Sigmund freud (1856— 1939) is a famous Austrian psychiatrist, psychologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. His psychoanalytic theory swept the world at the beginning of this century, which widely influenced literature, art and aesthetics, and formed psychoanalytic aesthetics and literature and art.
Freud's works mainly study human psychiatry, trace back to the composition of human consciousness, and involve the psychology of artistic creation and appreciation, as well as some papers specializing in literature and art. His works in this field are mainly Interpretation of Dreams, Three Treatises on Sexuality, Totems and Taboos, Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Moses of Michelangelo, Daydreaming of Writers, etc.
Freud's psychoanalytic theory is mainly manifested in three levels of psychological composition and three principles of activity process. He explained that the deepest of these three levels is the unconscious (or subconscious), which belongs to instinctive impulse, and the spiritual field it occupies is unparalleled. This is the "id" instinct of human beings, which exists and develops beyond the times and history, and has nothing to do with the good and evil of values and morality. It acts according to the principle of happiness, and the second layer is pre-consciousness, which belongs to "self". It plays an intermediary role between various perceptions of the outside world. It not only accepts the external * * *, but also feels the internal * * * of psychology, and mediates the conflict between them, protects the "ID" and acts according to the principle of realism. However, it is monitored and suppressed by the superego, and is bound by three masters (the outside world, superego and ID). The third level is that consciousness belongs to the superego. As a special psychological function, it keeps away from instinct, maintains people's conscience, morality and other social factors, suppresses instinctive impulses and acts according to the principle of perfection. In Freud's instinct, life and death are the center, life is derived as the driving force of love and construction, and death is derived as the driving force of killing, abuse and destruction. When people's instinct is suppressed by the existence marked by superego, they turn to other ways to get satisfaction. Dreams, religion, philosophy and art are all ways to suppress and transfer. Freud's psychoanalysis is therefore associated with art and aesthetics.
Freud thought that literary creation was a daydream. He believes that people create an artistic world different from the real world in the form of fantasy, which is close to a dream in the sense that its fantasy is unreal; Different from dream, it is a "daydream" because of artistic arrangement and passionate creation. As far as "daydreaming" is concerned, it is similar to the consciousness of mental patients, but the artist's "daydreaming" is a sublimation of a new direction and has the initiative of self-deception. It appears in aesthetic forms, including "enjoyment or pleasure of beauty" and "beauty * * *", which reduces the author's personal egoism and becomes a means for the viewer to restrain and transfer. From the process of artistic thinking, Freud's understanding is quite close to the characteristics of artistic thinking, from which we can find the starting point of complex artistic aesthetic relations such as reality and nothingness, illusion and truth, emotion and reason, works and appreciation. However, it is unrealistic for him to completely put the foundation of art on the point of instinctive sublimation and try to explain all artistic problems by this.
Freud analyzed and explained art from the viewpoint of sexual instinct, and put forward the viewpoint of "Oedipus complex". By recalling his childhood life and combining his clinical observation and research, Freud thought that people were widely sexy in childhood, and then they shifted with age. Babies will develop into "Oedipus complex" or "Oedipus complex". The plot of Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother written in the ancient Greek drama Sophocles was cited by him as an example to illustrate Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Shakespeare's Madness of Hamlet. He thinks that he has "solved the mystery of the Sphinx", but in fact, due to the exaggeration of the theory and the imagination attached to the application, it is far from reality. This led Freud's psychoanalysis to a fork in the road, and some of his followers, such as Jung, left him because they disagreed with this. Some of his later fanatics further exaggerated this point and pulled art and art theory to the road of anti-rationality, anti-logic, decadence and yellow, which was completely different from the original Freud.
Freud's theory touched on the elimination of fear in aesthetics. He believes that aesthetics should not only study the theory of beauty, but also study emotion, the "most remote field of aesthetics", which can not be ignored in aesthetics. He believes that the category of "frightening" is. He agreed with Schelling's definition of "frightening": "What should be hidden but exposed." However, the expression of art is unrealistic in nature, and it is a fantasy world, so it will not produce the effect of fear. The content of fantasy is not tested by the function of testing reality, but it "coincides with the reality we are familiar with", thus producing artistic aesthetic effect, which is consistent with the "self-protection motivation" in Double Roles. His view is of great practical significance for people to understand the tragedy in tragedy and the aesthetic value of magic in fairy tales.
As for comedy, he believes that "it comes from an unexpected discovery in human social relations", followed by unnecessary action consumption and exaggeration of normal emotions. He said that in the face of strangeness and exaggeration, we can find a unified explanation. "Compared with us, anyone who spends too much on physical function and too little on mental function will make us think he is funny. It is undeniable that no matter how much he spends, we will show our superiority in laughter. " On the contrary, he thinks there will be a feeling of surprise and appreciation. His view is of great value to understanding comedy. However, he linked laughter and wit with his * * * instinct and hostile instinct, and regarded it as a concrete form of realizing this instinctive requirement and a form of saving spiritual energy consumption, which was far-fetched.
When we know Freud, we should also pay special attention to it. Although he used the method of psychoanalysis, he did not always take the standard of sexual psychology as the criterion, nor did he blindly affirm the subconscious. In Michelangelo's "Moses", a wonderful work of aesthetic analysis, he highly appreciates the rational analysis spirit embodied by the author in the creation process and the statue, which is the decisive factor that makes the statue of Moses have extraordinary aesthetic value.
Freud opened up a new field of psychology with his psychoanalysis, and with his many experiences and theories about the subconscious, he had a very complicated influence on literary theory and literary creation. History has proved to a great extent that the significance of Freud's theory is very complicated. The impact is also very complicated. The judgment of its theoretical value is often directly related to the attitude and method adopted in its theory.