1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,720 The following content is provided by MIT OpenCourseWare 2 00:00:02,720 --> 00:00:05,233 under a Creative Commons license. 3 00:00:05,233 --> 00:00:08,752 Additional information about our license at MIT 4 00:00:08,752 --> 00:00:12,271 OpenCourseWare in general is available at ocw.mit.edu. 5 00:00:16,265 --> 00:00:18,020 PROFESSOR: Good afternoon. 6 00:00:18,020 --> 00:00:27,040 I want to do two things today and they involve two sets of 7 00:00:27,040 --> 00:00:28,880 Freudian jargon. 8 00:00:28,880 --> 00:00:32,490 I want to talk about Freud's so called structural 9 00:00:32,490 --> 00:00:38,420 psychology that involves the terms id, ego, and superego 10 00:00:38,420 --> 00:00:42,830 and will give me a brief chance to talk about Freud's 11 00:00:42,830 --> 00:00:46,170 theory of civilization as a whole. 12 00:00:46,170 --> 00:00:48,500 And then I want to talk about Freud's developmental 13 00:00:48,500 --> 00:00:52,770 psychology which is where we get these notions of an oral, 14 00:00:52,770 --> 00:00:57,590 anal, phallic, and then onto latency in adult stages of 15 00:00:57,590 --> 00:00:58,590 development. 16 00:00:58,590 --> 00:01:01,890 And that'll give me a chance to talk about fairy tales or 17 00:01:01,890 --> 00:01:09,080 more broadly about the practice of using Freudian 18 00:01:09,080 --> 00:01:14,120 ideas to interpret literary texts. 19 00:01:14,120 --> 00:01:18,540 The second part may well run into next Tuesday as 20 00:01:18,540 --> 00:01:19,800 I think about it. 21 00:01:23,880 --> 00:01:30,010 Freud thought that babies came into the world thinking that 22 00:01:30,010 --> 00:01:34,910 they were co-extensive with the universe. 23 00:01:34,910 --> 00:01:36,220 That they were everything. 24 00:01:36,220 --> 00:01:39,560 Not that they were looking out in space saying, look, the 25 00:01:39,560 --> 00:01:40,970 stars-- they're me. 26 00:01:40,970 --> 00:01:45,700 But that what the initial experience of being a 27 00:01:45,700 --> 00:01:49,220 conscious entity was thinking that you're it, you're 28 00:01:49,220 --> 00:01:50,170 everything. 29 00:01:50,170 --> 00:01:52,380 It's not as though that's new with Freud. 30 00:01:52,380 --> 00:01:55,040 I won't attempt to do a reading of the piece of 31 00:01:55,040 --> 00:01:57,520 Tennyson that I put on the handout because I discover I'm 32 00:01:57,520 --> 00:01:58,770 a bad reader of Tennyson. 33 00:02:04,310 --> 00:02:08,440 But if you read that you will see Tennyson saying very much 34 00:02:08,440 --> 00:02:09,300 the same thing. 35 00:02:09,300 --> 00:02:15,140 That the job of an infant is to learn the use of I and me 36 00:02:15,140 --> 00:02:18,320 and finds, I am not what I see other than 37 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:19,430 the things I touched. 38 00:02:19,430 --> 00:02:23,560 You've got to figure out what's you and what's not you. 39 00:02:23,560 --> 00:02:25,630 Freud thought this little bundle of-- 40 00:02:28,770 --> 00:02:33,450 that this universe of a baby wanted one thing, which talked 41 00:02:33,450 --> 00:02:34,230 about last time. 42 00:02:34,230 --> 00:02:39,320 The kid wants pleasure and the kid wants pleasure now, anyway 43 00:02:39,320 --> 00:02:40,970 he/she can get it. 44 00:02:40,970 --> 00:02:45,080 That collection of unbridled desires is what 45 00:02:45,080 --> 00:02:47,040 Freud called the id. 46 00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:50,110 Now this all looks like very fancy or not very fancy-- 47 00:02:50,110 --> 00:02:52,790 looks like jargon, but in Freud's original writing it's 48 00:02:52,790 --> 00:02:53,940 not particularly jargony. 49 00:02:53,940 --> 00:02:58,370 It is just a Latinization of the word for it, the animal 50 00:02:58,370 --> 00:02:59,710 piece of you. 51 00:02:59,710 --> 00:03:07,190 The it that wants stuff and wants it now. 52 00:03:07,190 --> 00:03:13,170 The id is essentially unconscious. 53 00:03:13,170 --> 00:03:16,280 And well, actually to combine the two bits of the -- 54 00:03:16,280 --> 00:03:19,460 where does the id get its pleasures? 55 00:03:19,460 --> 00:03:24,170 Freud's series of developmental stages were 56 00:03:24,170 --> 00:03:29,390 driven by a notion of where the sources of pleasure were 57 00:03:29,390 --> 00:03:31,600 in the kid's life and so initially for 58 00:03:31,600 --> 00:03:34,040 instance, it's all oral. 59 00:03:34,040 --> 00:03:41,050 The fact that this all has a sexual overrun to it is in 60 00:03:41,050 --> 00:03:43,720 fact, probably more problem for Freud 61 00:03:43,720 --> 00:03:47,100 than useful for Freud. 62 00:03:50,280 --> 00:03:52,100 All right, so the kids get some-- 63 00:03:52,100 --> 00:03:55,050 oral stuff-- that what's giving the kid pleasure. 64 00:03:55,050 --> 00:03:56,380 That's sort of interesting. 65 00:03:56,380 --> 00:03:59,160 What really is important in this early stage of 66 00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:04,010 development though is well, one of the things is figuring 67 00:04:04,010 --> 00:04:06,220 out who I am. 68 00:04:06,220 --> 00:04:08,320 How much of this universe belongs to me? 69 00:04:08,320 --> 00:04:12,040 And is this universe a safe place? 70 00:04:12,040 --> 00:04:15,960 The real force behind Freud's stages of development are 71 00:04:15,960 --> 00:04:20,430 these stages where particular issues emerge really for the 72 00:04:20,430 --> 00:04:21,580 first time. 73 00:04:21,580 --> 00:04:24,620 Issues that will then turn out to be important for the rest 74 00:04:24,620 --> 00:04:25,880 of people's lives. 75 00:04:25,880 --> 00:04:31,450 So the initial issue that comes up in this oral stage of 76 00:04:31,450 --> 00:04:33,730 development is safety. 77 00:04:33,730 --> 00:04:35,730 Am I going to be fed when I need to be fed? 78 00:04:35,730 --> 00:04:37,010 Am I going to be warm enough? 79 00:04:37,010 --> 00:04:39,850 Am I going to be taken care of? 80 00:04:39,850 --> 00:04:44,280 That's newborn stuff, but it's not stuff that goes away. 81 00:04:44,280 --> 00:04:50,370 You know that concerns about, is the world a safe place is 82 00:04:50,370 --> 00:04:54,010 the sort of things that can occupy your mind now too. 83 00:04:54,010 --> 00:04:57,520 How you understand the world, how you understand those 84 00:04:57,520 --> 00:05:01,060 problems says Freud -- not unreasonably -- 85 00:05:01,060 --> 00:05:05,300 are likely to be shaped by these early experiences. 86 00:05:05,300 --> 00:05:10,630 If your early experiences is of a safe, comfortable world 87 00:05:10,630 --> 00:05:13,945 you're going to treat later challenges differently than if 88 00:05:13,945 --> 00:05:16,500 your early experiences-- who knows if mom's ever going to 89 00:05:16,500 --> 00:05:18,890 get around to feeding me again. 90 00:05:18,890 --> 00:05:21,520 That's going to be a different kind of experience. 91 00:05:21,520 --> 00:05:23,920 The anal stage-- all right, why is it anal? 92 00:05:23,920 --> 00:05:27,010 Well, it's anal because Freud had some notion that there's 93 00:05:27,010 --> 00:05:30,410 certain pleasures in the elimination process 94 00:05:30,410 --> 00:05:31,390 and things like that. 95 00:05:31,390 --> 00:05:36,340 But the real issue here, the life-long issue that emerges 96 00:05:36,340 --> 00:05:39,590 is who's in control? 97 00:05:39,590 --> 00:05:43,700 And the reason that's an anal stage issue is because this is 98 00:05:43,700 --> 00:05:49,070 the point at which if you're an infant it's not just 99 00:05:49,070 --> 00:05:51,080 anything goes anymore. 100 00:05:51,080 --> 00:05:56,600 Up to this point the first great crisis of control in a 101 00:05:56,600 --> 00:06:00,300 little child's life is very often toilet training. 102 00:06:00,300 --> 00:06:03,100 Up to this point you could do whatever you wanted, wherever 103 00:06:03,100 --> 00:06:04,430 you want to do it. 104 00:06:04,430 --> 00:06:08,950 Now all of a sudden somebody's saying, do it there, now. 105 00:06:08,950 --> 00:06:10,660 Don't play with it. 106 00:06:10,660 --> 00:06:12,820 Don't do any of the various-- 107 00:06:12,820 --> 00:06:15,310 it wasn't disgusting before. 108 00:06:15,310 --> 00:06:20,130 Back when I was very little they looked at it-- oh, great 109 00:06:20,130 --> 00:06:20,890 [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 110 00:06:20,890 --> 00:06:22,760 Now it's disgusting and I gotta put it over there. 111 00:06:22,760 --> 00:06:24,980 What's this about? 112 00:06:24,980 --> 00:06:27,940 And you got to figure out how much control do 113 00:06:27,940 --> 00:06:30,710 you have over yourself? 114 00:06:30,710 --> 00:06:37,220 And how much are you in the control of somebody else? 115 00:06:37,220 --> 00:06:43,300 Here the issue is identity. 116 00:06:43,300 --> 00:06:44,980 Who am I? 117 00:06:44,980 --> 00:06:46,840 Identity. 118 00:06:46,840 --> 00:06:47,580 Who am I? 119 00:06:47,580 --> 00:06:51,690 And more specifically, what does it mean 120 00:06:51,690 --> 00:06:54,540 to the male or female? 121 00:06:54,540 --> 00:06:59,400 I'll come back to the details of that a little later on 122 00:06:59,400 --> 00:07:02,890 because it gets me a little ahead of the story. 123 00:07:02,890 --> 00:07:05,780 Presently we're still back here with little Mister Id. 124 00:07:05,780 --> 00:07:13,440 This unbridled collection desires who wants everything 125 00:07:13,440 --> 00:07:15,620 and wants it now. 126 00:07:15,620 --> 00:07:20,740 At some point the id runs up against what Freud called the 127 00:07:20,740 --> 00:07:24,310 reality principle, which is you can't get what you want 128 00:07:24,310 --> 00:07:26,390 all the time, exactly when you want it. 129 00:07:26,390 --> 00:07:30,390 If you haven't noticed this at this point that's probably a 130 00:07:30,390 --> 00:07:31,900 little grim. 131 00:07:31,900 --> 00:07:36,720 The ego, which is just the Latinization of the word for I 132 00:07:36,720 --> 00:07:38,280 or the self. 133 00:07:38,280 --> 00:07:45,860 The ego grows out of the collision of this little Miss 134 00:07:45,860 --> 00:07:48,510 Id with reality. 135 00:07:48,510 --> 00:07:56,300 So the ego has to check the desires of the id. 136 00:07:56,300 --> 00:08:01,450 And the ego is sort of the embodiment of this effort to 137 00:08:01,450 --> 00:08:04,930 figure out how much of the universe really is me. 138 00:08:04,930 --> 00:08:08,840 So the sort of thing you can imagine a kid discovering is 139 00:08:08,840 --> 00:08:10,900 all right, I'm an oral stage baby. 140 00:08:10,900 --> 00:08:13,250 I like sucking on stuff. 141 00:08:13,250 --> 00:08:17,860 There are some things that I can suck on anytime I want. 142 00:08:17,860 --> 00:08:20,340 You know there's this thumb thing-- 143 00:08:20,340 --> 00:08:22,750 anytime I want it it's there. 144 00:08:22,750 --> 00:08:25,440 There's other things, like the bottle or the breast or 145 00:08:25,440 --> 00:08:28,170 whatever, they're different. 146 00:08:28,170 --> 00:08:30,350 I like them, but they're fundamentally different. 147 00:08:30,350 --> 00:08:33,470 They're not me. 148 00:08:33,470 --> 00:08:37,700 At the most basic level you have to figure out how much of 149 00:08:37,700 --> 00:08:39,450 the world is you. 150 00:08:39,450 --> 00:08:46,310 Now this again, ramifies through the rest of your life. 151 00:08:46,310 --> 00:08:51,110 If you grow up considering that you are co-extensive with 152 00:08:51,110 --> 00:08:55,130 the universe and that you make the planets turn in their 153 00:08:55,130 --> 00:08:59,240 orbits, you're going to be an odd adult, right? 154 00:08:59,240 --> 00:09:01,110 You've got to shrink it down from that. 155 00:09:01,110 --> 00:09:03,590 If you shrink down too far-- 156 00:09:03,590 --> 00:09:05,680 I'm not in control of anything. 157 00:09:05,680 --> 00:09:07,210 This didn't work out well for me. 158 00:09:07,210 --> 00:09:08,330 I'm not in control of everything. 159 00:09:08,330 --> 00:09:11,270 I'm just a little worm pushed around by force-- you know, 160 00:09:11,270 --> 00:09:13,360 that's not going to be very healthy either. 161 00:09:13,360 --> 00:09:16,430 So the job of this emerging ego is to come up with some 162 00:09:16,430 --> 00:09:21,460 reasonable estimate of what your powers are and what it is 163 00:09:21,460 --> 00:09:26,830 that you might be in some sort of control over. 164 00:09:26,830 --> 00:09:30,860 So now the ego's busy there fighting with the id. 165 00:09:30,860 --> 00:09:32,590 So that the id is saying I want to 166 00:09:32,590 --> 00:09:33,310 kill my little brother. 167 00:09:33,310 --> 00:09:34,840 The ego says, you can't do that. 168 00:09:34,840 --> 00:09:36,790 The id says, how come? 169 00:09:36,790 --> 00:09:41,210 The ego says, well because mom would whack us. 170 00:09:41,210 --> 00:09:42,720 And the id says, I don't care. 171 00:09:42,720 --> 00:09:43,570 I still want to kill him. 172 00:09:43,570 --> 00:09:46,560 And the ego at this point starts to say 173 00:09:46,560 --> 00:09:47,640 things like forget it. 174 00:09:47,640 --> 00:09:49,170 We're going to repress that idea. 175 00:09:49,170 --> 00:09:50,940 This is where you get the beginnings of ideas of 176 00:09:50,940 --> 00:09:54,280 repression that I was talking about last time. 177 00:09:54,280 --> 00:09:59,870 All of these Freudian bits of theories attempt to interlock 178 00:09:59,870 --> 00:10:00,830 in some fashion. 179 00:10:00,830 --> 00:10:04,790 So the ego is busy taking the more unacceptable bits of the 180 00:10:04,790 --> 00:10:10,340 id and stuffing them away in that unconscious reservoir of 181 00:10:10,340 --> 00:10:11,710 the repressed. 182 00:10:11,710 --> 00:10:15,050 Now you'll see that that's gotten you from an id who just 183 00:10:15,050 --> 00:10:16,260 was ruled by pleasure. 184 00:10:16,260 --> 00:10:18,610 This really essentially amoral id. 185 00:10:18,610 --> 00:10:22,910 You've now got the beginnings of a sense of morality here. 186 00:10:22,910 --> 00:10:26,490 It's not very sophisticated, but it's on the one hand, this 187 00:10:26,490 --> 00:10:27,390 would be fun. 188 00:10:27,390 --> 00:10:30,130 On the other hand, we can't do it because 189 00:10:30,130 --> 00:10:31,180 we might get punished. 190 00:10:31,180 --> 00:10:32,800 So it's sort of a reward and punishment. 191 00:10:32,800 --> 00:10:34,260 Why not rob the bank? 192 00:10:34,260 --> 00:10:35,920 Because you'll get arrested and thrown in jail. 193 00:10:35,920 --> 00:10:42,100 It's that sort of crime and punishment kind of morality. 194 00:10:42,100 --> 00:10:47,740 Morality gets more complicated when you reach this oedipal 195 00:10:47,740 --> 00:10:52,720 stage of development. 196 00:10:52,720 --> 00:10:57,450 To explain that I need to say a little more about that 197 00:10:57,450 --> 00:11:00,360 stage, which I can see that on the handout 198 00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:01,800 I promised I would. 199 00:11:04,520 --> 00:11:06,470 I'll do the male version of this. 200 00:11:06,470 --> 00:11:08,830 If this is about identity and 201 00:11:08,830 --> 00:11:11,020 particularly, sexual identity-- 202 00:11:11,020 --> 00:11:14,100 there's going to be a male story and a female story. 203 00:11:14,100 --> 00:11:15,600 Let's do the male story and we'll come back 204 00:11:15,600 --> 00:11:16,850 to the female story. 205 00:11:25,630 --> 00:11:28,650 The large scale notion that makes some degree of sense is 206 00:11:28,650 --> 00:11:30,170 that you've got to figure out what does it 207 00:11:30,170 --> 00:11:31,530 mean to be a male? 208 00:11:31,530 --> 00:11:37,210 That's an important thing to figure out and it's likely 209 00:11:37,210 --> 00:11:42,340 that Dad or other adult males in the immediate vicinity are 210 00:11:42,340 --> 00:11:47,200 going to be sort of a model for what that's going to mean. 211 00:11:47,200 --> 00:11:55,630 The difficulty for Freud or the start of the conflict in 212 00:11:55,630 --> 00:12:00,390 an oedipal conflict is that the child starts very much 213 00:12:00,390 --> 00:12:02,390 attached to Mom. 214 00:12:02,390 --> 00:12:05,190 It's Mom who provides nourishment. 215 00:12:05,190 --> 00:12:09,230 It's Mom who gave birth to you and so on. 216 00:12:09,230 --> 00:12:10,890 How are you going to get an attachment or 217 00:12:10,890 --> 00:12:12,240 identification with Dad? 218 00:12:12,240 --> 00:12:16,270 Well, what Freud proposed was that little kids, little 219 00:12:16,270 --> 00:12:19,950 boys-- stick with boys here-- little boys initially see 220 00:12:19,950 --> 00:12:22,880 themselves in competition with Dad. 221 00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:24,300 They like Mom. 222 00:12:24,300 --> 00:12:25,930 Mom is great. 223 00:12:25,930 --> 00:12:27,950 They want Mom. 224 00:12:27,950 --> 00:12:31,860 All right, it's called oedipal because Freud saw a parallel 225 00:12:31,860 --> 00:12:33,950 with the Greek Myth of Oedipus. 226 00:12:33,950 --> 00:12:37,150 Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother. 227 00:12:37,150 --> 00:12:41,050 So you get this weird notion that somehow Freud thought 228 00:12:41,050 --> 00:12:44,920 little boys wanted to sexually possess their mothers and that 229 00:12:44,920 --> 00:12:47,050 sounds both weird and icky. 230 00:12:51,220 --> 00:12:53,180 Freud didn't do himself any help here, he was talking 231 00:12:53,180 --> 00:12:55,160 about infantile sexuality. 232 00:12:55,160 --> 00:12:58,330 Everybody heard the sexuality bit and sort of left off the 233 00:12:58,330 --> 00:13:00,100 infantile bit. 234 00:13:00,100 --> 00:13:02,650 Freud is not thinking in any sort of adult 235 00:13:02,650 --> 00:13:03,650 sexual terms here. 236 00:13:03,650 --> 00:13:06,380 He's saying look, the little kid likes Mom. 237 00:13:06,380 --> 00:13:07,440 Mom's a good thing. 238 00:13:07,440 --> 00:13:09,420 He wants Mom all to himself. 239 00:13:09,420 --> 00:13:12,440 Now it turns out that there's Dad. 240 00:13:12,440 --> 00:13:17,010 Dad mysteriously seems to have some claim on Mom, too. 241 00:13:17,010 --> 00:13:20,784 And so the little kid in this infantile kind of way figures, 242 00:13:20,784 --> 00:13:23,550 I'm going to have it out with Dad. 243 00:13:23,550 --> 00:13:26,810 We're going to have a fight here man because there's only 244 00:13:26,810 --> 00:13:30,400 one Mom and I want her. 245 00:13:30,400 --> 00:13:31,930 I've still got a lot of id going on 246 00:13:31,930 --> 00:13:34,700 here, I want Mom and-- 247 00:13:34,700 --> 00:13:36,000 all right, that's Stage One. 248 00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:38,460 That's the conflict stage. 249 00:13:38,460 --> 00:13:39,940 I can't remember what buzz word I used 250 00:13:39,940 --> 00:13:40,620 for the second stage. 251 00:13:40,620 --> 00:13:43,160 Oh, the second stage is capitulation. 252 00:13:43,160 --> 00:13:45,730 Well, there's a problem with this conflict. 253 00:13:45,730 --> 00:13:49,620 OK, I'm going to have a big fight with Dad. 254 00:13:49,620 --> 00:13:50,800 Dad. 255 00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:53,780 Oh man, like Dad's really big. 256 00:13:53,780 --> 00:13:57,460 If Dad ever figures out that I want to have a fight with him 257 00:13:57,460 --> 00:13:59,300 Dad is going to kill me. 258 00:13:59,300 --> 00:14:01,170 Maybe he's going to castrate me, I'm not sure. 259 00:14:01,170 --> 00:14:03,310 But it's something really, really bad is going to happen 260 00:14:03,310 --> 00:14:09,630 here and so I better deny that I was ever interested in this. 261 00:14:09,630 --> 00:14:13,600 In fact, what I'm going to do is I'm going to reject, 262 00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:19,470 suppress my desire for Mom and I'm going to idealize Dad. 263 00:14:19,470 --> 00:14:27,230 I'm going to come to take Dad, in response to this perceived 264 00:14:27,230 --> 00:14:32,190 threat, perhaps to my very life I'm 265 00:14:32,190 --> 00:14:33,210 going to idealize Dad. 266 00:14:33,210 --> 00:14:36,290 And in some sense incorporate Dad into me. 267 00:14:36,290 --> 00:14:41,490 And that act of incorporation is the beginnings of 268 00:14:41,490 --> 00:14:45,440 development of what Freud called the superego. 269 00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:48,300 Another Latinization, this time of a term that just means 270 00:14:48,300 --> 00:14:53,890 sort of over I. You know, the thing that is above the self. 271 00:14:53,890 --> 00:14:57,540 It's not quite your conscience. 272 00:14:57,540 --> 00:15:01,270 It's not unrelated to your conscience, but it initially 273 00:15:01,270 --> 00:15:05,780 for Freud starts out as the voice of the father for a 274 00:15:05,780 --> 00:15:06,970 little boy. 275 00:15:06,970 --> 00:15:08,630 Well, let's just say voice of parent. 276 00:15:11,380 --> 00:15:18,610 And will eventually become the voice of society as a whole 277 00:15:18,610 --> 00:15:21,520 telling you how to live. 278 00:15:21,520 --> 00:15:25,940 Not necessarily consciously, not necessarily explicitly, 279 00:15:25,940 --> 00:15:29,080 but telling you what the rules are. 280 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:34,160 Now again, you might think that this whole business of a 281 00:15:34,160 --> 00:15:40,900 conflict with Daddy over Mommy and the notion that you have 282 00:15:40,900 --> 00:15:43,700 some internalized voice of the parent that is going to be 283 00:15:43,700 --> 00:15:45,750 sort of the roots of your morality, your more 284 00:15:45,750 --> 00:15:47,230 sophisticated adult morality. 285 00:15:47,230 --> 00:15:49,560 That that all sounds a little strange. 286 00:15:49,560 --> 00:15:54,410 You can get a feeling for where such thoughts might come 287 00:15:54,410 --> 00:15:56,520 from again, if you hang around with kids. 288 00:15:56,520 --> 00:16:00,240 Remember last time we were talking about you know, 289 00:16:00,240 --> 00:16:02,340 hugging your little brother till he turns blue. 290 00:16:02,340 --> 00:16:08,270 Well look, I've now raised three sons through the oedipal 291 00:16:08,270 --> 00:16:10,020 stage of development. 292 00:16:10,020 --> 00:16:15,140 I think every last one of them at some point in the ages of 293 00:16:15,140 --> 00:16:18,700 around three, four the appropriate Freudian age has 294 00:16:18,700 --> 00:16:21,420 hopped into bed some Sunday morning or something like 295 00:16:21,420 --> 00:16:25,130 that-- into our great, big, huge, king-sized bed and 296 00:16:25,130 --> 00:16:28,690 asserted this bed isn't big enough for the three of us. 297 00:16:28,690 --> 00:16:32,490 Why doesn't Daddy get out? 298 00:16:32,490 --> 00:16:35,370 And mostly what you're sitting there thinking is, no kid 299 00:16:35,370 --> 00:16:36,960 should never be born to a psychologist. 300 00:16:36,960 --> 00:16:39,620 What's he doing, reading the books on the side here? 301 00:16:39,620 --> 00:16:41,890 And then I thinking, what am I supposed to do now? 302 00:16:41,890 --> 00:16:44,040 You know, am I suppose to like threaten to kill them or 303 00:16:44,040 --> 00:16:47,940 something because that develops morality? 304 00:16:50,470 --> 00:16:57,950 So you can really see these sorts of seemingly oedipal 305 00:16:57,950 --> 00:17:02,060 comments in kids of that age and you can also sometimes 306 00:17:02,060 --> 00:17:07,790 here this voice of the parent as it gets internalized, like 307 00:17:07,790 --> 00:17:16,230 a little kid who's been told, the cake's over here. 308 00:17:16,230 --> 00:17:18,950 It's for dinner, don't mess with it. 309 00:17:18,950 --> 00:17:22,670 Don't go sticking your finger in the chocolate icing again. 310 00:17:22,670 --> 00:17:27,460 So no, no, no, you hear the kid say it. 311 00:17:27,460 --> 00:17:30,660 The nice thing about little kids is that the superego will 312 00:17:30,660 --> 00:17:35,630 verbalize itself for you-- no, no. 313 00:17:38,850 --> 00:17:45,090 So the idea is that the stress or the trauma of this oedipal 314 00:17:45,090 --> 00:17:50,230 conflict is what drives the superego down into the psyche 315 00:17:50,230 --> 00:17:53,510 almost like a spike from the outside. 316 00:17:53,510 --> 00:17:56,880 Well, I would be remiss if I didn't say something about 317 00:17:56,880 --> 00:18:01,150 Freud's theory about how this works out for women. 318 00:18:01,150 --> 00:18:04,390 Now I might be remiss, but you wouldn't be missing anything 319 00:18:04,390 --> 00:18:05,360 in terms of-- 320 00:18:05,360 --> 00:18:07,830 people have all sorts of problems with this oedipal 321 00:18:07,830 --> 00:18:09,950 theory business. 322 00:18:09,950 --> 00:18:12,080 Because for instance, what happens if you get raised in a 323 00:18:12,080 --> 00:18:14,340 single-parent family with just Mom? 324 00:18:14,340 --> 00:18:16,560 Is there any evidence that your development comes out 325 00:18:16,560 --> 00:18:17,060 differently? 326 00:18:17,060 --> 00:18:19,210 No, in fact. 327 00:18:19,210 --> 00:18:21,630 So you don't need Dad there. 328 00:18:21,630 --> 00:18:23,870 You do need to figure out what it means to be male. 329 00:18:23,870 --> 00:18:29,630 Let me say a quick word about homosexuality. 330 00:18:29,630 --> 00:18:35,710 Freud regarded homosexuality seemingly as a variant of an 331 00:18:35,710 --> 00:18:37,290 outcome to this. 332 00:18:37,290 --> 00:18:41,710 He did not seem to regard it as a pathology. 333 00:18:41,710 --> 00:18:46,130 So he's got a very interesting letter written to the mother 334 00:18:46,130 --> 00:18:48,120 of a gay man. 335 00:18:48,120 --> 00:18:50,610 The mother was worried about this and he says basically, 336 00:18:50,610 --> 00:18:53,650 there's a bunch of ways this plays out. 337 00:18:53,650 --> 00:18:58,290 The mainline one is in the words of the old song you grow 338 00:18:58,290 --> 00:19:01,040 up to, I want a girl just like the girl who 339 00:19:01,040 --> 00:19:02,350 married dear old Dad. 340 00:19:02,350 --> 00:19:05,530 That's the sort of ultimate goal of this. 341 00:19:05,530 --> 00:19:08,720 In sort of the mainstream version you reject your desire 342 00:19:08,720 --> 00:19:11,200 for Mom, you go into this latent period. 343 00:19:11,200 --> 00:19:15,210 You go and you do math for awhile and then you wake up as 344 00:19:15,210 --> 00:19:18,670 a sexually mature adult, not looking for your mother, but 345 00:19:18,670 --> 00:19:23,210 looking for an appropriate object of your desires. 346 00:19:23,210 --> 00:19:25,430 Freud thought that there were other possible outcomes. 347 00:19:25,430 --> 00:19:27,660 That they were just other possible outcome. 348 00:19:27,660 --> 00:19:32,780 Subsequent generations of American psychology declared 349 00:19:32,780 --> 00:19:36,490 homosexuality to be a pathology and it was only in 350 00:19:36,490 --> 00:19:41,520 the '70s that American psychology returned in a sense 351 00:19:41,520 --> 00:19:48,010 to this view that it's a variant, not a problem. 352 00:19:48,010 --> 00:19:49,600 So women-- how did we get to women. 353 00:19:49,600 --> 00:19:51,220 What's the problem with women? 354 00:19:51,220 --> 00:19:56,030 The problem is you need the same fight thought Freud. 355 00:19:56,030 --> 00:19:58,150 He's got himself sold on this oedipal thing. 356 00:19:58,150 --> 00:20:00,580 And you need the same fight, but now you need a fight 357 00:20:00,580 --> 00:20:05,330 between the daughter and Mom for Dad. 358 00:20:05,330 --> 00:20:08,370 And the problem is that the initial bonding of the 359 00:20:08,370 --> 00:20:10,590 daughter is also to Mom. 360 00:20:10,590 --> 00:20:14,160 So that's no good because you can't fight with the person 361 00:20:14,160 --> 00:20:17,170 you're bonded too, so he's got to get the bond to flip. 362 00:20:17,170 --> 00:20:22,710 And so he came up with one of his less credible constructs-- 363 00:20:22,710 --> 00:20:25,100 the one that even good Freudians don't really believe 364 00:20:25,100 --> 00:20:27,470 in, which is penis envy. 365 00:20:27,470 --> 00:20:28,590 What is that? 366 00:20:28,590 --> 00:20:31,590 Well, he figured that little girls at some point figured 367 00:20:31,590 --> 00:20:35,630 out that they did not have something that little boys 368 00:20:35,630 --> 00:20:38,700 had, and that this was a disaster. 369 00:20:38,700 --> 00:20:40,960 This was very bad and they figured out that Mom didn't 370 00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:41,930 have one either. 371 00:20:41,930 --> 00:20:44,980 And therefore, Mom was defective and we ought to 372 00:20:44,980 --> 00:20:47,170 admire Dad instead. 373 00:20:47,170 --> 00:20:48,620 And then we can go and fight with Mom. 374 00:20:52,990 --> 00:20:54,540 This was traumatic, this discovery. 375 00:20:54,540 --> 00:20:57,880 But it wasn't so traumatic, so Freud also theorized that 376 00:20:57,880 --> 00:21:01,020 since it was that trauma that was creating the superego and 377 00:21:01,020 --> 00:21:04,230 as a result, adult morality that it followed that women 378 00:21:04,230 --> 00:21:06,360 were simply less moral than men. 379 00:21:06,360 --> 00:21:11,450 A conclusion born out anytime you open the newspaper, right? 380 00:21:11,450 --> 00:21:14,700 It's not one of the more successful pieces of Freud, 381 00:21:14,700 --> 00:21:18,660 but it is the source of my favorite, really bad 382 00:21:18,660 --> 00:21:20,870 experiment in this realm. 383 00:21:20,870 --> 00:21:25,190 Which was an experiment where somebody gave a paper and 384 00:21:25,190 --> 00:21:27,330 pencil test to a group like you. 385 00:21:27,330 --> 00:21:29,280 One of these sort of SAT things where you're filling in 386 00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:33,460 the little things with the golf pencils and stuff. 387 00:21:33,460 --> 00:21:36,890 And then you hand the thing back and the experimenters 388 00:21:36,890 --> 00:21:39,930 don't care a bit about the test at all. 389 00:21:39,930 --> 00:21:43,710 All they care about is who returned the little pencils. 390 00:21:43,710 --> 00:21:46,380 And more guys returned the pencils than women. 391 00:21:49,310 --> 00:21:53,770 Anyway, it's really lame. 392 00:21:53,770 --> 00:22:02,830 So look, the broad issue of what does it mean to be a boy 393 00:22:02,830 --> 00:22:06,180 or a girl, a man or a woman-- 394 00:22:06,180 --> 00:22:09,540 who is going to turn out to be an appropriate object for my 395 00:22:09,540 --> 00:22:11,080 sexual desire and so on? 396 00:22:11,080 --> 00:22:14,540 Those are interesting questions. 397 00:22:14,540 --> 00:22:18,550 There is considerable question about whether this actual 398 00:22:18,550 --> 00:22:21,090 oedipal conflict-- 399 00:22:21,090 --> 00:22:24,480 actually there's very little doubt that the strict form of 400 00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:26,030 it is not required. 401 00:22:26,030 --> 00:22:29,810 The single parent family thing is one good bit of evidence 402 00:22:29,810 --> 00:22:30,510 against that. 403 00:22:30,510 --> 00:22:33,400 And the woman story-- 404 00:22:33,400 --> 00:22:34,910 it's just kind of whack. 405 00:22:38,270 --> 00:22:45,400 In any case, around this time you do get this development of 406 00:22:45,400 --> 00:22:49,240 a more sophisticated morality. 407 00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:54,170 And in Freud's view what you had was this poor ego here 408 00:22:54,170 --> 00:22:57,980 that was on the one side, assailed by the desires of the 409 00:22:57,980 --> 00:23:01,310 id that wanted to do all sorts of unspeakable and stupid 410 00:23:01,310 --> 00:23:04,230 things that you couldn't do in the face of reality and then 411 00:23:04,230 --> 00:23:08,020 there's the demands on the other side of the superego 412 00:23:08,020 --> 00:23:11,170 mostly, that doesn't want you to do stuff too. 413 00:23:11,170 --> 00:23:13,040 But anyway, it's got its own demand. 414 00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:17,820 And the ego has to somehow thread a path through here. 415 00:23:17,820 --> 00:23:21,890 Now how does the superego let you know what 416 00:23:21,890 --> 00:23:24,600 you're supposed to do? 417 00:23:24,600 --> 00:23:25,810 Well, it says on the handout, does it? 418 00:23:25,810 --> 00:23:27,810 Where'd I put it on the handout? 419 00:23:27,810 --> 00:23:28,690 Oh, no, I put a blank. 420 00:23:28,690 --> 00:23:29,680 Look at that. 421 00:23:29,680 --> 00:23:36,620 The superego has a weapon that lets you know when you've done 422 00:23:36,620 --> 00:23:39,490 what it does not approve of. 423 00:23:39,490 --> 00:23:43,470 To figure out what that weapon is you can invoke your own 424 00:23:43,470 --> 00:23:44,890 introspection. 425 00:23:44,890 --> 00:23:49,760 What you need to do is imagine some activity that your 426 00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:54,320 parents would disapprove of. 427 00:23:54,320 --> 00:23:56,460 It can be society as a whole if you like, but 428 00:23:56,460 --> 00:23:57,360 parents will do. 429 00:23:57,360 --> 00:24:00,280 So think of something that your parents would deeply 430 00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:04,640 disapprove of if you phoned up and said, guess what I did. 431 00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:09,200 And ask yourself, how would you feel the next day? 432 00:24:12,372 --> 00:24:12,901 AUDIENCE: Guilty. 433 00:24:12,901 --> 00:24:14,151 PROFESSOR: Guilty, thank you. 434 00:24:17,360 --> 00:24:22,580 Guilt is the weapon of the superego in this view. 435 00:24:22,580 --> 00:24:26,550 So when you feel guilty a good Freudian would say, you're 436 00:24:26,550 --> 00:24:29,720 feeling guilty because you've done something that 437 00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:32,760 transgressed the boundaries set by the superego. 438 00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:36,830 Now look, I went out and I committed murder and I feel 439 00:24:36,830 --> 00:24:37,830 really bad about that. 440 00:24:37,830 --> 00:24:40,100 Yeah, all right that's not too terribly interesting. 441 00:24:40,100 --> 00:24:43,000 The more interesting case is where patients who said, I 442 00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:44,590 feel guilty. 443 00:24:44,590 --> 00:24:45,960 I don't really know why. 444 00:24:45,960 --> 00:24:49,360 I just feel this sense of guilt. 445 00:24:49,360 --> 00:24:51,670 And a Freudian would say, well look. 446 00:24:51,670 --> 00:24:55,140 This isn't all conscious stuff. 447 00:24:55,140 --> 00:24:59,800 You've apparently transgressed some boundary that you don't 448 00:24:59,800 --> 00:25:02,820 quite recognize yourself consciously, but it's there. 449 00:25:05,950 --> 00:25:07,920 If you want to get over this guilt we need to figure out 450 00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:09,010 what that problem is. 451 00:25:09,010 --> 00:25:13,690 Now, how many people here enjoy feeling guilty? 452 00:25:13,690 --> 00:25:18,510 All right, so it follows that the ego, which is not eager to 453 00:25:18,510 --> 00:25:22,230 sit around feeling guilty is going to have some defense 454 00:25:22,230 --> 00:25:24,010 against that. 455 00:25:24,010 --> 00:25:27,280 So introspection oughta work here, too. 456 00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:29,770 Let's go back to that, whatever it was that you were 457 00:25:29,770 --> 00:25:33,970 going to do that would be really, really wrong. 458 00:25:33,970 --> 00:25:37,740 Now let's suppose you haven't done it yet. 459 00:25:37,740 --> 00:25:39,800 But you're going to do it. 460 00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:41,570 It's right over there. 461 00:25:41,570 --> 00:25:45,480 You can just go in and do it. 462 00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:49,265 How will you feel? 463 00:25:49,265 --> 00:25:51,230 AUDIENCE: Anxious. 464 00:25:51,230 --> 00:25:52,030 PROFESSOR: Anxious. 465 00:25:52,030 --> 00:25:53,790 I heard an anxious over there somewhere. 466 00:25:53,790 --> 00:25:56,350 Thank you for the anxious, wherever anxious is. 467 00:25:56,350 --> 00:26:05,740 Anxiety is considered to be the defense mechanism of the 468 00:26:05,740 --> 00:26:10,910 ego against the predations of the superego. 469 00:26:10,910 --> 00:26:16,070 So when you feel anxious in this context the answer is 470 00:26:16,070 --> 00:26:17,960 well, you're pushing up against something that the 471 00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:19,510 superego doesn't want you to do. 472 00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:26,670 Now let's go back to the case where I feel anxious, but I 473 00:26:26,670 --> 00:26:29,620 don't know why. 474 00:26:29,620 --> 00:26:35,603 Classic Freudian view would have been there's some chunk 475 00:26:35,603 --> 00:26:38,970 of your superego that you're getting close to there, it's 476 00:26:38,970 --> 00:26:43,390 rules and it's not happy with you. 477 00:26:43,390 --> 00:26:47,240 Any reasonable more modern view would include the 478 00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:52,160 possibility that you are just having an anxiety attack that 479 00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:55,930 we might consider to be more biological than psychological. 480 00:26:55,930 --> 00:26:59,180 That there are chunks of the brain that if they are 481 00:26:59,180 --> 00:27:01,660 overactive-- 482 00:27:01,660 --> 00:27:03,530 the experience is being anxious. 483 00:27:03,530 --> 00:27:07,970 If they're overactive for essentially neurochemical 484 00:27:07,970 --> 00:27:11,920 reasons you may feel a sort of a disembodied anxiety that's 485 00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:14,980 got nothing to do with whether or not you're about to do 486 00:27:14,980 --> 00:27:18,710 something that Mother doesn't approve of, but has everything 487 00:27:18,710 --> 00:27:22,460 to do with the balance of your chemicals. 488 00:27:22,460 --> 00:27:28,410 The current position in the pendulum that swings back and 489 00:27:28,410 --> 00:27:34,620 forth on how to handle essentially psychiatric issues 490 00:27:34,620 --> 00:27:39,310 would be to treat free-floating anxiety as 491 00:27:39,310 --> 00:27:41,450 essentially biological problem that we 492 00:27:41,450 --> 00:27:43,910 might want to medicate. 493 00:27:43,910 --> 00:27:46,600 And we tend to undervalue the possibility that you're 494 00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:49,560 feeling anxious for underlying psychological rather than for 495 00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:52,230 underlying neurochemical reasons. 496 00:27:52,230 --> 00:27:54,200 And of course, you can feel anxious for things that don't 497 00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:57,200 have anything particular to do with the superego or the 498 00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:01,110 imbalance of your neurotransmitters. 499 00:28:01,110 --> 00:28:05,780 If I stand on the lectern on one foot I might feel a 500 00:28:05,780 --> 00:28:08,860 certain amount of anxiety for this because there's a 501 00:28:08,860 --> 00:28:12,830 straightforward threat to my personal safety. 502 00:28:12,830 --> 00:28:17,120 So there are multiple roots into anxiety, but within this 503 00:28:17,120 --> 00:28:23,060 context anxiety is the warning sign that you are embarking on 504 00:28:23,060 --> 00:28:26,360 a course that mother would not approve of or maybe dad or 505 00:28:26,360 --> 00:28:30,800 maybe the broader society as a whole. 506 00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:40,610 So the result here for Freud is that with this collection 507 00:28:40,610 --> 00:28:43,000 of psychological structures-- again, psychological 508 00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:44,940 structures, nobody thinks you're going to go into it an 509 00:28:44,940 --> 00:28:49,990 MRI machine and find the locus of the superego. 510 00:28:49,990 --> 00:28:53,530 But the result of this is that we don't end up raping and 511 00:28:53,530 --> 00:28:57,450 pillaging our way across the landscapes. 512 00:28:57,450 --> 00:29:00,350 We sublimate our aggressive urges into things 513 00:29:00,350 --> 00:29:03,450 like sports or work. 514 00:29:05,950 --> 00:29:12,270 The unbridled sexual desires of the id get redirected into 515 00:29:12,270 --> 00:29:17,490 courtship or into literature or into some other appropriate 516 00:29:17,490 --> 00:29:20,300 kind of realm. 517 00:29:24,030 --> 00:29:27,860 From this Freud ends up generalizing a theory of 518 00:29:27,860 --> 00:29:29,220 civilization as a whole. 519 00:29:29,220 --> 00:29:31,530 He wrote a very interesting book late in his life called 520 00:29:31,530 --> 00:29:33,700 Civilization and Its Discontents. 521 00:29:33,700 --> 00:29:35,420 Why its discontents? 522 00:29:35,420 --> 00:29:41,330 Freud believed that in order to be civilized you were going 523 00:29:41,330 --> 00:29:47,090 to have to fight against the desires of your id. 524 00:29:47,090 --> 00:29:49,710 Your id was going to be unhappy with you and you were 525 00:29:49,710 --> 00:29:53,120 going to have to fight against the whacko strictures of the 526 00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:55,530 superego, which were going to be too strict for any normal 527 00:29:55,530 --> 00:29:57,760 person to hold onto. 528 00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:00,030 You were necessarily going to be repressed, 529 00:30:00,030 --> 00:30:04,210 dissatisfied, and so on. 530 00:30:04,210 --> 00:30:08,300 That was the price you paid for being civilized. 531 00:30:08,300 --> 00:30:12,500 Or one way to think about this, one line from the book 532 00:30:12,500 --> 00:30:16,650 is that "the first man to hurl a spear-- sorry, to hurl an 533 00:30:16,650 --> 00:30:21,790 insult rather than a spear is the founder of civilization." 534 00:30:21,790 --> 00:30:25,500 The first man who can redirect that sort of id like desire 535 00:30:25,500 --> 00:30:28,540 into something that's consistent with maintaining a 536 00:30:28,540 --> 00:30:31,640 civilized world, that's where you start to get the 537 00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:33,830 possibility of civilization. 538 00:30:33,830 --> 00:30:39,890 Now I recommend book to you in part because some of it is 539 00:30:39,890 --> 00:30:44,160 extremely entertaining, for all the wrong reasons. 540 00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:50,260 As you may have gathered by now, not all of Freud's 541 00:30:50,260 --> 00:30:53,780 detailed ideas have stood the test of time. 542 00:30:53,780 --> 00:30:58,030 So I cannot resist the urge to give you Freud's account of 543 00:30:58,030 --> 00:30:59,280 the domestication of fire. 544 00:31:02,710 --> 00:31:05,070 Here's the problem as Freud saw it. 545 00:31:05,070 --> 00:31:08,740 Fire happens out in the world. 546 00:31:08,740 --> 00:31:12,930 What did primitive man do when he saw fire? says Freud. 547 00:31:15,910 --> 00:31:17,400 AUDIENCE: Burned himself. 548 00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:17,770 PROFESSOR: Burned himself. 549 00:31:17,770 --> 00:31:20,590 Well, that would be one possibility. 550 00:31:20,590 --> 00:31:23,130 Well, we can follow with this line, if you weren't going to 551 00:31:23,130 --> 00:31:25,370 burn yourself, what might you want to do to that fire? 552 00:31:25,370 --> 00:31:26,330 AUDIENCE: Put it out. 553 00:31:26,330 --> 00:31:27,020 PROFESSOR: Put it out. 554 00:31:27,020 --> 00:31:29,000 If you're a guy, how you going to put it out? 555 00:31:31,798 --> 00:31:32,790 AUDIENCE: Smack it. 556 00:31:32,790 --> 00:31:34,720 PROFESSOR: Smack it? 557 00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,970 No, that's if you're a dumb guy. 558 00:31:37,970 --> 00:31:41,210 No, Freud proposed that you would urinate on it. 559 00:31:41,210 --> 00:31:45,240 And that this was an essentially sexual act-- don't 560 00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:47,160 ask me why. 561 00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:52,370 But that the first man to renounce that desire, that 562 00:31:52,370 --> 00:31:57,266 apparently id like desire to go and urinate on fire-- he 563 00:31:57,266 --> 00:32:00,050 could bring the fire home and that again, would be a 564 00:32:00,050 --> 00:32:01,940 building block of civilization. 565 00:32:01,940 --> 00:32:06,080 Not only that, said Freud, this explains why in many 566 00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:09,860 cultures women are the keeper of the hearth. 567 00:32:09,860 --> 00:32:11,190 Why is that? 568 00:32:11,190 --> 00:32:15,180 Well, it's a great deal more difficult if you're a woman to 569 00:32:15,180 --> 00:32:16,620 urinate on the fire. 570 00:32:16,620 --> 00:32:19,080 It's just not going to work out well for you. 571 00:32:22,090 --> 00:32:26,210 No, you don't have to believe that. 572 00:32:26,210 --> 00:32:29,370 It's on page 37 apparently of my copy of Civilization and 573 00:32:29,370 --> 00:32:30,620 its Discontents. 574 00:32:33,230 --> 00:32:36,300 I mean, the book is a beautiful example of exactly 575 00:32:36,300 --> 00:32:39,670 why I think it's still worth teaching Freud. 576 00:32:39,670 --> 00:32:42,900 There's a lot of whacko stuff in there about peeing on the 577 00:32:42,900 --> 00:32:47,840 fire, but the broader, large scale thought that repression 578 00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:55,750 of infantile urges is a price that we pay for civilization 579 00:32:55,750 --> 00:32:59,160 is, it seems to me, a worthwhile 580 00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:01,050 thought to rattle around. 581 00:33:01,050 --> 00:33:05,210 That as you become more civilized in a sense, you end 582 00:33:05,210 --> 00:33:07,040 up becoming more repressed. 583 00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:13,410 That the id's going to sit there trying to escape and you 584 00:33:13,410 --> 00:33:17,540 fill more and more walls around it and you live with 585 00:33:17,540 --> 00:33:22,530 more anxiety and more guilt as the price for being in some 586 00:33:22,530 --> 00:33:24,990 sense more civilized. 587 00:33:24,990 --> 00:33:26,940 Now that's sort of a dark view. 588 00:33:26,940 --> 00:33:31,290 It's interesting that this dark view crops up-- 589 00:33:31,290 --> 00:33:35,220 later in his life he had to flee Austria from the Nazis. 590 00:33:35,220 --> 00:33:40,320 He was a sick and dying man when he wrote Civilization and 591 00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:41,120 its Discontents. 592 00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:44,740 It's a rather dark view of civilization. 593 00:33:52,260 --> 00:33:56,430 Suppose this is all true, in some fashion. 594 00:33:56,430 --> 00:33:59,100 Well, as it says on the handout, how you going to talk 595 00:33:59,100 --> 00:34:01,010 to the children about this? 596 00:34:01,010 --> 00:34:04,840 If these are important issues and your kid is hopping into 597 00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:09,830 bed with you and saying, Daddy get out of bed. 598 00:34:09,830 --> 00:34:11,940 I want Mommy and stuff like that. 599 00:34:11,940 --> 00:34:13,280 How do you talk to-- 600 00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:14,690 I'll tell you how you don't talk to your kids. 601 00:34:14,690 --> 00:34:18,240 You don't say, I recognize that at this stage in your 602 00:34:18,240 --> 00:34:23,780 life that you are thinking that you're in conflict with 603 00:34:23,780 --> 00:34:27,010 me, but what you need to realize is that I'm much 604 00:34:27,010 --> 00:34:30,540 bigger than you and if you pursue this much further-- 605 00:34:30,540 --> 00:34:31,610 see the scissors? 606 00:34:31,610 --> 00:34:34,830 You're in very big trouble here. 607 00:34:34,830 --> 00:34:36,825 That's not a conversation you want to have with a four 608 00:34:36,825 --> 00:34:38,190 year-old kid. 609 00:34:38,190 --> 00:34:40,080 Even if you're a psychologist. 610 00:34:40,080 --> 00:34:42,550 This is not a good idea. 611 00:34:42,550 --> 00:34:47,970 But you could imagine that these issues, which not 612 00:34:47,970 --> 00:34:51,740 explicitly understood by parents or children, but that 613 00:34:51,740 --> 00:34:56,320 these issues about, is the world safe? 614 00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:57,510 Who runs the show? 615 00:34:57,510 --> 00:34:58,790 What am I? 616 00:34:58,790 --> 00:35:00,930 You know, these sort of issues are issues that you're going 617 00:35:00,930 --> 00:35:03,290 to want to talk about. 618 00:35:03,290 --> 00:35:07,620 And if there's this sort of psycho-sexual development 619 00:35:07,620 --> 00:35:11,660 thing running underneath it those are the issues you're 620 00:35:11,660 --> 00:35:14,560 going to want to talk about in those terms. 621 00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:18,390 Bruno Bettelheim, following up on ideas in Freud's own 622 00:35:18,390 --> 00:35:22,410 writings wrote a very interesting book called The 623 00:35:22,410 --> 00:35:27,980 Uses of Enchantment in which he argued that among other 624 00:35:27,980 --> 00:35:34,080 things, fairy tales or more precisely, folk tales serve 625 00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:38,960 the role of a hidden language or a way to talk into your 626 00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:42,840 children in hidden language about these issues. 627 00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:44,840 Fairy tales is an English term. 628 00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:47,250 It's a little misleading because fairy tales don't 629 00:35:47,250 --> 00:35:50,680 necessarily have fairies in them, but folk tales is the 630 00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:52,120 more accurate term. 631 00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:57,560 So something like the Tales of the Brothers Grimm, the 632 00:35:57,560 --> 00:36:01,020 brothers did not write those stories, they collected them. 633 00:36:01,020 --> 00:36:03,960 They were early 19th century anthropologists wandering 634 00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:06,310 around northern Germany getting Grandma 635 00:36:06,310 --> 00:36:08,140 to tell them stories. 636 00:36:08,140 --> 00:36:11,050 And a folk tale is a story that's not explicitly written 637 00:36:11,050 --> 00:36:13,690 down for literary purposes, it's a story that has a 638 00:36:13,690 --> 00:36:17,195 grownup organically from parents telling children and 639 00:36:17,195 --> 00:36:20,470 children saying, tell me the one about the witch with the 640 00:36:20,470 --> 00:36:22,500 candy house and stuff like that. 641 00:36:22,500 --> 00:36:25,140 And these stories-- the good ones-- get passed on and 642 00:36:25,140 --> 00:36:29,000 Bettelheim says the good ones get passed on because they do 643 00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:30,320 this kind of work. 644 00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:39,100 They allow you to talk about these kinds of issues. 645 00:36:39,100 --> 00:36:41,890 I see that I said, what are the 646 00:36:41,890 --> 00:36:43,460 characteristics of fairy tales? 647 00:36:43,460 --> 00:36:46,740 So I better say a word about that. 648 00:36:46,740 --> 00:36:51,530 Characters in fairy tales are typically good or bad. 649 00:36:51,530 --> 00:36:53,200 You don't get-- 650 00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:55,300 in the woods there was a witch. 651 00:36:55,300 --> 00:36:58,410 She wasn't really, like really a horrible person, she was 652 00:36:58,410 --> 00:37:01,360 kind of misunderstood and she'd been abused as a child. 653 00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:03,290 No, she's a bad witch. 654 00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:10,120 And there was a boy. 655 00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:11,810 Very schematic chara-- oh, that's the 656 00:37:11,810 --> 00:37:12,590 second point actually. 657 00:37:12,590 --> 00:37:14,710 Very schematic characters often with names like 658 00:37:14,710 --> 00:37:17,530 the boy, the girl. 659 00:37:17,530 --> 00:37:20,690 Or just a simple descriptor like Snow White, which is just 660 00:37:20,690 --> 00:37:22,740 telling you something about how she looks. 661 00:37:27,620 --> 00:37:28,960 She's good, right? 662 00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:34,110 It's not that she's got issues or something, she's good. 663 00:37:34,110 --> 00:37:38,470 And they're figures that a kid could identify with typically. 664 00:37:38,470 --> 00:37:43,020 This is in contrast for instance, to myth. 665 00:37:43,020 --> 00:37:46,750 Oedipus is not a folk tale in this sense. 666 00:37:46,750 --> 00:37:51,170 You don't, at age four say, let me tell you about this 667 00:37:51,170 --> 00:37:54,790 cool story where this guy goes off and kills his dad and then 668 00:37:54,790 --> 00:37:56,640 marries his mom and he blinds himself in the end, it's 669 00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:59,420 really neat. 670 00:37:59,420 --> 00:38:01,640 But you say, ooh, that's really gross. 671 00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:04,300 But ask yourself-- we're going to do Hansel and Gretel in a 672 00:38:04,300 --> 00:38:05,550 minute here. 673 00:38:05,550 --> 00:38:08,330 How many people know the story of Hansel and Gretel? 674 00:38:08,330 --> 00:38:11,620 Think about Hansel and Gretel in those terms. 675 00:38:11,620 --> 00:38:14,540 Or think about the headlines, poverty parents 676 00:38:14,540 --> 00:38:17,700 ditch kids in wood. 677 00:38:17,700 --> 00:38:20,970 Girl, five, cooks old lady in oven. 678 00:38:20,970 --> 00:38:25,720 I mean, this stuff is just as gruesome in it's own way as 679 00:38:25,720 --> 00:38:28,480 king of Thebes finds out he's married to Mom, blinds himself 680 00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:31,400 and wanders off into three more plays by Sophocles. 681 00:38:37,590 --> 00:38:42,770 It's not immediately obvious that it's just grossness that 682 00:38:42,770 --> 00:38:46,730 somehow differentiates myth and folk tale. 683 00:38:46,730 --> 00:38:49,870 But the characters are typically something that a kid 684 00:38:49,870 --> 00:38:51,060 could identify with. 685 00:38:51,060 --> 00:38:54,740 They have optimistic endings, that clearly distinguishes you 686 00:38:54,740 --> 00:38:57,400 from Greek tragedy or something like that. 687 00:38:57,400 --> 00:39:03,120 At the end of a classic fairy tale good things happen to 688 00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:05,950 good people and bad things happen to bad people. 689 00:39:05,950 --> 00:39:08,430 Witches get killed. 690 00:39:08,430 --> 00:39:12,740 Good little girls and boys go home and live happily ever 691 00:39:12,740 --> 00:39:14,330 after and stuff like that. 692 00:39:14,330 --> 00:39:17,010 But at the same time, while they're optimistic in their 693 00:39:17,010 --> 00:39:21,900 ending they do not typically have overt morals on them like 694 00:39:21,900 --> 00:39:24,400 Aesop's Fables or something like that. 695 00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:28,490 You don't get fairy tales that say, they came home after 696 00:39:28,490 --> 00:39:31,810 having cooked the witch and they said, we'll never go into 697 00:39:31,810 --> 00:39:35,300 the woods again or eat any candy, ever, ever, ever. 698 00:39:35,300 --> 00:39:37,540 It's good things happen to good people, bad things happen 699 00:39:37,540 --> 00:39:39,930 to bad people and [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 700 00:39:39,930 --> 00:39:43,620 No overt punchline at the end. 701 00:39:43,620 --> 00:39:47,440 An important point is that even if Bettelheim is correct, 702 00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,730 that these are somehow talking in this sort of coded Freudian 703 00:39:50,730 --> 00:39:54,530 language, parents don't know the language and kids don't 704 00:39:54,530 --> 00:39:58,020 know the language or don't know that they're doing this 705 00:39:58,020 --> 00:40:06,060 all again, sort of implicitly rather than explicitly. 706 00:40:06,060 --> 00:40:09,780 Nobody, except somebody who took too many notes in Intro 707 00:40:09,780 --> 00:40:16,180 Psych says, let's see-- the kid's three and he was making 708 00:40:16,180 --> 00:40:21,450 these cracks about the bed and Dad and stuff like that. 709 00:40:21,450 --> 00:40:23,750 Let's see, I need an oedipal fairy tale. 710 00:40:23,750 --> 00:40:27,450 Jack and the Beanstalk that'll work tonight. 711 00:40:27,450 --> 00:40:30,950 But the notion is that the kid will be requesting stories 712 00:40:30,950 --> 00:40:33,710 that address issues that he wants to hear about and that 713 00:40:33,710 --> 00:40:37,410 the parents may find themselves choosing stories to 714 00:40:37,410 --> 00:40:44,220 read or to tell that serve the issues that are arising in 715 00:40:44,220 --> 00:40:47,890 their minds at the time. 716 00:40:47,890 --> 00:40:51,700 Now a lot of this has been somewhat diluted in our era 717 00:40:51,700 --> 00:40:57,440 because we tend to read fairy tales or watch them on videos 718 00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:01,510 where they have been turned into literary constructs in 719 00:41:01,510 --> 00:41:04,580 ways that they weren't in northern Germany in the 19th 720 00:41:04,580 --> 00:41:07,000 century or something like that. 721 00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:09,700 We'll talk a little later about some of the ways that 722 00:41:09,700 --> 00:41:13,080 Disney has modified some of the great fairy tales. 723 00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:17,990 They're wonderful things, but Bettelheim is very mad about 724 00:41:17,990 --> 00:41:23,760 the ones where the revisions that make nice at the end-- 725 00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:27,210 Cinderella stories where you do something nice to the step 726 00:41:27,210 --> 00:41:30,970 daughters, stepsisters-- you're not supposed to do 727 00:41:30,970 --> 00:41:32,410 anything nice to the stepsisters. 728 00:41:32,410 --> 00:41:35,700 They're supposed to get their eyes pecked out by crows 729 00:41:35,700 --> 00:41:40,340 because they're bad and bad stuff happens to bad people. 730 00:41:40,340 --> 00:41:43,550 Cinderella isn't supposed to arrange for them to mary some 731 00:41:43,550 --> 00:41:45,120 duke or something like that. 732 00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:48,440 That makes Bettelheim very agitated. 733 00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:53,910 All right, let's talk fairy tales here. 734 00:41:53,910 --> 00:42:02,940 So Hansel and Gretel is in this way of thinking about 735 00:42:02,940 --> 00:42:05,390 things an oral stage fairy tale. 736 00:42:05,390 --> 00:42:09,400 Oh, let me say something about that-- oral stage, 737 00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:11,140 that's like year one. 738 00:42:11,140 --> 00:42:14,670 And you're sitting there saying, I like Hansel and 739 00:42:14,670 --> 00:42:19,090 Gretel, does that mean I never got out of the oral stage? 740 00:42:19,090 --> 00:42:19,490 No. 741 00:42:19,490 --> 00:42:23,900 Remember the idea here is that the issues that arise in the 742 00:42:23,900 --> 00:42:27,470 oral stage about, is the world a safe place, for instance, 743 00:42:27,470 --> 00:42:29,990 are issues that will persist for the rest of your life. 744 00:42:29,990 --> 00:42:33,260 So you're a seven year-old kid in this view or something 745 00:42:33,260 --> 00:42:35,870 having a certain amount of concern about whether the 746 00:42:35,870 --> 00:42:38,106 world is safe and if you walked down the street to 747 00:42:38,106 --> 00:42:39,560 school you're going to get hit by a car or 748 00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:40,600 something like that. 749 00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:46,190 And maybe Hansel and Gretel would appeal on those terms. 750 00:42:46,190 --> 00:42:50,110 Another example would be, Beauty and the Beast. 751 00:42:50,110 --> 00:42:54,400 A female oedipal story, we will see, if and 752 00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:55,020 when I get to it. 753 00:42:55,020 --> 00:42:58,300 You're saying, I'm a guy. 754 00:42:58,300 --> 00:42:58,880 I'm a guy. 755 00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:01,470 I like Beauty and the Beast. 756 00:43:01,470 --> 00:43:03,310 Is this a problem? 757 00:43:03,310 --> 00:43:04,570 No. 758 00:43:04,570 --> 00:43:07,110 Part of this is not only do you have to figure out what it 759 00:43:07,110 --> 00:43:09,220 means to be a guy, you also have to figure out what it 760 00:43:09,220 --> 00:43:09,920 means to be a woman. 761 00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:12,340 You don't happen to be a woman, but it would be really 762 00:43:12,340 --> 00:43:14,570 interesting to understand what it might mean. 763 00:43:14,570 --> 00:43:18,190 And so again, you might be interested in that particular 764 00:43:18,190 --> 00:43:24,843 story not because some strange path is going on 765 00:43:24,843 --> 00:43:25,850 [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 766 00:43:25,850 --> 00:43:27,100 These are interesting questions. 767 00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:31,090 Hansel and Gretel. 768 00:43:34,620 --> 00:43:35,470 Let's step back. 769 00:43:35,470 --> 00:43:37,120 What's the family situation here? 770 00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:39,790 Who we got at the characters in Hansel and Gretel? 771 00:43:39,790 --> 00:43:41,080 Well, there's Hansel and Gretel. 772 00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:42,450 Who else do we have? 773 00:43:42,450 --> 00:43:42,910 AUDIENCE: Father. 774 00:43:42,910 --> 00:43:43,630 PROFESSOR: Father and? 775 00:43:43,630 --> 00:43:45,320 AUDIENCE: The mother. 776 00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:46,830 PROFESSOR: The mother? 777 00:43:46,830 --> 00:43:47,220 AUDIENCE: Stepmother. 778 00:43:47,220 --> 00:43:49,390 PROFESSOR: The stepmother. 779 00:43:49,390 --> 00:43:50,340 She a good stepmother? 780 00:43:50,340 --> 00:43:51,320 AUDIENCE: No. 781 00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:52,480 PROFESSOR: Or a bad stepmother? 782 00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:56,790 There are an awful lot of bad stepmothers in fairy tales. 783 00:43:56,790 --> 00:43:58,240 Now that's a little mysterious. 784 00:43:58,240 --> 00:44:01,500 There are a couple of ways to understand this. 785 00:44:01,500 --> 00:44:05,390 That one of them is to say that in the days when 786 00:44:05,390 --> 00:44:09,430 childbirth was a much riskier proposition many more people 787 00:44:09,430 --> 00:44:13,290 had stepmothers because Mom had died in childbirth. 788 00:44:13,290 --> 00:44:16,780 As indeed happens in any number of fairy stories. 789 00:44:16,780 --> 00:44:19,680 And in fact, you can come up with an evolutionary psych 790 00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:23,410 argument that says that the stepmother that systematically 791 00:44:23,410 --> 00:44:28,360 favors her own genetic children over the step- 792 00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:33,940 children, but that's not the Freudian account here. 793 00:44:33,940 --> 00:44:37,700 The Freudian account is look, the initial mother who you 794 00:44:37,700 --> 00:44:42,710 encounter when you're a baby is a really good mommy. 795 00:44:42,710 --> 00:44:48,300 She does everything for you and she says yes all the time. 796 00:44:48,300 --> 00:44:49,930 You cry, she jumps. 797 00:44:49,930 --> 00:44:51,400 It's great. 798 00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:56,070 Eventually Mom gets tired of this and Mom starts saying no 799 00:44:56,070 --> 00:44:59,640 and Mom starts saying things like it's time to go poop in 800 00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:01,560 the bucket and not in your pants and 801 00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:03,540 all this other stuff. 802 00:45:03,540 --> 00:45:10,360 And that, in this view is the transition between good Mommy 803 00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:13,170 and bad Mommy and there are so many fairy tales where you get 804 00:45:13,170 --> 00:45:18,140 born to a good mommy and then the bad mommy shows up. 805 00:45:18,140 --> 00:45:23,230 Way outside of the range of what would be probable in the 806 00:45:23,230 --> 00:45:24,670 population. 807 00:45:24,670 --> 00:45:28,390 That you can imagine that it's a stand-in for something else. 808 00:45:28,390 --> 00:45:31,490 Maybe for a stand-in that you're coming out of this oral 809 00:45:31,490 --> 00:45:35,830 stage of development in this story. 810 00:45:35,830 --> 00:45:39,470 All right, so what's the problem that's faced by our 811 00:45:39,470 --> 00:45:42,260 lovely little family unit? 812 00:45:42,260 --> 00:45:45,025 What's the issue here? 813 00:45:45,025 --> 00:45:46,090 AUDIENCE: Poor. 814 00:45:46,090 --> 00:45:46,530 PROFESSOR: Poor. 815 00:45:46,530 --> 00:45:50,800 We're out of money, so what's the specific result of being 816 00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:51,873 out of money? 817 00:45:51,873 --> 00:45:53,970 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 818 00:45:53,970 --> 00:45:56,970 PROFESSOR: A few hands would be handy rather than the 819 00:45:56,970 --> 00:45:58,110 general purpose muttering. 820 00:45:58,110 --> 00:45:59,210 No? 821 00:45:59,210 --> 00:45:59,940 We've scared them off. 822 00:45:59,940 --> 00:46:03,160 What have we run out of here? 823 00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:03,650 Food. 824 00:46:03,650 --> 00:46:06,480 We don't have any food. 825 00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:08,830 The natural thing to do when you've run out 826 00:46:08,830 --> 00:46:10,413 of food is do what? 827 00:46:10,413 --> 00:46:11,300 AUDIENCE: Gather some. 828 00:46:11,300 --> 00:46:12,020 PROFESSOR: Gather some. 829 00:46:12,020 --> 00:46:13,620 Well, that didn't work apparently or at least that 830 00:46:13,620 --> 00:46:15,100 was a really boring story. 831 00:46:15,100 --> 00:46:18,150 You know, once upon a time there was a mother, a father, 832 00:46:18,150 --> 00:46:21,090 and a little boy and girl and they got hungry and they went 833 00:46:21,090 --> 00:46:24,530 in a field and they gathered mushrooms and unfortunately 834 00:46:24,530 --> 00:46:25,890 they were poisonous and they all died. 835 00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:30,190 That was one of those stores that didn't get repeated. 836 00:46:30,190 --> 00:46:34,230 You know, tell me the story about the poison-- no. 837 00:46:34,230 --> 00:46:37,553 So what happens in Hansel and Gretel? 838 00:46:37,553 --> 00:46:39,660 AUDIENCE: Get rid of the kids. 839 00:46:39,660 --> 00:46:40,980 PROFESSOR: You get rid of the kids. 840 00:46:40,980 --> 00:46:43,690 You stick the kids out in the woods. 841 00:46:43,690 --> 00:46:46,870 But Hansel hears the plan, mom and dad are busy discussing 842 00:46:46,870 --> 00:46:50,850 this at night. 843 00:46:50,850 --> 00:46:52,773 Hansel hears about it, he does what? 844 00:46:52,773 --> 00:46:53,680 AUDIENCE: Runs away. 845 00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:55,690 PROFESSOR: No, he doesn't run away. 846 00:46:55,690 --> 00:46:57,338 That's the Russian version. 847 00:46:57,338 --> 00:46:59,290 AUDIENCE: Kills the parents. 848 00:46:59,290 --> 00:47:00,930 PROFESSOR: Kills the parents, no. 849 00:47:00,930 --> 00:47:04,390 Wait a second guys, I thought you said you knew this story. 850 00:47:04,390 --> 00:47:06,940 Let's get this straight. 851 00:47:06,940 --> 00:47:08,990 He goes out into the garden, he collects a 852 00:47:08,990 --> 00:47:10,250 bunch of white stones. 853 00:47:10,250 --> 00:47:15,355 He leaves the white stones behind as a trail and-- 854 00:47:15,355 --> 00:47:15,850 AUDIENCE: Bread. 855 00:47:15,850 --> 00:47:16,840 AUDIENCE: Bread crumbs. 856 00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:20,630 PROFESSOR: No, that's the second time. 857 00:47:20,630 --> 00:47:23,140 You guys are all going to flunk the final. 858 00:47:23,140 --> 00:47:25,620 This is very bad. 859 00:47:25,620 --> 00:47:31,950 So first time it's white rocks and when the moon rises so you 860 00:47:31,950 --> 00:47:33,840 can see the white rocks, they come back. 861 00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:36,170 So you've got an oral stage problem. 862 00:47:36,170 --> 00:47:39,340 There ain't no food. 863 00:47:39,340 --> 00:47:44,290 And the initial crisis where the kids get left in the woods 864 00:47:44,290 --> 00:47:46,070 is met with a nonsolution. 865 00:47:46,070 --> 00:47:49,250 You just returned back to the same situation. 866 00:47:49,250 --> 00:47:51,280 Second time, same thing. 867 00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:53,880 They get abandoned out in the woods, but this time this 868 00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:56,600 nasty old Step-mom has been cagier about it and locked 869 00:47:56,600 --> 00:48:00,440 Hansel in and all he's got is his bread. 870 00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:03,630 And so now he tries what you can think of as an oral stage 871 00:48:03,630 --> 00:48:06,220 solution to an oral problem. 872 00:48:06,220 --> 00:48:09,760 He leaves this collection of bread crumbs behind. 873 00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:13,120 Does an oral solution solve this problem? 874 00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:13,930 Well, no. 875 00:48:13,930 --> 00:48:15,550 What happens to the bread crumbs? 876 00:48:15,550 --> 00:48:16,900 AUDIENCE: The birds eat them. 877 00:48:16,900 --> 00:48:19,290 PROFESSOR: The birds eat the bread crumbs, so there's no 878 00:48:19,290 --> 00:48:19,810 bread crumbs. 879 00:48:19,810 --> 00:48:23,740 And they wander around and they fall asleep in the woods 880 00:48:23,740 --> 00:48:27,390 and there's a beautiful chorus in the Engelbert Humperdinck 881 00:48:27,390 --> 00:48:29,590 opera which you should all hear sometime-- gorgeous 882 00:48:29,590 --> 00:48:31,090 opera-- and Engelbert Humperdinck 883 00:48:31,090 --> 00:48:32,660 really was his name. 884 00:48:32,660 --> 00:48:37,930 Very sad, but the opera's lovely. 885 00:48:37,930 --> 00:48:39,520 Anyway, so the next day they wake up. 886 00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:40,480 They're hopelessly lost. 887 00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:41,310 They wander around. 888 00:48:41,310 --> 00:48:43,420 They're hungry. 889 00:48:43,420 --> 00:48:47,710 They're not terribly happy and they find? 890 00:48:47,710 --> 00:48:48,170 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 891 00:48:48,170 --> 00:48:49,190 PROFESSOR: The house, right. 892 00:48:49,190 --> 00:48:51,750 The house made of gingerbread and candy and stuff like that. 893 00:48:51,750 --> 00:48:54,555 And so like all good little kids what they do is engage in 894 00:48:54,555 --> 00:48:55,805 a little petty vandalism. 895 00:48:59,070 --> 00:49:02,950 Gretel eats a window and Hansel eats a hunk of the roof 896 00:49:02,950 --> 00:49:07,700 and then they hear this voice saying, "Nibbling, nibbling 897 00:49:07,700 --> 00:49:11,910 like a mouse, who's that nibbling at my house?" And 898 00:49:11,910 --> 00:49:16,050 they respond, "The wind, the wind doth blow from the 899 00:49:16,050 --> 00:49:21,720 heavens to the earth below," which makes no sense. 900 00:49:21,720 --> 00:49:27,710 But anyway, so out comes the? 901 00:49:27,710 --> 00:49:27,850 AUDIENCE: Witch. 902 00:49:27,850 --> 00:49:29,410 PROFESSOR: How do you know she's a witch? 903 00:49:29,410 --> 00:49:31,990 AUDIENCE: Because she's [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 904 00:49:31,990 --> 00:49:35,990 PROFESSOR: Now the way you know she's a witch it says is 905 00:49:35,990 --> 00:49:38,630 because her eyes glow red. 906 00:49:38,630 --> 00:49:40,570 This is a tip-off in case-- this is 907 00:49:40,570 --> 00:49:41,850 practical advice for you. 908 00:49:41,850 --> 00:49:46,530 If you're vandalizing somebody's house and the owner 909 00:49:46,530 --> 00:49:50,710 comes out and her eyes are glowing red, worry about it. 910 00:49:50,710 --> 00:49:53,010 But that this means that witches don't see very well, 911 00:49:53,010 --> 00:49:54,130 which turns out to be handy. 912 00:49:54,130 --> 00:49:56,540 They have keen senses of smell we're told. 913 00:49:56,540 --> 00:50:00,890 Anyway, this witch-- now the interesting thing about these 914 00:50:00,890 --> 00:50:05,720 fairy tales is that you have a problem at home and then you 915 00:50:05,720 --> 00:50:09,260 are thrust out into-- well, in the north German versions of 916 00:50:09,260 --> 00:50:12,300 the Grimm fairy tales are into the woods to solve it. 917 00:50:12,300 --> 00:50:16,530 Somebody will have to tell me what you do if you're reading 918 00:50:16,530 --> 00:50:18,980 Saudi Arabian fairy tales whether you get thrust out 919 00:50:18,980 --> 00:50:21,820 into the dunes or something like that. 920 00:50:21,820 --> 00:50:25,840 But the important thing is you go out away from-- you don't 921 00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:29,190 solve your problem where it is in these stories typically. 922 00:50:29,190 --> 00:50:33,160 You out and away and what you find out there in story after 923 00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:38,950 story is a charicature-- an extreme version of 924 00:50:38,950 --> 00:50:40,670 the problem at home. 925 00:50:40,670 --> 00:50:42,340 So here we've got an oral problem. 926 00:50:42,340 --> 00:50:45,660 There isn't enough food or perhaps, if we're thinking in 927 00:50:45,660 --> 00:50:49,590 infantile terms, where's the food come from 928 00:50:49,590 --> 00:50:50,350 if you're an infant? 929 00:50:50,350 --> 00:50:52,020 Well, it comes from Mom. 930 00:50:52,020 --> 00:50:55,190 So not enough food means you've kind of eaten all that 931 00:50:55,190 --> 00:50:58,870 you can eat off of Mom and you might worry, what's going to 932 00:50:58,870 --> 00:51:00,770 happen if Mom wants this back? 933 00:51:00,770 --> 00:51:04,350 Well, what you find in the woods is this orality gone 934 00:51:04,350 --> 00:51:08,400 nuts because what this witch does is eats little kids. 935 00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:10,800 That's her stock and trade. 936 00:51:10,800 --> 00:51:13,660 And she's going to eat Hansel, but it turns out he's too 937 00:51:13,660 --> 00:51:14,870 skinny for her. 938 00:51:14,870 --> 00:51:18,940 So there's this fattening up period. 939 00:51:18,940 --> 00:51:26,820 Eventually, it's cooking day and the witch says to Gretel, 940 00:51:26,820 --> 00:51:29,800 climb into the oven and see if it's warm because we're baking 941 00:51:29,800 --> 00:51:31,190 bread-- haha. 942 00:51:31,190 --> 00:51:35,080 Climb into the oven and Gretel who's onto this says, I don't 943 00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:37,810 think I can do that. 944 00:51:37,810 --> 00:51:38,096 Can you show me how? 945 00:51:38,096 --> 00:51:40,390 And the witch says something like, you silly goose. 946 00:51:40,390 --> 00:51:41,450 Anybody can do that. 947 00:51:41,450 --> 00:51:44,940 And she climbs up to the oven and Gretel slams the door on 948 00:51:44,940 --> 00:51:49,010 her and she perishes horribly, making loud screams. 949 00:51:49,010 --> 00:51:53,010 Which, not much better than blinding yourself 950 00:51:53,010 --> 00:51:54,040 and things like that. 951 00:51:54,040 --> 00:51:57,410 But is deeply satisfying in this story. 952 00:51:59,990 --> 00:52:05,170 So now they've killed off this symbol of orality and there 953 00:52:05,170 --> 00:52:08,790 are two important things that happen thereafter. 954 00:52:08,790 --> 00:52:13,600 First of all, what they now discover is that the house is 955 00:52:13,600 --> 00:52:15,890 full of gold and jewels. 956 00:52:15,890 --> 00:52:16,880 And they stuff their-- 957 00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:19,760 there's a little more looting going on here-- but they stuff 958 00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:23,480 their pockets not with candy, not with more oral solution 959 00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:27,100 kind of stuff, but now with something that allows them to 960 00:52:27,100 --> 00:52:30,650 go home and have moved to a different stage. 961 00:52:30,650 --> 00:52:33,190 A stage, where in principle they can be contributors, not 962 00:52:33,190 --> 00:52:35,210 just consumers. 963 00:52:35,210 --> 00:52:37,230 This isn't supposed to be an accurate 964 00:52:37,230 --> 00:52:38,950 model of what happens-- 965 00:52:38,950 --> 00:52:41,330 one year-old kid moving out of the oral stage. 966 00:52:41,330 --> 00:52:43,850 Oral stage kid doesn't suddenly say at the end of a 967 00:52:43,850 --> 00:52:46,360 year OK look, like I'm weaned and now I'm 968 00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:48,550 going to go do chores. 969 00:52:48,550 --> 00:52:51,090 You've got to understand this in a little more symbolic way. 970 00:52:53,940 --> 00:52:56,010 Rather than an oral solution we've got a 971 00:52:56,010 --> 00:52:57,390 different kind of solution. 972 00:52:57,390 --> 00:53:00,840 The other thing that's very emblematic here is what do the 973 00:53:00,840 --> 00:53:02,570 children find when they get home? 974 00:53:02,570 --> 00:53:04,543 Anybody remember? 975 00:53:04,543 --> 00:53:05,010 AUDIENCE: The stepmother is dead. 976 00:53:05,010 --> 00:53:06,710 PROFESSOR: The stepmother is dead. 977 00:53:06,710 --> 00:53:10,040 Presumably, the stepmother is dead at the instant that the 978 00:53:10,040 --> 00:53:12,250 witch is killed because they're in a sense, one and 979 00:53:12,250 --> 00:53:13,500 the same character. 980 00:53:16,090 --> 00:53:17,590 They are the problem. 981 00:53:17,590 --> 00:53:20,300 They are the emblem of this oral stage problem. 982 00:53:20,300 --> 00:53:26,280 It gets killed off and everybody's good. 983 00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:29,290 Well, I think before the break, I'm going to skip the 984 00:53:29,290 --> 00:53:31,930 anal stage for the present. 985 00:53:31,930 --> 00:53:34,880 I promise to come back with an anal stage fairy tale. 986 00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:38,170 But what I'm going to do before the break is I'm going 987 00:53:38,170 --> 00:53:41,300 to skip to-- 988 00:53:41,300 --> 00:53:46,470 and there are lots of oedipal stage fairy tales and I am 989 00:53:46,470 --> 00:53:49,850 going to use Jack and the Beanstalk as an example of an 990 00:53:49,850 --> 00:53:53,950 early oedipal stage fairy tale. 991 00:53:53,950 --> 00:53:54,990 Jack and the Beanstalk. 992 00:53:54,990 --> 00:53:57,390 All right, let's do Jack and the Beanstalk quickly. 993 00:53:57,390 --> 00:54:00,150 Jack and the Beanstalk, what's the crisis at the beginning? 994 00:54:02,660 --> 00:54:04,550 What's Jack sent off to do? 995 00:54:04,550 --> 00:54:05,410 AUDIENCE: Sell the cow. 996 00:54:05,410 --> 00:54:06,580 PROFESSOR: Sell the cow. 997 00:54:06,580 --> 00:54:08,755 Why are you selling the cow? 998 00:54:08,755 --> 00:54:09,340 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 999 00:54:09,340 --> 00:54:11,060 PROFESSOR: It's not giving milk anymore. 1000 00:54:11,060 --> 00:54:14,910 If you want a nice clear image that you're out of the oral 1001 00:54:14,910 --> 00:54:19,790 stage, the cow having run dry on you is pretty good. 1002 00:54:19,790 --> 00:54:23,130 So Jack's supposed to go off-- he's supposed to do the Hansel 1003 00:54:23,130 --> 00:54:23,970 and Gretel thing, right? 1004 00:54:23,970 --> 00:54:28,010 He's supposed to go from the dried up cow thing and get 1005 00:54:28,010 --> 00:54:32,500 some money so we can go do the food thing the other way. 1006 00:54:32,500 --> 00:54:33,390 But what's he do? 1007 00:54:33,390 --> 00:54:35,330 He trades it for...? 1008 00:54:35,330 --> 00:54:35,740 AUDIENCE: Magic beans. 1009 00:54:35,740 --> 00:54:38,680 PROFESSOR: Magic beans. 1010 00:54:38,680 --> 00:54:40,150 All right, he comes home. 1011 00:54:40,150 --> 00:54:41,930 Is Mom happy about this? 1012 00:54:41,930 --> 00:54:43,020 AUDIENCE: No. 1013 00:54:43,020 --> 00:54:44,320 PROFESSOR: No. 1014 00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:47,270 So what happens to Jack? 1015 00:54:47,270 --> 00:54:49,390 He gets sent to bed without any supper. 1016 00:54:49,390 --> 00:54:53,030 Another sort of end of oral stage kind of image. 1017 00:54:53,030 --> 00:54:55,183 And Mom does what with the beans? 1018 00:54:55,183 --> 00:54:56,030 AUDIENCE: Throws them out. 1019 00:54:56,030 --> 00:54:58,465 PROFESSOR: Throws them out the window or sows his wild oats 1020 00:54:58,465 --> 00:55:00,140 or something like that. 1021 00:55:00,140 --> 00:55:04,150 In any case, something grows really big at 1022 00:55:04,150 --> 00:55:07,150 night in this story. 1023 00:55:07,150 --> 00:55:10,770 You don't have to be a vastly Freudian imagination to think 1024 00:55:10,770 --> 00:55:13,930 that this looks a little phallic here maybe. 1025 00:55:13,930 --> 00:55:16,430 Anyway, you wake up in the morning and 1026 00:55:16,430 --> 00:55:20,720 there's this giant beanstalk. 1027 00:55:20,720 --> 00:55:21,970 Climbs up the beanstalk. 1028 00:55:24,110 --> 00:55:25,470 You climb up the beanstalk. 1029 00:55:25,470 --> 00:55:28,810 What do you find at the top of the beanstalk? 1030 00:55:28,810 --> 00:55:29,330 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 1031 00:55:29,330 --> 00:55:32,500 PROFESSOR: You find another-- just like in Hansel and Gretel 1032 00:55:32,500 --> 00:55:38,030 you find a cartoon version of what was at home. 1033 00:55:38,030 --> 00:55:41,920 So you find the castle, which is just the house and who 1034 00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:43,036 lives there? 1035 00:55:43,036 --> 00:55:43,870 AUDIENCE: Giant. 1036 00:55:43,870 --> 00:55:47,610 PROFESSOR: Well, who does he find when he gets there first? 1037 00:55:47,610 --> 00:55:48,600 The giant's wife. 1038 00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:51,650 Or the ogre's wife who's the stand-in for Mom. 1039 00:55:51,650 --> 00:55:53,330 Is she bad? 1040 00:55:53,330 --> 00:55:54,480 No, she's really very nice. 1041 00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:56,080 They have a very nice relationship. 1042 00:55:56,080 --> 00:55:57,620 They're playing all day. 1043 00:55:57,620 --> 00:56:04,260 The problem is "Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an 1044 00:56:04,260 --> 00:56:04,860 Englishman. 1045 00:56:04,860 --> 00:56:09,840 Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make 1046 00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:12,840 my bread." Otherwise known as Dad has come home. 1047 00:56:17,990 --> 00:56:20,960 One of the things that's sort of interesting here is that 1048 00:56:20,960 --> 00:56:25,490 this models a classic sort of nuclear family with a stay- 1049 00:56:25,490 --> 00:56:28,230 at- home mom that-- 1050 00:56:28,230 --> 00:56:31,570 and you can sort of imagine in the context of 1051 00:56:31,570 --> 00:56:33,250 this oedipal conflict. 1052 00:56:33,250 --> 00:56:34,870 So here's the son. 1053 00:56:34,870 --> 00:56:37,540 All day long he gets to play with Mom. 1054 00:56:37,540 --> 00:56:38,430 You know Mom's cool. 1055 00:56:38,430 --> 00:56:39,040 Mom's great. 1056 00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:47,530 And then this ogre comes home and he wants Mom 1057 00:56:47,530 --> 00:56:48,160 and he wants dinner. 1058 00:56:48,160 --> 00:56:49,906 And he wants to grind up little kids 1059 00:56:49,906 --> 00:56:50,820 and stuff like that. 1060 00:56:50,820 --> 00:56:57,370 A little strange, but it is an image of the situation that a 1061 00:56:57,370 --> 00:56:59,830 young child might find himself in. 1062 00:56:59,830 --> 00:57:04,270 Now you might wonder whether in a few more generations our 1063 00:57:04,270 --> 00:57:10,900 fairy tales will have to change in response to the-- 1064 00:57:10,900 --> 00:57:18,400 in my family both of us were out of the house working. 1065 00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:21,560 So the nice giantess at home model isn't 1066 00:57:21,560 --> 00:57:22,550 going to quite work. 1067 00:57:22,550 --> 00:57:27,620 You sort of wonder whether or not in a few years, a few 1068 00:57:27,620 --> 00:57:31,960 generations or something, Jack will be there with the nice 1069 00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:36,330 daycare provider or something like that and the mom and dad 1070 00:57:36,330 --> 00:57:39,310 giants will come home at the end of the day. 1071 00:57:39,310 --> 00:57:44,565 Fee, fie, fo, fum, let's microwave the little bum or 1072 00:57:44,565 --> 00:57:47,080 something like that. 1073 00:57:49,930 --> 00:57:53,020 But in this version you got Dad. 1074 00:57:53,020 --> 00:57:54,660 He comes home and-- 1075 00:57:57,400 --> 00:58:01,160 the dad's stand-in and so what does Jack do? 1076 00:58:01,160 --> 00:58:04,690 Well, first of all, the mother hides him in the oven, which 1077 00:58:04,690 --> 00:58:07,430 is a sort of womb-like symbol, which is rather nice. 1078 00:58:07,430 --> 00:58:11,280 But he goes out and steals stuff from Dad-- 1079 00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:12,150 from the giant. 1080 00:58:12,150 --> 00:58:15,630 He spends all of time ripping Dad off here and basically 1081 00:58:15,630 --> 00:58:16,710 being in conflict with Dad. 1082 00:58:16,710 --> 00:58:21,570 Eventually he tries to steal Dad's golden harp, which is 1083 00:58:21,570 --> 00:58:24,220 bad because the thing makes a racket. 1084 00:58:24,220 --> 00:58:27,080 He got the goose out of there without the problem. 1085 00:58:27,080 --> 00:58:30,430 Goose that lays that golden eggs-- good thing to steal. 1086 00:58:30,430 --> 00:58:32,490 Kept the goose quite, but the harp made a noise. 1087 00:58:32,490 --> 00:58:36,350 Anyway, the giant catches onto this and what's he do? 1088 00:58:36,350 --> 00:58:37,600 What's Jack do? 1089 00:58:41,060 --> 00:58:41,420 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 1090 00:58:41,420 --> 00:58:44,310 PROFESSOR: Didn't understand a word of that. 1091 00:58:44,310 --> 00:58:45,240 Where's Jack go? 1092 00:58:45,240 --> 00:58:46,140 AUDIENCE: Down. 1093 00:58:46,140 --> 00:58:46,910 PROFESSOR: Back down the beanstalk. 1094 00:58:46,910 --> 00:58:48,480 What's he do with the beanstalk? 1095 00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:49,730 AUDIENCE: Chops it down. 1096 00:58:49,730 --> 00:58:51,920 PROFESSOR: He chops it down. 1097 00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:54,920 It depends on the version -- either Dad crashes or the 1098 00:58:54,920 --> 00:58:55,910 giant crashed or not. 1099 00:58:55,910 --> 00:59:02,500 But in any case, if this was a full blast oedipal story you'd 1100 00:59:02,500 --> 00:59:05,200 be going [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 1101 00:59:05,200 --> 00:59:08,690 and get to the point where you go off and for instance, marry 1102 00:59:08,690 --> 00:59:10,940 the princess or something like that. 1103 00:59:10,940 --> 00:59:13,450 This is a partway oedipal-- 1104 00:59:13,450 --> 00:59:15,250 not all the way through the story-- thing. 1105 00:59:15,250 --> 00:59:18,830 You get that beanstalk and you get rid of it. 1106 00:59:18,830 --> 00:59:21,080 Either it's sort of a reversion back or it's going 1107 00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:22,300 into a latent period. 1108 00:59:22,300 --> 00:59:25,470 None of this stuff that grows in the night-- nothing man, 1109 00:59:25,470 --> 00:59:27,800 we're done with that for the time being. 1110 00:59:27,800 --> 00:59:29,430 Nothing good happens here. 1111 00:59:29,430 --> 00:59:32,410 Large, big guys chase me around when I do anything of 1112 00:59:32,410 --> 00:59:35,470 that and forget it, so it's a story that doesn't get all the 1113 00:59:35,470 --> 00:59:41,420 way through to the end of this whole psycho-sexual story that 1114 00:59:41,420 --> 00:59:44,110 Freud's weaving. 1115 00:59:44,110 --> 00:59:48,010 So let's see here. 1116 00:59:48,010 --> 00:59:52,650 All right, I've already given you a hint that classic male 1117 00:59:52,650 --> 00:59:56,200 oedipal stories are those stories where you do end up 1118 00:59:56,200 --> 00:59:57,080 marrying the princess. 1119 00:59:57,080 --> 00:59:59,420 I'll say a bit more about that in a minute. 1120 00:59:59,420 --> 01:00:02,060 But let's take a short break because otherwise I'll never 1121 01:00:02,060 --> 01:00:03,310 get to the end of this. 1122 01:00:22,106 --> 01:00:23,641 AUDIENCE: Thanks for the final. 1123 01:00:23,641 --> 01:00:26,198 Can you put up some links for me because I really don't 1124 01:00:26,198 --> 01:00:26,710 remember some of these stories. 1125 01:00:26,710 --> 01:00:29,080 PROFESSOR: Oh, don't worry. 1126 01:00:29,080 --> 01:00:32,655 No answer on the final would require you to know the 1127 01:00:32,655 --> 01:00:35,980 details of the story. 1128 01:00:35,980 --> 01:00:38,610 And I hope I'm telling enough of the story that you can get 1129 01:00:38,610 --> 01:00:40,972 the feeling for how it maps back and forth 1130 01:00:40,972 --> 01:00:43,570 to the bits of Freud. 1131 01:00:43,570 --> 01:00:48,150 But if you happen to be fond of fairy tale literature the 1132 01:00:48,150 --> 01:00:50,910 Bettelheim book is a lot of fun to read. 1133 01:00:53,430 --> 01:00:55,060 I mean, it's now-- how old is it? 1134 01:00:55,060 --> 01:00:56,980 God, it's twenty-five years old. 1135 01:00:56,980 --> 01:00:59,200 I read that sucker when it came out the first time. 1136 01:00:59,200 --> 01:01:03,360 Anyway, I keep looking for new stuff to read on it and 1137 01:01:03,360 --> 01:01:06,270 there's nothing as good. 1138 01:01:06,270 --> 01:01:27,020 It's fun to read. 1139 01:01:30,920 --> 01:01:38,010 In the full blast male version oedipal fairy tales there and 1140 01:01:38,010 --> 01:01:41,620 endless ones of these and they are of the form-- they're very 1141 01:01:41,620 --> 01:01:43,640 typically of the form-- 1142 01:01:43,640 --> 01:01:46,200 the lead character is typically somewhat older. 1143 01:01:46,200 --> 01:01:52,420 Often described as a prince rather now than as a boy. 1144 01:01:52,420 --> 01:01:55,430 Rather than being like abandoned in the woods, he is 1145 01:01:55,430 --> 01:01:58,720 now thrust out of doors by his father for 1146 01:01:58,720 --> 01:02:00,570 some crime or other. 1147 01:02:00,570 --> 01:02:02,540 He has to go out into the world. 1148 01:02:02,540 --> 01:02:07,070 He's at home in this oedipal conflict. 1149 01:02:07,070 --> 01:02:10,170 They reach the crisis in the conflict and Dad literally 1150 01:02:10,170 --> 01:02:11,190 says, I'm going to kill you. 1151 01:02:11,190 --> 01:02:13,290 The kings says, I'm going to kill you or something and he's 1152 01:02:13,290 --> 01:02:14,680 got to go out into the world. 1153 01:02:14,680 --> 01:02:17,400 And he goes out in the world and has adventures. 1154 01:02:17,400 --> 01:02:21,460 What he does out in the world in these stories is very 1155 01:02:21,460 --> 01:02:24,520 typically to kill a stand-in for the father. 1156 01:02:24,520 --> 01:02:27,320 In Greek tragedy, you may kill your father. 1157 01:02:27,320 --> 01:02:32,210 In a fairy tale you kill the ogre the dragon, the giant-- 1158 01:02:32,210 --> 01:02:37,430 something that stands in for the father and the reason 1159 01:02:37,430 --> 01:02:40,520 you're doing this is because the ogre, the giant, or the 1160 01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:44,976 dragon has in his possession, what? 1161 01:02:44,976 --> 01:02:45,410 AUDIENCE: Princess. 1162 01:02:45,410 --> 01:02:46,660 PROFESSOR: A princess. 1163 01:02:49,430 --> 01:02:52,480 Almost always a princess who thinks that the prince is 1164 01:02:52,480 --> 01:02:55,120 really quite nice and all that. 1165 01:02:55,120 --> 01:02:56,820 And not Mother. 1166 01:02:56,820 --> 01:03:01,160 You don't go out and rescue your mother from the dragon. 1167 01:03:01,160 --> 01:03:03,120 It just doesn't happen. 1168 01:03:03,120 --> 01:03:06,040 What you're going to go out in one of these stories and do is 1169 01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:09,450 find an appropriate mate. 1170 01:03:09,450 --> 01:03:13,030 Not the inappropriate oedipal conflict stage mate. 1171 01:03:13,030 --> 01:03:14,140 You're going to go out and find the 1172 01:03:14,140 --> 01:03:16,710 princess, kill the dragon. 1173 01:03:16,710 --> 01:03:20,100 You're going to then bring her home and everything is going 1174 01:03:20,100 --> 01:03:20,720 to be good. 1175 01:03:20,720 --> 01:03:22,990 And in fact, at this point typically in one of these 1176 01:03:22,990 --> 01:03:28,310 stories the King will not die, but will retire. 1177 01:03:28,310 --> 01:03:30,870 And Prince Charles in England been waiting for this for 1178 01:03:30,870 --> 01:03:34,220 years, but it's never worked out for him. 1179 01:03:36,780 --> 01:03:41,110 You come home with the right princess and the King retires 1180 01:03:41,110 --> 01:03:42,970 and you get to rule the roost. 1181 01:03:42,970 --> 01:03:46,460 That's getting through all the way to the end of the story. 1182 01:03:46,460 --> 01:03:55,010 Now female oedipal stories are different in interesting ways 1183 01:03:55,010 --> 01:03:56,810 because of the difference in the 1184 01:03:56,810 --> 01:03:59,560 traditional family structure. 1185 01:03:59,560 --> 01:04:05,200 If in a male structure you've got the giant in Jack and the 1186 01:04:05,200 --> 01:04:08,920 Beanstalk who comes in only intermittently because the 1187 01:04:08,920 --> 01:04:11,300 primary care-giver is the mother. 1188 01:04:11,300 --> 01:04:16,090 The female's got the conflict with the primary care-giver, 1189 01:04:16,090 --> 01:04:22,760 so you have in these sort of stories the girls who are 1190 01:04:22,760 --> 01:04:29,370 captives of nasty, older women in some fashion or other. 1191 01:04:29,370 --> 01:04:32,270 So let's look, for instance, at Snow White. 1192 01:04:32,270 --> 01:04:35,120 Snow White, another one of these names where the name is 1193 01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:36,570 just a generic term. 1194 01:04:36,570 --> 01:04:38,440 She's white as snow and got hair as 1195 01:04:38,440 --> 01:04:40,840 black as coal or something. 1196 01:04:40,840 --> 01:04:41,630 I don't remember. 1197 01:04:41,630 --> 01:04:46,030 Anyway, lovely mother-- lovely mother dies. 1198 01:04:46,030 --> 01:04:53,740 The husband, the King remarries another lovely 1199 01:04:53,740 --> 01:04:55,460 woman, but a very jealous one. 1200 01:04:55,460 --> 01:04:59,003 The jealous stepmother has what cool device? 1201 01:04:59,003 --> 01:04:59,970 AUDIENCE: Mirror. 1202 01:04:59,970 --> 01:05:02,760 PROFESSOR: The mirror made famous most 1203 01:05:02,760 --> 01:05:05,810 recently in Shrek endlessly. 1204 01:05:05,810 --> 01:05:12,150 And the cool thing about the mirror in Snow White is it 1205 01:05:12,150 --> 01:05:15,750 speaks not literally, but figuratively with the voice of 1206 01:05:15,750 --> 01:05:17,530 the little girl. 1207 01:05:17,530 --> 01:05:21,510 Initially, when the stepmother asks, "Mirror, mirror on the 1208 01:05:21,510 --> 01:05:24,760 wall who's the fairest of us all?" The mirror says, you. 1209 01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:25,900 It's you. 1210 01:05:25,900 --> 01:05:28,320 The voice of the little girl saying, look, I idealize you. 1211 01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:29,050 You're my mother. 1212 01:05:29,050 --> 01:05:32,080 You're the greatest thing since sliced bread. 1213 01:05:32,080 --> 01:05:35,320 Little later, "Mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest 1214 01:05:35,320 --> 01:05:38,180 of us all?" Well look, Queenie, you look pretty good 1215 01:05:38,180 --> 01:05:43,080 for a woman of your age, but have you seen Snow White? 1216 01:05:43,080 --> 01:05:47,350 You know, she is a blossoming, young woman here and hmmm-- 1217 01:05:47,350 --> 01:05:51,690 well anyway, this drives the nasty old stepmother nuts. 1218 01:05:51,690 --> 01:05:55,730 And in the best tradition of oedipal stories she decides to 1219 01:05:55,730 --> 01:05:58,180 do what with Snow White? 1220 01:05:58,180 --> 01:06:02,090 Kill her. 1221 01:06:02,090 --> 01:06:05,540 Another characteristic of female oedipal stories is that 1222 01:06:05,540 --> 01:06:08,150 the dad tends to either be absent or useless. 1223 01:06:08,150 --> 01:06:09,940 The King does nothing here. 1224 01:06:09,940 --> 01:06:13,670 The other dad stand-in who's the huntsman, who the Queen 1225 01:06:13,670 --> 01:06:17,940 gives Snow White to to have her killed. 1226 01:06:17,940 --> 01:06:21,820 The huntsman fails both the Queen and Snow White. 1227 01:06:21,820 --> 01:06:23,840 Disney's actually quite close to the original 1228 01:06:23,840 --> 01:06:25,570 story in this one. 1229 01:06:25,570 --> 01:06:27,820 The huntsman takes her out into the woods, doesn't have 1230 01:06:27,820 --> 01:06:30,520 the heart to kill her, but also doesn't have the guts to 1231 01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:34,110 save her so loses her out in the woods basically. 1232 01:06:34,110 --> 01:06:36,080 He goes off and kills what? 1233 01:06:36,080 --> 01:06:36,800 AUDIENCE: A deer. 1234 01:06:36,800 --> 01:06:37,310 PROFESSOR: A deer. 1235 01:06:37,310 --> 01:06:37,970 Does what? 1236 01:06:37,970 --> 01:06:39,040 AUDIENCE: Cuts out its heart. 1237 01:06:39,040 --> 01:06:40,980 PROFESSOR: Cuts out its heart. 1238 01:06:40,980 --> 01:06:42,120 Brings it home. 1239 01:06:42,120 --> 01:06:44,440 The Queen does what? 1240 01:06:44,440 --> 01:06:46,830 She eats it. 1241 01:06:46,830 --> 01:06:50,000 Nice woman. 1242 01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:55,120 Anyway, so she goes off into the woods. 1243 01:06:59,290 --> 01:07:02,340 What does she find out in the woods? 1244 01:07:02,340 --> 01:07:03,390 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 1245 01:07:03,390 --> 01:07:06,120 PROFESSOR: Hi ho, hi ho-- 1246 01:07:06,120 --> 01:07:10,910 she finds a lovely little encapsulated anal stage fairy 1247 01:07:10,910 --> 01:07:12,260 tale is what she finds. 1248 01:07:19,560 --> 01:07:22,300 The women will have some intuition about this. 1249 01:07:22,300 --> 01:07:28,160 If you told your mother, Mom, I found this really great 1250 01:07:28,160 --> 01:07:29,650 housing arrangement at MIT. 1251 01:07:29,650 --> 01:07:33,480 I'm going to go and live with seven hairy guys. 1252 01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:34,750 Would mom be thrilled? 1253 01:07:34,750 --> 01:07:37,020 No, she would not be. 1254 01:07:37,020 --> 01:07:41,810 If however, they're the dwarves from Snow White even 1255 01:07:41,810 --> 01:07:44,490 though the ones in Grimm aren't Sleepy and Dopey and 1256 01:07:44,490 --> 01:07:47,220 Whiffy and Waffy and whatever they are in Disney-- 1257 01:07:47,220 --> 01:07:51,580 you wouldn't worry about it because these guys, they're 1258 01:07:51,580 --> 01:07:53,820 little asexual guys. 1259 01:07:53,820 --> 01:07:56,990 There is no sense of threat here at all. 1260 01:07:56,990 --> 01:07:59,530 And what do they like to do? 1261 01:07:59,530 --> 01:08:01,035 They like to dig stuff out of the dirt and put 1262 01:08:01,035 --> 01:08:01,842 stuff back in the dirt. 1263 01:08:01,842 --> 01:08:03,460 And dig stuff out of the dirt and put stuff back. 1264 01:08:03,460 --> 01:08:06,600 And they're devoted to Snow White, they think she's great. 1265 01:08:06,600 --> 01:08:08,830 But they're a little anal stage fairy 1266 01:08:08,830 --> 01:08:11,070 tale tucked in there. 1267 01:08:11,070 --> 01:08:15,840 And so the problem is that the mirror rats out Snow White, 1268 01:08:15,840 --> 01:08:17,990 right? "Mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest of us 1269 01:08:17,990 --> 01:08:19,600 all?" Yeah, yeah Queen you look great. 1270 01:08:19,600 --> 01:08:24,060 Guess who's blossoming down in the woods with a bunch of 1271 01:08:24,060 --> 01:08:26,720 little hairy asexual guys? 1272 01:08:26,720 --> 01:08:32,450 So she disguises herself, the Queen disguises herself and 1273 01:08:32,450 --> 01:08:35,810 goes off in an effort to kill Snow White. 1274 01:08:35,810 --> 01:08:39,900 She tries three different times and they are 1275 01:08:39,900 --> 01:08:44,290 interestingly emblematic of an effort to keep a girl from 1276 01:08:44,290 --> 01:08:45,700 turning into a woman. 1277 01:08:45,700 --> 01:08:48,893 The clearest one of these is the corset that she sells-- 1278 01:08:48,893 --> 01:08:53,610 she goes as a peddler woman and sells Snow White a corset 1279 01:08:53,610 --> 01:08:59,250 that squeezes her body back into a little girl body so 1280 01:08:59,250 --> 01:09:01,400 hard that she can't breathe and falls over dead. 1281 01:09:01,400 --> 01:09:04,680 Or semi-dead. 1282 01:09:04,680 --> 01:09:06,910 And always at the last minute-- 1283 01:09:06,910 --> 01:09:09,460 Hi ho, hi ho and the dwarves come back. 1284 01:09:09,460 --> 01:09:10,860 She's dim. 1285 01:09:10,860 --> 01:09:14,220 You know, it's one of these sort of fool me once shame on 1286 01:09:14,220 --> 01:09:17,620 me things, but three times she goes and falls for the old 1287 01:09:17,620 --> 01:09:19,080 lady thing. 1288 01:09:19,080 --> 01:09:21,720 And the last time it's with this Adam 1289 01:09:21,720 --> 01:09:24,420 and Eve kind of apple. 1290 01:09:24,420 --> 01:09:25,930 She eats the apple. 1291 01:09:25,930 --> 01:09:29,670 The dwarves come home and she's dead and they can't do 1292 01:09:29,670 --> 01:09:30,980 anything about it. 1293 01:09:30,980 --> 01:09:33,410 Now what would the natural thing be to do under those 1294 01:09:33,410 --> 01:09:34,950 circumstances? 1295 01:09:34,950 --> 01:09:36,470 Bury her, right? 1296 01:09:36,470 --> 01:09:37,130 Or something. 1297 01:09:37,130 --> 01:09:38,590 She's dead. 1298 01:09:38,590 --> 01:09:40,270 What do they do? 1299 01:09:40,270 --> 01:09:42,550 They put her in a glass coffin. 1300 01:09:42,550 --> 01:09:44,490 It says they can't bear to bury her. 1301 01:09:44,490 --> 01:09:48,870 They put in a glass coffin and put her in a 1302 01:09:48,870 --> 01:09:50,820 clearing in the woods. 1303 01:09:55,070 --> 01:09:58,270 And it says in the story that she continues to grow into a 1304 01:09:58,270 --> 01:10:01,510 beautiful young woman, which is a lovely image of a latency 1305 01:10:01,510 --> 01:10:02,540 stage, right. 1306 01:10:02,540 --> 01:10:05,340 Nothing's happening, but she's turning into a sexually mature 1307 01:10:05,340 --> 01:10:07,280 woman is what's going on here. 1308 01:10:07,280 --> 01:10:10,760 You would think that the dwarves might catch on. 1309 01:10:10,760 --> 01:10:14,000 There's something weird here guys. 1310 01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:17,580 That normally the dead body thing doesn't work like this. 1311 01:10:17,580 --> 01:10:19,070 But anyway, the dwarves don't-- she's getting 1312 01:10:19,070 --> 01:10:22,210 beautiful and through the woods comes the...? 1313 01:10:22,210 --> 01:10:22,850 AUDIENCE: Prince. 1314 01:10:22,850 --> 01:10:24,220 PROFESSOR: Prince. 1315 01:10:24,220 --> 01:10:26,320 The prince does what? 1316 01:10:26,320 --> 01:10:27,820 AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 1317 01:10:27,820 --> 01:10:29,450 PROFESSOR: Nah, the prince doesn't kiss her. 1318 01:10:29,450 --> 01:10:30,360 None of that stuff. 1319 01:10:30,360 --> 01:10:31,860 What the prince does-- 1320 01:10:31,860 --> 01:10:34,880 I can't remember if he does this in the Disney version, 1321 01:10:34,880 --> 01:10:38,230 but in the traditional version the prince orders the dwarves 1322 01:10:38,230 --> 01:10:41,990 to bring the coffin to his castle. 1323 01:10:41,990 --> 01:10:44,190 What is he thinking? 1324 01:10:44,190 --> 01:10:47,140 You know, this would be a really cool coffee table? 1325 01:10:47,140 --> 01:10:52,390 It's very weird stuff. 1326 01:10:52,390 --> 01:10:54,520 But what happens is the dwarves who have been 1327 01:10:54,520 --> 01:11:01,100 extremely careful all along-- the dwarves trip, the coffin 1328 01:11:01,100 --> 01:11:08,090 shatters and the apple pops out of her throat and she's 1329 01:11:08,090 --> 01:11:09,850 alive, she's fine. 1330 01:11:09,850 --> 01:11:13,090 This is a story that doesn't quite get all the way through 1331 01:11:13,090 --> 01:11:17,520 to adult sexuality in the sense that the story ends 1332 01:11:17,520 --> 01:11:19,750 without her saying that she loves the prince or 1333 01:11:19,750 --> 01:11:20,570 anything like that. 1334 01:11:20,570 --> 01:11:23,910 It says, he was nice and so she went with him. 1335 01:11:23,910 --> 01:11:27,020 It doesn't quite get you all the way through. 1336 01:11:27,020 --> 01:11:30,600 The classic stories that get you all the way through to the 1337 01:11:30,600 --> 01:11:36,480 end of the story on the female side are the so-called "animal 1338 01:11:36,480 --> 01:11:38,320 groom" stories. 1339 01:11:38,320 --> 01:11:43,910 I don't have time to do Little Red Riding Hood really. 1340 01:11:43,910 --> 01:11:47,340 But Little Red Riding Hood is a story where all men are 1341 01:11:47,340 --> 01:11:51,100 beasts and they stay beasts. 1342 01:11:51,100 --> 01:11:54,960 The classic versions of female oedipal stories that get you 1343 01:11:54,960 --> 01:11:57,960 all the way through to the end of the story are the ones 1344 01:11:57,960 --> 01:12:02,850 where the beast is redeemed by the love of a good woman. 1345 01:12:02,850 --> 01:12:05,690 You know, one class of these is kiss the frog and it turns 1346 01:12:05,690 --> 01:12:06,880 into a prince. 1347 01:12:06,880 --> 01:12:09,560 But let's do Beauty and the Beast. 1348 01:12:09,560 --> 01:12:11,910 Now Beauty and the Beast in the Disney version is a 1349 01:12:11,910 --> 01:12:14,600 wonderful movie about female empowerment or something like 1350 01:12:14,600 --> 01:12:18,230 that, but it's a long, long way from the original folk 1351 01:12:18,230 --> 01:12:21,190 tale version of it, unlike the Disney Snow White. 1352 01:12:21,190 --> 01:12:27,840 So let me tell you a little more about the version that is 1353 01:12:27,840 --> 01:12:29,650 in Grimm's fairy tales-- 1354 01:12:32,680 --> 01:12:34,280 if you aren't familiar with it. 1355 01:12:34,280 --> 01:12:38,260 So in Grimm's fairy tales or in the classic Beauty and the 1356 01:12:38,260 --> 01:12:44,840 Beast story for starters, there's no reason why the 1357 01:12:44,840 --> 01:12:47,710 Beast is a beast. 1358 01:12:47,710 --> 01:12:51,170 In these stories typically, the Beast in the Disney 1359 01:12:51,170 --> 01:12:55,270 version is a beast because he's got no love and he was 1360 01:12:55,270 --> 01:12:59,180 nasty to whatever she was who showed up at the door and 1361 01:12:59,180 --> 01:12:59,920 stuff like that. 1362 01:12:59,920 --> 01:13:01,190 None of that in the traditional version. 1363 01:13:01,190 --> 01:13:06,160 He's a beast because some old woman said, you're a beast. 1364 01:13:06,160 --> 01:13:11,770 In the all men are beasts school of beasthood. 1365 01:13:11,770 --> 01:13:15,400 So when we start out with Beauty and the Beast, Beauty 1366 01:13:15,400 --> 01:13:18,580 is at home with her two sisters. 1367 01:13:18,580 --> 01:13:23,120 No Mom onsite at all in this one, but there's Dad and Dad's 1368 01:13:23,120 --> 01:13:25,430 going on off on a trip. 1369 01:13:25,430 --> 01:13:28,340 Not because he's got some whacko cool invention, he's 1370 01:13:28,340 --> 01:13:30,360 just going on a trip and he says, what do you want me to 1371 01:13:30,360 --> 01:13:35,310 bring back and one greedy, old sister says, oh bring me a 1372 01:13:35,310 --> 01:13:39,640 Mercedes and the other one says, bring me a fur coat and 1373 01:13:39,640 --> 01:13:44,150 Beauty who's a bit of a sap says, just bring me one rose. 1374 01:13:44,150 --> 01:13:47,390 So anyway, he does well on the trip and he gets the Mercedes 1375 01:13:47,390 --> 01:13:48,415 and gets the fur coat. 1376 01:13:48,415 --> 01:13:51,130 He forgets the rose, right? 1377 01:13:51,130 --> 01:13:57,790 So he's coming home and he passes this ruinous castle and 1378 01:13:57,790 --> 01:14:01,100 there's a rosebush of course, and he says, nobody's going to 1379 01:14:01,100 --> 01:14:03,380 miss one rose, right? 1380 01:14:03,380 --> 01:14:05,030 So he goes and picks the rose. 1381 01:14:05,030 --> 01:14:09,705 So bad move because out comes [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 1382 01:14:09,705 --> 01:14:14,230 And you picked my rose, now I'm going to kill you which 1383 01:14:14,230 --> 01:14:15,810 seems a little disproportionate, but you 1384 01:14:15,810 --> 01:14:18,840 know, he's a beast after all. 1385 01:14:18,840 --> 01:14:22,410 And so the daddy explains way more than he should be under 1386 01:14:22,410 --> 01:14:24,280 the circumstances. 1387 01:14:24,280 --> 01:14:27,230 Oh, I was just picking one for my daughter-- 1388 01:14:27,230 --> 01:14:29,710 and the beast says, OK. 1389 01:14:29,710 --> 01:14:30,730 Fine, I won't kill you. 1390 01:14:30,730 --> 01:14:32,990 Send me the daughter. 1391 01:14:32,990 --> 01:14:36,370 Dad says, OK. 1392 01:14:36,370 --> 01:14:38,390 There are two ways of looking at this. 1393 01:14:38,390 --> 01:14:42,590 One of them is that dads very traditionally, in animal groom 1394 01:14:42,590 --> 01:14:45,900 stories are the person who, in a sense, walks the daughter 1395 01:14:45,900 --> 01:14:47,710 down the aisle here. 1396 01:14:47,710 --> 01:14:49,770 The other way of thinking about this more charitably 1397 01:14:49,770 --> 01:14:52,380 about Dad is that Dad's thinking, I'm just getting out 1398 01:14:52,380 --> 01:14:53,110 of here man. 1399 01:14:53,110 --> 01:14:55,170 I'm not going to send my daughter back. 1400 01:14:55,170 --> 01:14:57,170 But he goes home. 1401 01:14:57,170 --> 01:15:02,790 He tells the story and very much like in the Disney 1402 01:15:02,790 --> 01:15:06,230 version Beauty says, hey, you gave your word. 1403 01:15:06,230 --> 01:15:08,010 I gotta go. 1404 01:15:08,010 --> 01:15:12,270 And so she goes off to live with the Beast. 1405 01:15:12,270 --> 01:15:17,010 Now the Beast-- well, he's a beast, but he's 1406 01:15:17,010 --> 01:15:19,000 kind of like a gentleman. 1407 01:15:19,000 --> 01:15:21,620 He's not really a bad beast as these things go. 1408 01:15:21,620 --> 01:15:24,890 They live a perfectly reasonable life there in this 1409 01:15:24,890 --> 01:15:27,030 grungy castle. 1410 01:15:27,030 --> 01:15:33,050 Every night, after dinner he says, will you kiss me and she 1411 01:15:33,050 --> 01:15:34,390 says, oh yuck. 1412 01:15:34,390 --> 01:15:35,650 You're a beast. 1413 01:15:35,650 --> 01:15:38,010 And he doesn't press the issue, right? 1414 01:15:38,010 --> 01:15:41,510 And they just go on like this for a long, long time. 1415 01:15:41,510 --> 01:15:47,860 And eventually she gets a postcard or something-- no, 1416 01:15:47,860 --> 01:15:49,410 gets the wedding invitation. 1417 01:15:49,410 --> 01:15:52,040 She gets an invitation that says, your 1418 01:15:52,040 --> 01:15:52,860 sister's getting married. 1419 01:15:52,860 --> 01:15:54,570 Why don't you come home for the wedding? 1420 01:15:54,570 --> 01:15:58,480 And the Beast is reluctant to let her go, but says, you can 1421 01:15:58,480 --> 01:16:05,220 go as long as you come back within a month or I'll die. 1422 01:16:05,220 --> 01:16:09,635 So she goes home and big, long party, I guess because she 1423 01:16:09,635 --> 01:16:12,850 forgets all about it. 1424 01:16:12,850 --> 01:16:16,720 The magic mirror in some versions, but in any case, on 1425 01:16:16,720 --> 01:16:21,350 the thirty-first day she either looks in the mirror or 1426 01:16:21,350 --> 01:16:23,620 realizes in a dream or something that 1427 01:16:23,620 --> 01:16:25,020 the Beast is dying. 1428 01:16:25,020 --> 01:16:26,140 The castle is in ruins. 1429 01:16:26,140 --> 01:16:28,110 The Beast is dying. 1430 01:16:28,110 --> 01:16:30,760 And she wishes herself back there. 1431 01:16:30,760 --> 01:16:34,920 She's magically transported back there. 1432 01:16:34,920 --> 01:16:37,674 Nobody gets to get killed on the roof in the rain or 1433 01:16:37,674 --> 01:16:38,240 anything like that. 1434 01:16:38,240 --> 01:16:43,700 She realizes that she does love this beast and kisses him 1435 01:16:43,700 --> 01:16:45,050 and kaboof! 1436 01:16:45,050 --> 01:16:50,230 Now he has been redeemed by the love of a good woman and 1437 01:16:50,230 --> 01:16:51,640 he's no longer a beast. 1438 01:16:51,640 --> 01:16:58,150 You've gotten through all the way to the end of the story. 1439 01:16:58,150 --> 01:17:01,420 So Little Red Riding Hood there's no sense that she's 1440 01:17:01,420 --> 01:17:02,413 going to go marry the Beast. 1441 01:17:02,413 --> 01:17:05,060 In Little Red Riding Hood what you've got is the situation 1442 01:17:05,060 --> 01:17:10,140 where Little Red Riding Hood says to-- 1443 01:17:10,140 --> 01:17:14,010 when confronted by the Beast on the road in effect she 1444 01:17:14,010 --> 01:17:15,970 says, I'm much too young for you. 1445 01:17:15,970 --> 01:17:18,840 I'm an inappropriate sexual object. 1446 01:17:18,840 --> 01:17:20,580 Why don't you go see Grandma? 1447 01:17:20,580 --> 01:17:22,980 She's a much more experienced woman. 1448 01:17:26,210 --> 01:17:28,000 Go read your Little Red Riding Hood again. 1449 01:17:28,000 --> 01:17:30,530 Little Red Riding Hood gives way too much-- 1450 01:17:30,530 --> 01:17:34,290 if you go and meet a stranger, a bad, scary stranger and he 1451 01:17:34,290 --> 01:17:38,010 asks a bunch of questions you're not supposed to say, I 1452 01:17:38,010 --> 01:17:40,000 live or I'm going to Grandma. 1453 01:17:40,000 --> 01:17:44,180 She lives at 400 Shady Brook Lane and I think she leaves 1454 01:17:44,180 --> 01:17:46,030 the back door unlocked. 1455 01:17:46,030 --> 01:17:48,130 That's more or less what Red Riding Hood does. 1456 01:17:53,450 --> 01:17:56,600 So what the Wolf does is it goes there 1457 01:17:56,600 --> 01:17:57,490 and gobbles up Grandma. 1458 01:17:57,490 --> 01:18:04,020 Gets into bed and then gobbles up Little Red Riding Hood. 1459 01:18:04,020 --> 01:18:10,150 Who is later delivered by cesarean section, more or less 1460 01:18:10,150 --> 01:18:14,090 and describes the whole experience as yucky. 1461 01:18:14,090 --> 01:18:14,910 Not scary. 1462 01:18:14,910 --> 01:18:16,580 It was all just sort gross. 1463 01:18:19,510 --> 01:18:25,530 And when the Wolf is captured by the huntsman, Daddy, the 1464 01:18:25,530 --> 01:18:28,440 Wolf is described as you old sinner. 1465 01:18:28,440 --> 01:18:29,360 What's that about? 1466 01:18:29,360 --> 01:18:32,670 Anyway, the Little Red Riding Hood ends with Little Red 1467 01:18:32,670 --> 01:18:35,670 Riding Hood saying, I will never go off the straight and 1468 01:18:35,670 --> 01:18:36,580 narrow again. 1469 01:18:36,580 --> 01:18:39,090 Because the Wolf's been saying go smell the flowers. 1470 01:18:39,090 --> 01:18:41,350 Go off the track and stuff like that. 1471 01:18:41,350 --> 01:18:43,360 So that's a story where you don't get 1472 01:18:43,360 --> 01:18:45,650 through the whole thing. 1473 01:18:45,650 --> 01:18:48,480 If you wanted to write a Little Red Riding Hood story-- 1474 01:18:48,480 --> 01:18:51,460 you wanted to morph it into a full blast story-- 1475 01:18:51,460 --> 01:18:54,050 I suppose it'd be a little crass if Little Red Riding 1476 01:18:54,050 --> 01:18:57,270 Hood had to go and marry the guy who killed Grandma. 1477 01:18:57,270 --> 01:19:00,510 That's a little gross, but she'd end up kissing the Wolf 1478 01:19:00,510 --> 01:19:07,550 at the end and the Wolf would turn into something nice. 1479 01:19:07,550 --> 01:19:11,190 There's a great MIT fairy tale-- a tool and die fairy 1480 01:19:11,190 --> 01:19:14,170 tale, but you'll have to ask me about it some other time.