Travelling with Freud

Naturally one of my hardest jobs prior to leaving for Indonesia was choosing something to read, other than my dictionaries, of course. Needed something weighty that would last eight weeks, not a junkread that could be disposed of on the flight from Canberra to Jakarta. Days before departure the three candidates were Fredric Jameson's Ideologies of Theory, a collection of Jameson's Marxist interventions; Sigmund Freud's Interpreting Dreams, Freud's celebrated birthing of the the 20th century and beyond; and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, an American writer equal to Pynchon and who, one day, will be immortalised by the phrase "Wallacesque." As in, "That's a very Wallacesque sentence."

If it weren't for Qantas' frugal baggage requirement, I would have opted for all three. Thanks, Qantas, though, for forcing me to be selective. Jameson was first to go, for a couple of reasons: the thinness of the paper would not survive the mugginess of Indonesia's weather, for starters, and I doubted my ability to hold together his magisterial and occasionally long-winded sentences together in a sultry climate. Next to go, a critic of Jameson's famous writing style, was Wallace, his 900+ pages (I think) of literary fireworks too long to manage, given I would be spending weekends rubbernecking around. A novel of that length needs 3-4 days of solid sitting. If I hadn't read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, a short story collection that, in an ideal world, would encourage the majority of writers to simply give up, then that would have been packed. Sigmund, in contrast, was a Penguin, light and transportable, and his sentences are so accessible. Classic 19th century prose.

I've been surprised at how often Freud and I have come into contact outside of Interpreting Dreams. In the "Women and Literature" class, two of the texts studied by the students referenced Freud: Allegra Maud Goodman's "Growing Up," in which the boy character, who builds ships and then sinks them in the bath, is described as trying to kill his father. The narrator then says she wasn't aware at that time of Freud's Oedipus complex or other complexes. Then in Aishe Berger's "Nose is a Country . . . I am the Second Generation" is written for a former patient of Freud's who, diagnosed as a hysteric, had her nose operated on to inhibit her sexual desire. The operation was a failure and Emma Eckstein was left an invalid. Interesting to be in an Islamic country and read these stories and poems, with Jewish characters, reflecting on Freud. Did the students, I wonder, have sufficient background knowledge to understand Freud's theories and his significance for the intellectual climate of the 20th century?

Of course, it's in Interpreting Dreams where we find one of his earliest meditations on the Oedipal theory. But there's more to Freud than boys wanting to kill their fathers and desiring their mothers, daughters desiring their father and the death of a rival . . . but not much more (on the back of a postcard, please, the musical allusion). In another class, a student gave a presentation on how to interpret dreams, based on a discussion she had with a friend. On her list of dreams - the dead father. According to her, this mean good fortune!

"The writer lives in fear of censorship, so he moderates what he says and distorts his meaning" (p.155). I'm not living in fear, but the blog, along with the daily diary I have to keep for the ANU (part of my assessment is that I record what I do), is moderated and distorted. I'm aware of audience. ANU staff have close connections with UKSW, so at times I've worn Converse rather than the Doc's.

I've had a dream experience that was sense of by Freud. In reading how the "somatic element controls the dream content" (p.251) and how internal or external corporeal stimulus can affect the content of what we dream, I was reminded of a dream I had in Yogyakarta: I was in a bus, that was being driven by two Indonesians. Everyone was saying panas sekali, panas sekali. Suddenly, we were in Australia, the drivers Aborigines. Everyone kept saying panas sekali, panas sekali. The desert was really hot, unbearably hot. I woke up. My sunburnt neck was throbbing.

Aside from the ease of reading his sentences, I really enjoy the prodigiousness of his intellect, his ability to refer to poetry, drama, novels, archaeology, science, botany, whatever is at hand to develop his theory. Interpret that "whatever" as you like!

Two-thirds of the way through the trip, about two-thirds of the way through Freud. Pleased with the choice I made.