Essay on Psychological Breakdown in Strindberg's The Father

Focusing on a twenty year old obsessed with death and suicide who falls in love with an eccentric almost-eighty-year-old woman, Harold and Maude is a somewhat unconventional romantic comedy widely regarded as a cult classic. This movie’s use of suicide and other sensationalized ideas from Psychology is jarring to say the least, but its Psychological principles are not limited to those. There are many everyday aspects of Psychology immortalized through this film that would hardly make one bat an eye. In the movie, twenty year old Harold lives, mostly, with his mother. During the time he is not living with his mother, he is faking suicide for her attention, bringing home a hearse as his first car, or attending funerals, presumably for fun. Harold’s quirks seem to at least somewhat

‘Women’s roles are often tokenistic in dramatic comedy.’ To what extent do you believe this to be the case in relation to the play you are studying?

In the time this play was set, a man’s daughter was seen as the man’s property, therefore the father was allowed to give his daughter to whom he thought was suitable. The daughter refusing her father’s instructions was seen as dishonourable and embarrassing for the father, for this shows a lack of power and control over his own daughter.

Another bit of interesting material from the book was how the “Masculinity Imperative” of the family dynamic seemed to slowly transition over time from strictly patriarchal with the father as the ruler the household in the 1800s to where it is now. I am in a gender studies class and so the existence of this modified patriarchy wasn’t really that much of a surprise, but it was fascinating to watch a sort of play-by-play of its transition as class values coalesced and then began to transition. After reading this book, I brought some of its points up with my grandmother, who I had learned was one of those young homemakers in the fifties Cherlin talked about, and she could verify almost every single point Cherlin talked about from that time period. She went through school and was told that as much as she loved science that it was impossible for her to get a job in it. She then got married after high school, had three kids, and got divorced once most of them had left the nest so she could travel to the west coast and get a degree. She talked a lot about how for someone who really enjoyed thinking and learning, being trapped within a house in the suburbs with only chores for company was torture. That really puts into perspective that these weren’t just some

A familial bond cannot be broken. As genetics pass from one end of the family tree to another, a series of exchanged physical and–more significant in terms of the story–behavioral traits, moreover, make themselves apparent. From each member of the complicated maternal chain consisting of three narrators, their behavioral traits and tendencies are easily taken advantage of, along with making them prone to grievous mistakes and overall actions. The topics of betrayal and subsequent neglect are present in an almost unavoidable continuous cycle throughout Michael Dorris’ A Yellow Raft on Blue Water, as each generation of women faced a series of abrupt and unforeseen deceptions by those either in an influential position in their lives or those possessing their trust, leading to damaged and unresolved relationships.

     The plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun, deal with the love, honor, and respect of family. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, the caring but overbearing and over protective mother, wants to be taken care of, but in A Raisin in the Sun, Mama, as she is known, is the overseer of the family. The prospective of the plays identify that we have family members, like Amanda, as overprotective, or like Mama, as overseers. I am going to give a contrast of the mothers in the plays.

Often when women are placed in a leadership position it is immensely challenged by some part of the male society. It is not only the leadership role that are stereotyped through the play but also the stereotype of blaming women for another mans demise.

The roles of the women in the drama are significant because of the way they shape the story and help the reader understand the nature of one of the strangest events in human history. Throughout the novel, women are portrayed in many different ways. Some are shown as being good and moral people while others the complete opposite. Arthur Miller's treatment of women in this play show women as weak beings who give into their husbands. Each women in the drama plays a significant role in showing the different archetypes there were among women especially Mary Warren, Elizabeth Proctor, and Abigail Williams. In addition, Kohlberg’s Moral Stages are six developmental stages of human moral reasoning which can tie into the view in which we have of the women in the play.

changing attitudes toward life and the other characters in the play, particularly the women; and his reflection on the

What’s great about this play is gives us insight into the past and focuses on an average family and provides lots of material to do a feminist analysis of.

William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in 1930, around the time when the theories of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, were gaining popularity. In his story about the death of a mother, Addie, and her family’s reaction and grieving process, Faulkner adheres to many of Freud’s theories on defense mechanisms. According to Freud, “Challenges from the outer environment and from our inner urges threaten us with anxiety… The process that the ego (subconscious mind) uses to distort reality to protect itself are called defense mechanisms” (Friedman 39). The family’s lack of a mourning process, obsession over burying Addie in Jefferson, and desire to acquire materialistic items all exemplify Freud’s defense mechanisms. Faulkner

During the time in which the play took place society frowned upon women asserting themselves.  Women were supposed to play a role in which they supported their husbands, took care of their children,

   The familiar story of Rapunzel, as told by the brothers Jacob Ludwig Carl and Wilhelm Carl Grimm, takes on new meaning with a psychoanalytic interpretation. It is a complex tale about desire, achievement, and loss. The trio of husband, wife, and witch function as the ego, id, and superego respectively to govern behavior regarding a beautiful object of desire, especially when a prince discovers this object.

Hamlet, a play by William Shakespeare, is as much a mystery as a tale about depression, madness and sanity. Shakespeare reveals how the scourge of corruption and decay rapidly spread; and the emotional consequences that follow. Insanity, madness and depression are as intolerable as corruption and deceit; and just as intertwined. The play makes one ponder if it is possible to be sane in an insane world full of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption? By examining the themes of melancholy, madness and sanity in Hamlet, Shakespeare details his character’s descent from depression to madness. Additionally, Hamlet’s psychological state can be

Sigmund Freud's revolutionary ideas have set the standard for modern psychoanalysis in which students of psychology can learn from his ideas spread from the field of medicine to daily living. His studies in areas such as unconsciousness, dreams, sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and sexual maladjustments laid the foundation for future studies. In result, better understanding of the small things, which shape our lives.