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WiSe 19/20: Sigmund Freud in the U.S.

Norbert Finzsch

Kommentar

Sigmund Freud traveled only once to the US (1909). However, his journey left an indelible mark on both American psychotherapy and culture. Very soon, American psychotherapists turned into Freudians, and the first translations were made both in England and the US. These translations turned out to be somewhat inaccurate, for instance when “Verdrängung” was not translated as “displacement” but as “suppression” or the German word “Trieb” was transferred as “instinct.” Apart from psychotherapy, Freud’s ideas were quickly popularized by his nephew Edward Bernays, an American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, who used psychoanalytical concepts to sell cigarettes or paper cups. Due to the specific history of American psychology and the readiness of psychoanalysts to talk about sexuality in a country that was traditionally prudish, psychoanalysis à la Americaine made its way into the offices of practitioners and the studios of movie corporations. Several movies were made in Hollywood that were based on popularized Freudian concepts (hysteria, dreams) and increasingly Freudian concepts popped up in popular and counseling literature. During WWII, tests of Army recruits used an analytical set of questions to determine the likelihood of the recruit’s homosexual tendencies in order to exclude gay soldiers from serving in the armed forces. With the end of WWII and the “crisis of masculinity,” the role of the mother was emphasized by such texts, and “momism” made its way into the vernacular dictionary. The 1960s gave birth to the “sexual revolution” as a possibility to end “suppression” by practicing forms of sexuality that has been outlawed or ostracized in the decades before. Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse used some of Freud’s ideas and developed them further. They both had a deep impact on the students’ rebellion of the 1960s. The seminar will spread a wide net over the popularization of Freud’s ideas in the US. Students will present a talk about the subject of their choice, and they will have the opportunity to turn this presentation into a term paper at the end of the semester. Schließen

16 Termine

Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung

Fr, 10:00 - 12:00 16 Termine

Fr, 18.10.2019 10:00 - 12:00

Dozenten:
Prof. Dr. Norbert Finzsch