An Analysis on the Pursuit of Happiness in The Lord of the Rings

Since The Lord of the Rings was adapted by Peter Jackson into trilogy film in 2001-03, it has astounded its critics and gratified its fans and students. Many critical journals or graduation papers have also talked about this massive novel. After doing a lot of reading concerning these reviews, it’s clear that most of them analyze this work using psychoanalytical criticism; myth and archetypal criticism; cultural studies, and recently ecocriticism. Among these theories, psychoanalytic interpretation mainly focuses on Freud’s key ideas, namely the id; ego; and superego. According to Freud’s theory that: “Psychoanalytic literary criticism is not simply about interpreting a text’s protagonists. It also seeks to relate the text to the mind of its author.”(Berg, 2003, p.84). In this circumstance, this paper will probably dig some new insights by using this theory. The paper will follow the protagonist’s inner mind through employing Freud’s some key ideas, such as repression and projection. Based upon psychoanalytic analysis of the protagonists, this paper tries to argue that the three Hobbits can acquire happiness as long as they deal properly with the relationship between themselves and the society. In other words, common people can also push the wheel of history as long as they code well with themselves and the society.

Analysis of a dream series by the Dream Coding System developed by Ulrich Moser

This paper serves psychotherapeutic process research and shows the process of change in a psychodynamic, individual psychological psychotherapy by means of a theory-based content analysis of the dreams reported in this therapy. The analysis of the patient’s dreams is carried out according to the dream coding method by Ulrich Moser and Vera Hortig (2019). The guiding question is about changes in positioning and interactions of the dream elements, how can they be determined and how (within the framework of the underlying dream generation theory) the influence of these changes on the patient’s ability to regulate affect can be assessed. Dream coding according to Moser and Hortig uses only the manifest dream and can be regarded as a research tool that rests, among other things, on psychoanalytic concepts, while at the same time taking into account more recent findings in dream and affect research. Its focus is on the coding of the present dream experience and the transformation of dream elements both within individual dreams and in the course of an entire dream series. It allows, without knowledge of the biographical anamnesis and without using psychoanalytic interpretation methods, to recognize changes in the dream structure and the affect regulation produced by it. The coding system thus also offers the possibility of making comparisons regarding the therapeutic changes achieved and thus (at least potentially) the effectiveness of different treatment methods (cf. Leuzinger-Bohleber, 2008, p. 7 f.). The coding of several dreams, i.e. the manifest dream content as a dream series highlighted the patient’s inner psychic change process: while the safety principle dominated the beginning, involvement increased and the use of the elements was more flexible and the interactions more mixed, to approach the initial dream again towards the end of the dream series. The coding indicates that the patient was able to increase her self-efficacy due to better containment of the emergent (dysfunctional) affects. This coding procedure serves as a promising empirical process assessment for carrying out single case studies.

Shakespeare's tragedy «Hamlet» in Freud's psychoanalytic interpretation

The wide interpretative range of Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet indicates that it has a considerable artistic power that has not diminished over the centuries, but on the contrary, has grown stronger and generated interest in the play in all new interpreters. The work with its always relevant ontological problems opens to the readers the Renaissance era, introduces the artistic and aesthetic canons of the time, unfolds pictures of private (family) and public life. The considerable number of interpretations of the Shakespearean plot in the works of researchers was the reason for the appearance of new approaches to the interpretation of the storyline, the behavioral model of the characters, which began to appear in the literature.

Les Femmes, le silence et le réel chez Ingmar Bergman

"The Women, the Silence and the Real in Ingmar Bergman. The main aim of this paper is to provide a psychoanalytic interpretation of the scream in the films of Ingmar Bergman, starting from Jacques Lacan’s consideration that the scream constitutes the abyss from which the silence emerges. After the outline of the difference between Silet and Taceo, the paper approaches three important aspects in the films of Bergman: the space of silence enveloping the silence of the film characters, the silence beyond the phallic, masculine order, and the silence as an empty void impossible to fill in the scream of Agnes (from Cries and Whispers). Keywords: woman, silence, real, anxiety, scream, death, dying, emptiness, voice. "

Of Metals and Men: Kofman, Conversion and The Merchant of Venice

Mindful that philosophy is for Kofman always sublated ( relevé) by literature and psychoanalysis, this essay examines Kofman's rarely discussed text ‘Conversions: The Merchant of Venice under the Sign of Saturn’ (1987) in the light of themes from elsewhere in her work. Typical of her method, Conversions is a richly philosophical reading of a psychoanalytic interpretation of a literary text. It is also Kofman's most sustained engagement with Shakespeare. In the study she builds on her earlier interest in the trope of metaphor and, drawing on Freud's reading of Shakespeare's play, derives a generalized theory of convertibility or ambivalence. Where the play seeks to establish symbolic equivalences between men and metals — between the triads Antonio/Bassano/Shylock and the lead/gold/silver of the three caskets — Kofman's analysis focuses instead on their respective Janus faces and alchemical transmutations. Beneath the explicit thematizations she follows Freud in discerning the interconvertibility of love and death, but she also goes beyond Freud in arguing that its condition of possibility is the structural ambivalence of time itself.

MILITARY DARK HUMOR AS A FORM OF ADAPTIVE PROCESSES AND THE INDIVIDUAL�S RESPONSE TO FEAR OF DEATH (PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ASPECT)

The aim of the article is to examine military black humor as a form of adaptive processes and the individual�s response to the fear of death in the system of psychological defense mechanisms and coping strategies. A more complete results in this study can be gotten through the integration of discourse analysis and psychoanalytic interpretation. Discourse analysis has the most empirically oriented approach and allows to focus on extensive psychological issues such as cognition, emotions, attitudes, values, prejudices, memory, motives. Psychoanalytic interpretation focuses on the symbolism of the unconscious, universal meanings and psychological mechanisms that are important material to analyze totality of derived psychological meanings present in dark humor patterns. The material for this empirical, inductive study is text fragments, memes and photographs, which are posted on the website of �Military service� Ukrainian group. Results and discussions. One of the thematic dominants of military dark humor is the threat to life and fear of it. The fear of death itself is one of the human existence conditions. Such amount of fear fits into bounds of what most humans can psychologically tolerate that does not destroy or paralyze activity. In order to protect his psyche from the destructive effects of traumatic situation during which the norms of fear exceed the standards, a military man often seeks to restore the functional state of his body and reduce emotional stress. Considering this perspective as a pragmatic aspect of humor it can be argued that the creation of the game reality of death in dark humor depends, first of all, on those coping strategies and psychological defense mechanisms, which are most appropriate for a person�s psyche. According to the terror management theory an individual uses certain coping strategies and defense mechanisms depending on whether or not he is aware of the inevitability of death. Analysis of the dark humor patterns created by the Ukrainian military and actualizing the theme of death and everything associated with it make it possible to outline the following range of adaptive mechanisms ranked in a descending order according to their relative importance in the total sample: �Desacralization�, �Regression�, �Desensitization�, �Positive re-evaluation�, �Displacement�, �Sublimation�, �Denial�. Conclusions. Being natural human emotion fear of death during combat activates defense mechanisms and coping strategies. The study of the projection of these occurrences in dark humor have made it possible to conclude that the military dark humor is the result of frustrating life experiences and aimed to reduce sensitivity to fears and improve their psychological state. This is achieved owing to changing the modal evaluation and the capability to be emotionally withdrawn.