:47:44 --> 00:47:46 is met with a nonsolution. 872 00:47:46 --> 00:47:49 You just returned back to the same situation. 873 00:47:49 --> 00:47:51 Second time, same thing. 874 00:47:51 --> 00:47:54 They get abandoned out in the woods, but this time this nasty 875 00:47:54 --> 00:47:57 old Step-mom has been cagier about it and locked Hansel in 876 00:47:57 --> 00:48:00 and all he's got is his bread. 877 00:48:00 --> 00:48:03 And so now he tries what you can think of as an oral stage 878 00:48:03 --> 00:48:06 solution to an oral problem. 879 00:48:06 --> 00:48:09 He leaves this collection of bread crumbs behind. 880 00:48:09 --> 00:48:13 Does an oral solution solve this problem? 881 00:48:13 --> 00:48:13 Well, no. 882 00:48:13 --> 00:48:15 What happens to the bread crumbs? 883 00:48:15 --> 00:48:16 AUDIENCE: The birds eat them. 884 00:48:16 --> 00:48:19 PROFESSOR: The birds eat the bread crumbs, so there's 885 00:48:19 --> 00:48:19 no bread crumbs. 886 00:48:19 --> 00:48:24 And they wander around and they fall asleep in the woods and 887 00:48:24 --> 00:48:27 there's a beautiful chorus in the Engelbert Humperdinck opera 888 00:48:27 --> 00:48:30 which you should all hear sometime-- gorgeous opera-- and 889 00:48:30 --> 00:48:32 Engelbert Humperdinck really was his name. 890 00:48:32 --> 00:48:37 Very sad, but the opera's lovely. 891 00:48:37 --> 00:48:39 Anyway, so the next day they wake up. 892 00:48:39 --> 00:48:40 They're hopelessly lost. 893 00:48:40 --> 00:48:41 They wander around. 894 00:48:41 --> 00:48:43 They're hungry. 895 00:48:43 --> 00:48:47 They're not terribly happy and they find? 896 00:48:47 --> 00:48:48 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 897 00:48:48 --> 00:48:49 PROFESSOR: The house, right. 898 00:48:49 --> 00:48:51 The house made of gingerbread and candy and stuff like that. 899 00:48:51 --> 00:48:54 And so like all good little kids what they do is engage 900 00:48:54 --> 00:48:55 in a little petty vandalism. 901 00:48:55 --> 00:48:59 902 00:48:59 --> 00:49:03 Gretel eats a window and Hansel eats a hunk of the roof and 903 00:49:03 --> 00:49:07 then they hear this voice saying, "Nibbling, nibbling 904 00:49:07 --> 00:49:12 like a mouse, who's that nibbling at my house?" And they 905 00:49:12 --> 00:49:16 respond, "The wind, the wind doth blow from the heavens 906 00:49:16 --> 00:49:21 to the earth below," which makes no sense. 907 00:49:21 --> 00:49:27 But anyway, so out comes the? 908 00:49:27 --> 00:49:27 AUDIENCE: Witch. 909 00:49:27 --> 00:49:29 PROFESSOR: How do you know she's a witch? 910 00:49:29 --> 00:49:31 AUDIENCE: Because she's [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 911 00:49:31 --> 00:49:35 PROFESSOR: Now the way you know she's a witch it says is 912 00:49:35 --> 00:49:38 because her eyes glow red. 913 00:49:38 --> 00:49:41 This is a tip-off in case-- this is practical 914 00:49:41 --> 00:49:41 advice for you. 915 00:49:41 --> 00:49:46 If you're vandalizing somebody's house and the owner 916 00:49:46 --> 00:49:50 comes out and her eyes are glowing red, worry about it. 917 00:49:50 --> 00:49:53 But that this means that witches don't see very well, 918 00:49:53 --> 00:49:54 which turns out to be handy. 919 00:49:54 --> 00:49:56 They have keen senses of smell we're told. 920 00:49:56 --> 00:50:00 Anyway, this witch-- now the interesting thing about these 921 00:50:00 --> 00:50:05 fairy tales is that you have a problem at home and then you 922 00:50:05 --> 00:50:09 are thrust out into-- well, in the north German versions of 923 00:50:09 --> 00:50:12 the Grimm fairy tales are into the woods to solve it. 924 00:50:12 --> 00:50:16 Somebody will have to tell me what you do if you're reading 925 00:50:16 --> 00:50:18 Saudi Arabian fairy tales whether you get thrust 926 00:50:18 --> 00:50:21 out into the dunes or something like that. 927 00:50:21 --> 00:50:25 But the important thing is you go out away from-- you don't 928 00:50:25 --> 00:50:29 solve your problem where it is in these stories typically. 929 00:50:29 --> 00:50:33 You out and away and what you find out there in story after 930 00:50:33 --> 00:50:38 story is a charicature-- an extreme version of 931 00:50:38 --> 00:50:40 the problem at home. 932 00:50:40 --> 00:50:42 So here we've got an oral problem. 933 00:50:42 --> 00:50:45 There isn't enough food or perhaps, if we're thinking in 934 00:50:45 --> 00:50:49 infantile terms, where's the food come from if 935 00:50:49 --> 00:50:50 you're an infant? 936 00:50:50 --> 00:50:52 Well, it comes from Mom. 937 00:50:52 --> 00:50:56 So not enough food means you've kind of eaten all that you can 938 00:50:56 --> 00:50:59 eat off of Mom and you might worry, what's going to happen 939 00:50:59 --> 00:51:00 if Mom wants this back? 940 00:51:00 --> 00:51:04 Well, what you find in the woods is this orality gone 941 00:51:04 --> 00:51:08 nuts because what this witch does is eats little kids. 942 00:51:08 --> 00:51:10 That's her stock and trade. 943 00:51:10 --> 00:51:13 And she's going to eat Hansel, but it turns out he's 944 00:51:13 --> 00:51:14 too skinny for her. 945 00:51:14 --> 00:51:18 So there's this fattening up period. 946 00:51:18 --> 00:51:26 Eventually, it's cooking day and the witch says to Gretel, 947 00:51:26 --> 00:51:29 climb into the oven and see if it's warm because we're 948 00:51:29 --> 00:51:31 baking bread-- haha. 949 00:51:31 --> 00:51:34 Climb into the oven and Gretel who's onto this says, I 950 00:51:34 --> 00:51:37 don't think I can do that. 951 00:51:37 --> 00:51:38 Can you show me how? 952 00:51:38 --> 00:51:40 And the witch says something like, you silly goose. 953 00:51:40 --> 00:51:41 Anybody can do that. 954 00:51:41 --> 00:51:44 And she climbs up to the oven and Gretel slams the door on 955 00:51:44 --> 00:51:49 her and she perishes horribly, making loud screams. 956 00:51:49 --> 00:51:53 Which, not much better than blinding yourself and 957 00:51:53 --> 00:51:54 things like that. 958 00:51:54 --> 00:51:57 But is deeply satisfying in this story. 959 00:51:57 --> 00:51:59 960 00:51:59 --> 00:52:05 So now they've killed off this symbol of orality and there 961 00:52:05 --> 00:52:08 are two important things that happen thereafter. 962 00:52:08 --> 00:52:13 First of all, what they now discover is that the house 963 00:52:13 --> 00:52:15 is full of gold and jewels. 964 00:52:15 --> 00:52:18 And they stuff their-- there's a little more looting going on 965 00:52:18 --> 00:52:22 here-- but they stuff their pockets not with candy, not 966 00:52:22 --> 00:52:26 with more oral solution kind of stuff, but now with something 967 00:52:26 --> 00:52:29 that allows them to go home and have moved 968 00:52:29 --> 00:52:30 to a different stage. 969 00:52:30 --> 00:52:32 A stage, where in principle they can be contributors, 970 00:52:32 --> 00:52:35 not just consumers. 971 00:52:35 --> 00:52:38 This isn't supposed to be an accurate model of what 972 00:52:38 --> 00:52:41 happens-- one year-old kid moving out of the oral stage. 973 00:52:41 --> 00:52:44 Oral stage kid doesn't suddenly say at the end of a year OK 974 00:52:44 --> 00:52:48 look, like I'm weaned and now I'm going to go do chores. 975 00:52:48 --> 00:52:51 You've got to understand this in a little more symbolic way. 976 00:52:51 --> 00:52:53 977 00:52:53 --> 00:52:56 Rather than an oral solution we've got a different 978 00:52:56 --> 00:52:57 kind of solution. 979 00:52:57 --> 00:53:00 The other thing that's very emblematic here is what 980 00:53:00 --> 00:53:02 do the children find when they get home? 981 00:53:02 --> 00:53:04 Anybody remember? 982 00:53:04 --> 00:53:05 AUDIENCE: The stepmother is dead. 983 00:53:05 --> 00:53:06 PROFESSOR: The stepmother is dead. 984 00:53:06 --> 00:53:10 Presumably, the stepmother is dead at the instant that the 985 00:53:10 --> 00:53:12 witch is killed because they're in a sense, one 986 00:53:12 --> 00:53:13 and the same character. 987 00:53:13 --> 00:53:16 988 00:53:16 --> 00:53:17 They are the problem. 989 00:53:17 --> 00:53:20 They are the emblem of this oral stage problem. 990 00:53:20 --> 00:53:26 It gets killed off and everybody's good. 991 00:53:26 --> 00:53:29 Well, I think before the break, I'm going to skip the anal 992 00:53:29 --> 00:53:31 stage for the present. 993 00:53:31 --> 00:53:34 I promise to come back with an anal stage fairy tale. 994 00:53:34 --> 00:53:38 But what I'm going to do before the break is I'm going to skip 995 00:53:38 --> 00:53:46 to-- and there are lots of oedipal stage fairy tales and I 996 00:53:46 --> 00:53:49 am going to use Jack and the Beanstalk as an example of an 997 00:53:49 --> 00:53:53 early oedipal stage fairy tale. 998 00:53:53 --> 00:53:54 Jack and the Beanstalk. 999 00:53:54 --> 00:53:57 All right, let's do Jack and the Beanstalk quickly. 1000 00:53:57 --> 00:54:00 Jack and the Beanstalk, what's the crisis at the beginning? 1001 00:54:00 --> 00:54:02 1002 00:54:02 --> 00:54:04 What's Jack sent off to do? 1003 00:54:04 --> 00:54:05 AUDIENCE: Sell the cow. 1004 00:54:05 --> 00:54:06 PROFESSOR: Sell the cow. 1005 00:54:06 --> 00:54:08 Why are you selling the cow? 1006 00:54:08 --> 00:54:09 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 1007 00:54:09 --> 00:54:11 PROFESSOR: It's not giving milk anymore. 1008 00:54:11 --> 00:54:14 If you want a nice clear image that you're out of the oral 1009 00:54:14 --> 00:54:19 stage, the cow having run dry on you is pretty good. 1010 00:54:19 --> 00:54:23 So Jack's supposed to go off-- he's supposed to do the Hansel 1011 00:54:23 --> 00:54:23 and Gretel thing, right? 1012 00:54:23 --> 00:54:28 He's supposed to go from the dried up cow thing and get some 1013 00:54:28 --> 00:54:32 money so we can go do the food thing the other way. 1014 00:54:32 --> 00:54:33 But what's he do? 1015 00:54:33 --> 00:54:35 He trades it for...? 1016 00:54:35 --> 00:54:35 AUDIENCE: Magic beans. 1017 00:54:35 --> 00:54:38 PROFESSOR: Magic beans. 1018 00:54:38 --> 00:54:40 All right, he comes home. 1019 00:54:40 --> 00:54:41 Is Mom happy about this? 1020 00:54:41 --> 00:54:43 AUDIENCE: No. 1021 00:54:43 --> 00:54:44 PROFESSOR: No. 1022 00:54:44 --> 00:54:47 So what happens to Jack? 1023 00:54:47 --> 00:54:49 He gets sent to bed without any supper. 1024 00:54:49 --> 00:54:53 Another sort of end of oral stage kind of image. 1025 00:54:53 --> 00:54:55 And Mom does what with the beans? 1026 00:54:55 --> 00:54:56 AUDIENCE: Throws them out. 1027 00:54:56 --> 00:54:58 PROFESSOR: Throws them out the window or sows his wild oats 1028 00:54:58 --> 00:55:00 or something like that. 1029 00:55:00 --> 00:55:04 In any case, something grows really big at 1030 00:55:04 --> 00:55:07 night in this story. 1031 00:55:07 --> 00:55:10 You don't have to be a vastly Freudian imagination to think 1032 00:55:10 --> 00:55:13 that this looks a little phallic here maybe. 1033 00:55:13 --> 00:55:16 Anyway, you wake up in the morning and there's 1034 00:55:16 --> 00:55:20 this giant beanstalk. 1035 00:55:20 --> 00:55:21 Climbs up the beanstalk. 1036 00:55:21 --> 00:55:24 1037 00:55:24 --> 00:55:25 You climb up the beanstalk. 1038 00:55:25 --> 00:55:28 What do you find at the top of the beanstalk? 1039 00:55:28 --> 00:55:29 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 1040 00:55:29 --> 00:55:32 PROFESSOR: You find another-- just like in Hansel and Gretel 1041 00:55:32 --> 00:55:38 you find a cartoon version of what was at home. 1042 00:55:38 --> 00:55:41 So you find the castle, which is just the house 1043 00:55:41 --> 00:55:43 and who lives there? 1044 00:55:43 --> 00:55:43 AUDIENCE: Giant. 1045 00:55:43 --> 00:55:47 PROFESSOR: Well, who does he find when he gets there first? 1046 00:55:47 --> 00:55:48 The giant's wife. 1047 00:55:48 --> 00:55:51 Or the ogre's wife who's the stand-in for Mom. 1048 00:55:51 --> 00:55:53 Is she bad? 1049 00:55:53 --> 00:55:54 No, she's really very nice. 1050 00:55:54 --> 00:55:56 They have a very nice relationship. 1051 00:55:56 --> 00:55:57 They're playing all day. 1052 00:55:57 --> 00:56:03 The problem is "Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the 1053 00:56:03 --> 00:56:04 blood of an Englishman. 1054 00:56:04 --> 00:56:10 Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my 1055 00:56:10 --> 00:56:12 bread." Otherwise known as Dad has come home. 1056 00:56:12 --> 00:56:17 1057 00:56:17 --> 00:56:20 One of the things that's sort of interesting here is that 1058 00:56:20 --> 00:56:25 this models a classic sort of nuclear family with a stay- at- 1059 00:56:25 --> 00:56:31 home mom that-- and you can sort of imagine in the context 1060 00:56:31 --> 00:56:33 of this oedipal conflict. 1061 00:56:33 --> 00:56:34 So here's the son. 1062 00:56:34 --> 00:56:37 All day long he gets to play with Mom. 1063 00:56:37 --> 00:56:38 You know Mom's cool. 1064 00:56:38 --> 00:56:39 Mom's great. 1065 00:56:39 --> 00:56:47 And then this ogre comes home and he wants Mom 1066 00:56:47 --> 00:56:48 and he wants dinner. 1067 00:56:48 --> 00:56:50 And he wants to grind up little kids and stuff like that. 1068 00:56:50 --> 00:56:57 A little strange, but it is an image of the situation that a 1069 00:56:57 --> 00:56:59 young child might find himself in. 1070 00:56:59 --> 00:57:04 Now you might wonder whether in a few more generations our 1071 00:57:04 --> 00:57:11 fairy tales will have to change in response to the-- in my 1072 00:57:11 --> 00:57:18 family both of us were out of the house working. 1073 00:57:18 --> 00:57:21 So the nice giantess at home model isn't 1074 00:57:21 --> 00:57:22 going to quite work. 1075 00:57:22 --> 00:57:27 You sort of wonder whether or not in a few years, a few 1076 00:57:27 --> 00:57:31 generations or something, Jack will be there with the nice 1077 00:57:31 --> 00:57:35 daycare provider or something like that and the mom and 1078 00:57:35 --> 00:57:39 dad giants will come home at the end of the day. 1079 00:57:39 --> 00:57:43 Fee, fie, fo, fum, let's microwave the little bum 1080 00:57:43 --> 00:57:47 or something like that. 1081 00:57:47 --> 00:57:49 1082 00:57:49 --> 00:57:53 But in this version you got Dad. 1083 00:57:53 --> 00:57:58 He comes home and-- the dad's stand-in and so 1084 00:57:58 --> 00:58:01 what does Jack do? 1085 00:58:01 --> 00:58:04 Well, first of all, the mother hides him in the oven, which is 1086 00:58:04 --> 00:58:07 a sort of womb-like symbol, which is rather nice. 1087 00:58:07 --> 00:58:09 But he goes out and steals stuff from 1088 00:58:09 --> 00:58:12 Dad-- from the giant. 1089 00:58:12 --> 00:58:15 He spends all of time ripping Dad off here and basically 1090 00:58:15 --> 00:58:16 being in conflict with Dad. 1091 00:58:16 --> 00:58:21 Eventually he tries to steal Dad's golden harp, which is 1092 00:58:21 --> 00:58:24 bad because the thing makes a racket. 1093 00:58:24 --> 00:58:27 He got the goose out of there without the problem. 1094 00:58:27 --> 00:58:30 Goose that lays that golden eggs-- good thing to steal. 1095 00:58:30 --> 00:58:32 Kept the goose quite, but the harp made a noise. 1096 00:58:32 --> 00:58:36 Anyway, the giant catches onto this and what's he do? 1097 00:58:36 --> 00:58:37 What's Jack do? 1098 00:58:37 --> 00:58:41 1099 00:58:41 --> 00:58:41 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 1100 00:58:41 --> 00:58:44 PROFESSOR: Didn't understand a word of that. 1101 00:58:44 --> 00:58:45 Where's Jack go? 1102 00:58:45 --> 00:58:46 AUDIENCE: Down. 1103 00:58:46 --> 00:58:46 PROFESSOR: Back down the beanstalk. 1104 00:58:46 --> 00:58:48 What's he do with the beanstalk? 1105 00:58:48 --> 00:58:49 AUDIENCE: Chops it down. 1106 00:58:49 --> 00:58:51 PROFESSOR: He chops it down. 1107 00:58:51 --> 00:58:54 It depends on the version -- either Dad crashes or the 1108 00:58:54 --> 00:58:55 giant crashed or not. 1109 00:58:55 --> 00:59:02 But in any case, if this was a full blast oedipal story you'd 1110 00:59:02 --> 00:59:05 be going [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 1111 00:59:05 --> 00:59:08 and get to the point where you go off and for instance, 1112 00:59:08 --> 00:59:10 marry the princess or something like that. 1113 00:59:10 --> 00:59:14 This is a partway oedipal-- not all the way through 1114 00:59:14 --> 00:59:15 the story-- thing. 1115 00:59:15 --> 00:59:18 You get that beanstalk and you get rid of it. 1116 00:59:18 --> 00:59:20 Either it's sort of a reversion back or it's 1117 00:59:20 --> 00:59:22 going into a latent period. 1118 00:59:22 --> 00:59:25 None of this stuff that grows in the night-- nothing man, 1119 00:59:25 --> 00:59:27 we're done with that for the time being. 1120 00:59:27 --> 00:59:29 Nothing good happens here. 1121 00:59:29 --> 00:59:33 Large, big guys chase me around when I do anything of that and 1122 00:59:33 --> 00:59:36 forget it, so it's a story that doesn't get all the way through 1123 00:59:36 --> 00:59:40 to the end of this whole psycho-sexual story 1124 00:59:40 --> 00:59:44 that Freud's weaving. 1125 00:59:44 --> 00:59:48 So let's see here. 1126 00:59:48 --> 00:59:52 All right, I've already given you a hint that classic male 1127 00:59:52 --> 00:59:56 oedipal stories are those stories where you do end 1128 00:59:56 --> 00:59:57 up marrying the princess. 1129 00:59:57 --> 00:59:59 I'll say a bit more about that in a minute. 1130 00:59:59 --> 01:00:02 But let's take a short break because otherwise I'll never 1131 01:00:02 --> 01:00:02 get to the end of this. 1132 01:00:02 --> 01:00:22 1133 01:00:22 --> 01:00:23 AUDIENCE: Thanks for the final. 1134 01:00:23 --> 01:00:26 Can you put up some links for me because I really don't 1135 01:00:26 --> 01:00:26 remember some of these stories. 1136 01:00:26 --> 01:00:29 PROFESSOR: Oh, don't worry. 1137 01:00:29 --> 01:00:32 No answer on the final would require you to know the 1138 01:00:32 --> 01:00:35 details of the story. 1139 01:00:35 --> 01:00:38 And I hope I'm telling enough of the story that you can get 1140 01:00:38 --> 01:00:40 the feeling for how it maps back and forth 1141 01:00:40 --> 01:00:43 to the bits of Freud. 1142 01:00:43 --> 01:00:47 But if you happen to be fond of fairy tale literature 1143 01:00:47 --> 01:00:50 the Bettelheim book is a lot of fun to read. 1144 01:00:50 --> 01:00:53 1145 01:00:53 --> 01:00:55 I mean, it's now-- how old is it? 1146 01:00:55 --> 01:00:56 God, it's twenty-five years old. 1147 01:00:56 --> 01:00:59 I read that sucker when it came out the first time. 1148 01:00:59 --> 01:01:03 Anyway, I keep looking for new stuff to read on it and 1149 01:01:03 --> 01:01:06 there's nothing as good. 1150 01:01:06 --> 01:01:27 It's fun to read. 1151 01:01:27 --> 01:01:30 1152 01:01:30 --> 01:01:38 In the full blast male version oedipal fairy tales there and 1153 01:01:38 --> 01:01:41 endless ones of these and they are of the form-- they're very 1154 01:01:41 --> 01:01:44 typically of the form-- the lead character is 1155 01:01:44 --> 01:01:46 typically somewhat older. 1156 01:01:46 --> 01:01:52 Often described as a prince rather now than as a boy. 1157 01:01:52 --> 01:01:55 Rather than being like abandoned in the woods, he is 1158 01:01:55 --> 01:02:00 now thrust out of doors by his father for some crime or other. 1159 01:02:00 --> 01:02:02 He has to go out into the world. 1160 01:02:02 --> 01:02:07 He's at home in this oedipal conflict. 1161 01:02:07 --> 01:02:10 They reach the crisis in the conflict and Dad literally 1162 01:02:10 --> 01:02:11 says, I'm going to kill you. 1163 01:02:11 --> 01:02:13 The kings says, I'm going to kill you or something and he's 1164 01:02:13 --> 01:02:14 got to go out into the world. 1165 01:02:14 --> 01:02:17 And he goes out in the world and has adventures. 1166 01:02:17 --> 01:02:21 What he does out in the world in these stories is very 1167 01:02:21 --> 01:02:24 typically to kill a stand-in for the father. 1168 01:02:24 --> 01:02:27 In Greek tragedy, you may kill your father. 1169 01:02:27 --> 01:02:32 In a fairy tale you kill the ogre the dragon, the giant-- 1170 01:02:32 --> 01:02:37 something that stands in for the father and the reason 1171 01:02:37 --> 01:02:40 you're doing this is because the ogre, the giant, or the 1172 01:02:40 --> 01:02:44 dragon has in his possession, what? 1173 01:02:44 --> 01:02:45 AUDIENCE: Princess. 1174 01:02:45 --> 01:02:46 PROFESSOR: A princess. 1175 01:02:46 --> 01:02:49 1176 01:02:49 --> 01:02:52 Almost always a princess who thinks that the prince is 1177 01:02:52 --> 01:02:55 really quite nice and all that. 1178 01:02:55 --> 01:02:56 And not Mother. 1179 01:02:56 --> 01:03:01 You don't go out and rescue your mother from the dragon. 1180 01:03:01 --> 01:03:03 It just doesn't happen. 1181 01:03:03 --> 01:03:05 What you're going to go out in one of these stories and do 1182 01:03:05 --> 01:03:09 is find an appropriate mate. 1183 01:03:09 --> 01:03:13 Not the inappropriate oedipal conflict stage mate. 1184 01:03:13 --> 01:03:16 You're going to go out and find the princess, kill the dragon. 1185 01:03:16 --> 01:03:19 You're going to then bring her home and everything 1186 01:03:19 --> 01:03:20 is going to be good. 1187 01:03:20 --> 01:03:22 And in fact, at this point typically in one of these 1188 01:03:22 --> 01:03:28 stories the King will not die, but will retire. 1189 01:03:28 --> 01:03:30 And Prince Charles in England been waiting for this for 1190 01:03:30 --> 01:03:34 years, but it's never worked out for him. 1191 01:03:34 --> 01:03:36 1192 01:03:36 --> 01:03:41 You come home with the right princess and the King retires 1193 01:03:41 --> 01:03:42 and you get to rule the roost. 1194 01:03:42 --> 01:03:46 That's getting through all the way to the end of the story. 1195 01:03:46 --> 01:03:55 Now female oedipal stories are different in interesting ways 1196 01:03:55 --> 01:03:57 because of the difference in the traditional 1197 01:03:57 --> 01:03:59 family structure. 1198 01:03:59 --> 01:04:05 If in a male structure you've got the giant in Jack and the 1199 01:04:05 --> 01:04:08 Beanstalk who comes in only intermittently because the 1200 01:04:08 --> 01:04:11 primary care-giver is the mother. 1201 01:04:11 --> 01:04:16 The female's got the conflict with the primary care-giver, 1202 01:04:16 --> 01:04:22 so you have in these sort of stories the girls who are 1203 01:04:22 --> 01:04:29 captives of nasty, older women in some fashion or other. 1204 01:04:29 --> 01:04:32 So let's look, for instance, at Snow White. 1205 01:04:32 --> 01:04:34 Snow White, another one of these names where the name 1206 01:04:34 --> 01:04:36 is just a generic term. 1207 01:04:36 --> 01:04:39 She's white as snow and got hair as black as 1208 01:04:39 --> 01:04:40 coal or something. 1209 01:04:40 --> 01:04:41 I don't remember. 1210 01:04:41 --> 01:04:46 Anyway, lovely mother-- lovely mother dies. 1211 01:04:46 --> 01:04:54 The husband, the King remarries another lovely woman, 1212 01:04:54 --> 01:04:55 but a very jealous one. 1213 01:04:55 --> 01:04:59 The jealous stepmother has what cool device? 1214 01:04:59 --> 01:04:59 AUDIENCE: Mirror. 1215 01:04:59 --> 01:05:03 PROFESSOR: The mirror made famous most recently 1216 01:05:03 --> 01:05:05 in Shrek endlessly. 1217 01:05:05 --> 01:05:12 And the cool thing about the mirror in Snow White is it 1218 01:05:12 --> 01:05:15 speaks not literally, but figuratively with the 1219 01:05:15 --> 01:05:17 voice of the little girl. 1220 01:05:17 --> 01:05:21 Initially, when the stepmother asks, "Mirror, mirror on the 1221 01:05:21 --> 01:05:24 wall who's the fairest of us all?" The mirror says, you. 1222 01:05:24 --> 01:05:25 It's you. 1223 01:05:25 --> 01:05:28 The voice of the little girl saying, look, I idealize you. 1224 01:05:28 --> 01:05:29 You're my mother. 1225 01:05:29 --> 01:05:32 You're the greatest thing since sliced bread. 1226 01:05:32 --> 01:05:35 Little later, "Mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest 1227 01:05:35 --> 01:05:38 of us all?" Well look, Queenie, you look pretty good for 1228 01:05:38 --> 01:05:43 a woman of your age, but have you seen Snow White? 1229 01:05:43 --> 01:05:47 You know, she is a blossoming, young woman here and hmmm-- 1230 01:05:47 --> 01:05:51 well anyway, this drives the nasty old stepmother nuts. 1231 01:05:51 --> 01:05:55 And in the best tradition of oedipal stories she decides 1232 01:05:55 --> 01:05:58 to do what with Snow White? 1233 01:05:58 --> 01:06:02 Kill her. 1234 01:06:02 --> 01:06:05 Another characteristic of female oedipal stories is 1235 01:06:05 --> 01:06:08 that the dad tends to either be absent or useless. 1236 01:06:08 --> 01:06:09 The King does nothing here. 1237 01:06:09 --> 01:06:13 The other dad stand-in who's the huntsman, who the Queen 1238 01:06:13 --> 01:06:17 gives Snow White to to have her killed. 1239 01:06:17 --> 01:06:21 The huntsman fails both the Queen and Snow White. 1240 01:06:21 --> 01:06:23 Disney's actually quite close to the original 1241 01:06:23 --> 01:06:25 story in this one. 1242 01:06:25 --> 01:06:27 The huntsman takes her out into the woods, doesn't have the 1243 01:06:27 --> 01:06:30 heart to kill her, but also doesn't have the guts to save 1244 01:06:30 --> 01:06:34 her so loses her out in the woods basically. 1245 01:06:34 --> 01:06:36 He goes off and kills what? 1246 01:06:36 --> 01:06:36 AUDIENCE: A deer. 1247 01:06:36 --> 01:06:37 PROFESSOR: A deer. 1248 01:06:37 --> 01:06:37 Does what? 1249 01:06:37 --> 01:06:39 AUDIENCE: Cuts out its heart. 1250 01:06:39 --> 01:06:40 PROFESSOR: Cuts out its heart. 1251 01:06:40 --> 01:06:42 Brings it home. 1252 01:06:42 --> 01:06:44 The Queen does what? 1253 01:06:44 --> 01:06:46 She eats it. 1254 01:06:46 --> 01:06:50 Nice woman. 1255 01:06:50 --> 01:06:55 Anyway, so she goes off into the woods. 1256 01:06:55 --> 01:06:59 1257 01:06:59 --> 01:07:02 What does she find out in the woods? 1258 01:07:02 --> 01:07:03 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 1259 01:07:03 --> 01:07:08 PROFESSOR: Hi ho, hi ho-- she finds a lovely little 1260 01:07:08 --> 01:07:12 encapsulated anal stage fairy tale is what she finds. 1261 01:07:12 --> 01:07:19 1262 01:07:19 --> 01:07:22 The women will have some intuition about this. 1263 01:07:22 --> 01:07:28 If you told your mother, Mom, I found this really great 1264 01:07:28 --> 01:07:29 housing arrangement at MIT. 1265 01:07:29 --> 01:07:33 I'm going to go and live with seven hairy guys. 1266 01:07:33 --> 01:07:34 Would mom be thrilled? 1267 01:07:34 --> 01:07:37 No, she would not be. 1268 01:07:37 --> 01:07:42 If however, they're the dwarves from Snow White even though the 1269 01:07:42 --> 01:07:45 ones in Grimm aren't Sleepy and Dopey and Whiffy and Waffy and 1270 01:07:45 --> 01:07:48 whatever they are in Disney-- you wouldn't worry about it 1271 01:07:48 --> 01:07:53 because these guys, they're little asexual guys. 1272 01:07:53 --> 01:07:56 There is no sense of threat here at all. 1273 01:07:56 --> 01:07:59 And what do they like to do? 1274 01:07:59 --> 01:08:01 They like to dig stuff out of the dirt and put 1275 01:08:01 --> 01:08:01 stuff back in the dirt. 1276 01:08:01 --> 01:08:03 And dig stuff out of the dirt and put stuff back. 1277 01:08:03 --> 01:08:06 And they're devoted to Snow White, they think she's great. 1278 01:08:06 --> 01:08:11 But they're a little anal stage fairy tale tucked in there. 1279 01:08:11 --> 01:08:15 And so the problem is that the mirror rats out Snow White, 1280 01:08:15 --> 01:08:17 right? "Mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest of us 1281 01:08:17 --> 01:08:19 all?" Yeah, yeah Queen you look great. 1282 01:08:19 --> 01:08:24 Guess who's blossoming down in the woods with a bunch of 1283 01:08:24 --> 01:08:26 little hairy asexual guys? 1284 01:08:26 --> 01:08:32 So she disguises herself, the Queen disguises herself and 1285 01:08:32 --> 01:08:35 goes off in an effort to kill Snow White. 1286 01:08:35 --> 01:08:41 She tries three different times and they are interestingly 1287 01:08:41 --> 01:08:44 emblematic of an effort to keep a girl from turning 1288 01:08:44 --> 01:08:45 into a woman. 1289 01:08:45 --> 01:08:49 The clearest one of these is the corset that she sells-- she 1290 01:08:49 --> 01:08:55 goes as a peddler woman and sells Snow White a corset that 1291 01:08:55 --> 01:08:59 squeezes her body back into a little girl body so hard that 1292 01:08:59 --> 01:09:01 she can't breathe and falls over dead. 1293 01:09:01 --> 01:09:04 Or semi-dead. 1294 01:09:04 --> 01:09:08 And always at the last minute-- Hi ho, hi ho and 1295 01:09:08 --> 01:09:09 the dwarves come back. 1296 01:09:09 --> 01:09:10 She's dim. 1297 01:09:10 --> 01:09:14 You know, it's one of these sort of fool me once shame on 1298 01:09:14 --> 01:09:16 me things, but three times she goes and falls for 1299 01:09:16 --> 01:09:19 the old lady thing. 1300 01:09:19 --> 01:09:21 And the last time it's with this Adam and 1301 01:09:21 --> 01:09:24 Eve kind of apple. 1302 01:09:24 --> 01:09:25 She eats the apple. 1303 01:09:25 --> 01:09:29 The dwarves come home and she's dead and they can't 1304 01:09:29 --> 01:09:30 do anything about it. 1305 01:09:30 --> 01:09:33 Now what would the natural thing be to do under 1306 01:09:33 --> 01:09:34 those circumstances? 1307 01:09:34 --> 01:09:36 Bury her, right? 1308 01:09:36 --> 01:09:37 Or something. 1309 01:09:37 --> 01:09:38 She's dead. 1310 01:09:38 --> 01:09:40 What do they do? 1311 01:09:40 --> 01:09:42 They put her in a glass coffin. 1312 01:09:42 --> 01:09:44 It says they can't bear to bury her. 1313 01:09:44 --> 01:09:48 They put in a glass coffin and put her in a 1314 01:09:48 --> 01:09:50 clearing in the woods. 1315 01:09:50 --> 01:09:55 1316 01:09:55 --> 01:09:58 And it says in the story that she continues to grow into a 1317 01:09:58 --> 01:10:00 beautiful young woman, which is a lovely image of a 1318 01:10:00 --> 01:10:02 latency stage, right. 1319 01:10:02 --> 01:10:05 Nothing's happening, but she's turning into a sexually mature 1320 01:10:05 --> 01:10:07 woman is what's going on here. 1321 01:10:07 --> 01:10:10 You would think that the dwarves might catch on. 1322 01:10:10 --> 01:10:14 There's something weird here guys. 1323 01:10:14 --> 01:10:17 That normally the dead body thing doesn't work like this. 1324 01:10:17 --> 01:10:20 But anyway, the dwarves don't-- she's getting beautiful and 1325 01:10:20 --> 01:10:22 through the woods comes the...? 1326 01:10:22 --> 01:10:22 AUDIENCE: Prince. 1327 01:10:22 --> 01:10:24 PROFESSOR: Prince. 1328 01:10:24 --> 01:10:26 The prince does what? 1329 01:10:26 --> 01:10:27 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 1330 01:10:27 --> 01:10:29 PROFESSOR: Nah, the prince doesn't kiss her. 1331 01:10:29 --> 01:10:30 None of that stuff. 1332 01:10:30 --> 01:10:34 What the prince does-- I can't remember if he does this in the 1333 01:10:34 --> 01:10:36 Disney version, but in the traditional version the prince 1334 01:10:36 --> 01:10:41 orders the dwarves to bring the coffin to his castle. 1335 01:10:41 --> 01:10:44 What is he thinking? 1336 01:10:44 --> 01:10:47 You know, this would be a really cool coffee table? 1337 01:10:47 --> 01:10:52 It's very weird stuff. 1338 01:10:52 --> 01:10:56 But what happens is the dwarves who have been extremely careful 1339 01:10:56 --> 01:11:04 all along-- the dwarves trip, the coffin shatters and the 1340 01:11:04 --> 01:11:09 apple pops out of her throat and she's alive, she's fine. 1341 01:11:09 --> 01:11:13 This is a story that doesn't quite get all the way through 1342 01:11:13 --> 01:11:18 to adult sexuality in the sense that the story ends without her 1343 01:11:18 --> 01:11:20 saying that she loves the prince or anything like that. 1344 01:11:20 --> 01:11:23 It says, he was nice and so she went with him. 1345 01:11:23 --> 01:11:27 It doesn't quite get you all the way through. 1346 01:11:27 --> 01:11:30 The classic stories that get you all the way through to the 1347 01:11:30 --> 01:11:35 end of the story on the female side are the so-called 1348 01:11:35 --> 01:11:38 "animal groom" stories. 1349 01:11:38 --> 01:11:43 I don't have time to do Little Red Riding Hood really. 1350 01:11:43 --> 01:11:47 But Little Red Riding Hood is a story where all men are 1351 01:11:47 --> 01:11:51 beasts and they stay beasts. 1352 01:11:51 --> 01:11:54 The classic versions of female oedipal stories that get you 1353 01:11:54 --> 01:11:58 all the way through to the end of the story are the ones where 1354 01:11:58 --> 01:12:02 the beast is redeemed by the love of a good woman. 1355 01:12:02 --> 01:12:05 You know, one class of these is kiss the frog and it 1356 01:12:05 --> 01:12:06 turns into a prince. 1357 01:12:06 --> 01:12:09 But let's do Beauty and the Beast. 1358 01:12:09 --> 01:12:12 Now Beauty and the Beast in the Disney version is a wonderful 1359 01:12:12 --> 01:12:14 movie about female empowerment or something like that, but 1360 01:12:14 --> 01:12:19 it's a long, long way from the original folk tale version 1361 01:12:19 --> 01:12:21 of it, unlike the Disney Snow White. 1362 01:12:21 --> 01:12:27 So let me tell you a little more about the version that is 1363 01:12:27 --> 01:12:34 in Grimm's fairy tales-- if you aren't familiar with it. 1364 01:12:34 --> 01:12:38 So in Grimm's fairy tales or in the classic Beauty and the 1365 01:12:38 --> 01:12:44 Beast story for starters, there's no reason why 1366 01:12:44 --> 01:12:47 the Beast is a beast. 1367 01:12:47 --> 01:12:51 In these stories typically, the Beast in the Disney version is 1368 01:12:51 --> 01:12:57 a beast because he's got no love and he was nasty to 1369 01:12:57 --> 01:12:59 whatever she was who showed up at the door and 1370 01:12:59 --> 01:12:59 stuff like that. 1371 01:12:59 --> 01:13:01 None of that in the traditional version. 1372 01:13:01 --> 01:13:06 He's a beast because some old woman said, you're a beast. 1373 01:13:06 --> 01:13:11 In the all men are beasts school of beasthood. 1374 01:13:11 --> 01:13:15 So when we start out with Beauty and the Beast, Beauty is 1375 01:13:15 --> 01:13:18 at home with her two sisters. 1376 01:13:18 --> 01:13:23 No Mom onsite at all in this one, but there's Dad and Dad's 1377 01:13:23 --> 01:13:25 going on off on a trip. 1378 01:13:25 --> 01:13:28 Not because he's got some whacko cool invention, he's 1379 01:13:28 --> 01:13:30 just going on a trip and he says, what do you want me to 1380 01:13:30 --> 01:13:35 bring back and one greedy, old sister says, oh bring me a 1381 01:13:35 --> 01:13:39 Mercedes and the other one says, bring me a fur coat and 1382 01:13:39 --> 01:13:44 Beauty who's a bit of a sap says, just bring me one rose. 1383 01:13:44 --> 01:13:47 So anyway, he does well on the trip and he gets the Mercedes 1384 01:13:47 --> 01:13:48 and gets the fur coat. 1385 01:13:48 --> 01:13:51 He forgets the rose, right? 1386 01:13:51 --> 01:13:57 So he's coming home and he passes this ruinous castle and 1387 01:13:57 --> 01:14:00 there's a rosebush of course, and he says, nobody's going 1388 01:14:00 --> 01:14:03 to miss one rose, right? 1389 01:14:03 --> 01:14:05 So he goes and picks the rose. 1390 01:14:05 --> 01:14:09 So bad move because out comes [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 1391 01:14:09 --> 01:14:14 And you picked my rose, now I'm going to kill you which seems a 1392 01:14:14 --> 01:14:16 little disproportionate, but you know, he's a 1393 01:14:16 --> 01:14:18 beast after all. 1394 01:14:18 --> 01:14:22 And so the daddy explains way more than he should be 1395 01:14:22 --> 01:14:24 under the circumstances. 1396 01:14:24 --> 01:14:27 Oh, I was just picking one for my daughter-- and 1397 01:14:27 --> 01:14:29 the beast says, OK. 1398 01:14:29 --> 01:14:30 Fine, I won't kill you. 1399 01:14:30 --> 01:14:32 Send me the daughter. 1400 01:14:32 --> 01:14:36 Dad says, OK. 1401 01:14:36 --> 01:14:38 There are two ways of looking at this. 1402 01:14:38 --> 01:14:42 One of them is that dads very traditionally, in animal groom 1403 01:14:42 --> 01:14:45 stories are the person who, in a sense, walks the daughter 1404 01:14:45 --> 01:14:47 down the aisle here. 1405 01:14:47 --> 01:14:50 The other way of thinking about this more charitably about Dad 1406 01:14:50 --> 01:14:53 is that Dad's thinking, I'm just getting out of here man. 1407 01:14:53 --> 01:14:55 I'm not going to send my daughter back. 1408 01:14:55 --> 01:14:57 But he goes home. 1409 01:14:57 --> 01:15:02 He tells the story and very much like in the Disney 1410 01:15:02 --> 01:15:06 version Beauty says, hey, you gave your word. 1411 01:15:06 --> 01:15:08 I gotta go. 1412 01:15:08 --> 01:15:12 And so she goes off to live with the Beast. 1413 01:15:12 --> 01:15:17 Now the Beast-- well, he's a beast, but he's kind 1414 01:15:17 --> 01:15:19 of like a gentleman. 1415 01:15:19 --> 01:15:21 He's not really a bad beast as these things go. 1416 01:15:21 --> 01:15:24 They live a perfectly reasonable life there 1417 01:15:24 --> 01:15:27 in this grungy castle. 1418 01:15:27 --> 01:15:32 Every night, after dinner he says, will you kiss me 1419 01:15:32 --> 01:15:34 and she says, oh yuck. 1420 01:15:34 --> 01:15:35 You're a beast. 1421 01:15:35 --> 01:15:38 And he doesn't press the issue, right? 1422 01:15:38 --> 01:15:41 And they just go on like this for a long, long time. 1423 01:15:41 --> 01:15:47 And eventually she gets a postcard or something-- no, 1424 01:15:47 --> 01:15:49 gets the wedding invitation. 1425 01:15:49 --> 01:15:52 She gets an invitation that says, your sister's 1426 01:15:52 --> 01:15:52 getting married. 1427 01:15:52 --> 01:15:54 Why don't you come home for the wedding? 1428 01:15:54 --> 01:15:58 And the Beast is reluctant to let her go, but says, you can 1429 01:15:58 --> 01:16:05 go as long as you come back within a month or I'll die. 1430 01:16:05 --> 01:16:09 So she goes home and big, long party, I guess because 1431 01:16:09 --> 01:16:12 she forgets all about it. 1432 01:16:12 --> 01:16:16 The magic mirror in some versions, but in any case, on 1433 01:16:16 --> 01:16:22 the thirty-first day she either looks in the mirror or realizes 1434 01:16:22 --> 01:16:25 in a dream or something that the Beast is dying. 1435 01:16:25 --> 01:16:26 The castle is in ruins. 1436 01:16:26 --> 01:16:28 The Beast is dying. 1437 01:16:28 --> 01:16:30 And she wishes herself back there. 1438 01:16:30 --> 01:16:34 She's magically transported back there. 1439 01:16:34 --> 01:16:37 Nobody gets to get killed on the roof in the rain 1440 01:16:37 --> 01:16:38 or anything like that. 1441 01:16:38 --> 01:16:43 She realizes that she does love this beast and 1442 01:16:43 --> 01:16:45 kisses him and kaboof! 1443 01:16:45 --> 01:16:50 Now he has been redeemed by the love of a good woman 1444 01:16:50 --> 01:16:51 and he's no longer a beast. 1445 01:16:51 --> 01:16:58 You've gotten through all the way to the end of the story. 1446 01:16:58 --> 01:17:01 So Little Red Riding Hood there's no sense that she's 1447 01:17:01 --> 01:17:02 going to go marry the Beast. 1448 01:17:02 --> 01:17:05 In Little Red Riding Hood what you've got is the situation 1449 01:17:05 --> 01:17:11 where Little Red Riding Hood says to-- when confronted by 1450 01:17:11 --> 01:17:14 the Beast on the road in effect she says, I'm much 1451 01:17:14 --> 01:17:15 too young for you. 1452 01:17:15 --> 01:17:18 I'm an inappropriate sexual object. 1453 01:17:18 --> 01:17:20 Why don't you go see Grandma? 1454 01:17:20 --> 01:17:22 She's a much more experienced woman. 1455 01:17:22 --> 01:17:26 1456 01:17:26 --> 01:17:28 Go read your Little Red Riding Hood again. 1457 01:17:28 --> 01:17:31 Little Red Riding Hood gives way too much-- if you go and 1458 01:17:31 --> 01:17:35 meet a stranger, a bad, scary stranger and he asks a bunch of 1459 01:17:35 --> 01:17:39 questions you're not supposed to say, I live or I'm 1460 01:17:39 --> 01:17:40 going to Grandma. 1461 01:17:40 --> 01:17:44 She lives at 400 Shady Brook Lane and I think she leaves 1462 01:17:44 --> 01:17:46 the back door unlocked. 1463 01:17:46 --> 01:17:48 That's more or less what Red Riding Hood does. 1464 01:17:48 --> 01:17:53 1465 01:17:53 --> 01:17:56 So what the Wolf does is it goes there and 1466 01:17:56 --> 01:17:57 gobbles up Grandma. 1467 01:17:57 --> 01:18:04 Gets into bed and then gobbles up Little Red Riding Hood. 1468 01:18:04 --> 01:18:09 Who is later delivered by cesarean section, more or 1469 01:18:09 --> 01:18:14 less and describes the whole experience as yucky. 1470 01:18:14 --> 01:18:14 Not scary. 1471 01:18:14 --> 01:18:16 It was all just sort gross. 1472 01:18:16 --> 01:18:19 1473 01:18:19 --> 01:18:25 And when the Wolf is captured by the huntsman, Daddy, 1474 01:18:25 --> 01:18:28 the Wolf is described as you old sinner. 1475 01:18:28 --> 01:18:29 What's that about? 1476 01:18:29 --> 01:18:32 Anyway, the Little Red Riding Hood ends with Little Red 1477 01:18:32 --> 01:18:35 Riding Hood saying, I will never go off the straight 1478 01:18:35 --> 01:18:36 and narrow again. 1479 01:18:36 --> 01:18:39 Because the Wolf's been saying go smell the flowers. 1480 01:18:39 --> 01:18:41 Go off the track and stuff like that. 1481 01:18:41 --> 01:18:43 So that's a story where you don't get through 1482 01:18:43 --> 01:18:45 the whole thing. 1483 01:18:45 --> 01:18:48 If you wanted to write a Little Red Riding Hood story-- you 1484 01:18:48 --> 01:18:52 wanted to morph it into a full blast story-- I suppose it'd be 1485 01:18:52 --> 01:18:55 a little crass if Little Red Riding Hood had to go and marry 1486 01:18:55 --> 01:18:57 the guy who killed Grandma. 1487 01:18:57 --> 01:19:00 That's a little gross, but she'd end up kissing the Wolf 1488 01:19:00 --> 01:19:07 at the end and the Wolf would turn into something nice. 1489 01:19:07 --> 01:19:11 There's a great MIT fairy tale-- a tool and die fairy 1490 01:19:11 --> 01:19:14 tale, but you'll have to ask me about it some other time.