Waking Up Repressed Memories

Since the World War One, Freud’s theory violently hit all areas of the humanities, arousing surging waves.Influence of Freud’s psychoanalysis on modern and contemporary western culture can not only be reflected from the spiritual analysis on its own specialized subject of psychology, but also be seen from the lasting impacts on anthropology, sociology, religion, philosophy, art and literature.As one of the modern western aesthetics schools in the20th century, psychoanalysis aesthetics occupied a unique position in the modern western aesthetics, having a huge and far-reaching influence on the modern western aesthetics.This paper introduces the repression and the sublimation theory of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and invesgates into its basis value, significance, far-reaching influence, and enlightenment on literary creation and criticism, aiming to reveal the significance of the theory in aesthetic activities.Freud holds that consciousness, unconsciousness and oppression is the cornerstone of the whole structure of his psychoanalysis and that sexual instinct of human consciousness and individual desires are constrained by the reality, being suppressed in the unconsciousness.These repressed impulses are not stationary, but at any time waiting for or looking for timing to pour out. As a result of the need of civilization and the balance of the individual, repressed desires are always looking for ways to express and be satisfied. Sublimation is a cultural transfer effective way.Sublimation can satisfy the desire of ego and meet the needs of the society, making the goals and objects of sex impulse transfer to a richer social significance value target and change of the object.The artist’s creative process is to make the pent-up return and recall the process of the lost memory. For the right time, artists borrow sublimation activity, having their pent-up sexual instinct desire expressed in the form of camouflage. In Freud’s view, the most fundamental literary and artistic creation is artist’s unconscious sexual instinct desire. The content of the desired performance is complex and desire which are deeply repressed in childhood in the unconsciousness of the artists. The viewer from the artist’s work feel the artist’s sexual instinct desire, resonate and get satisfied. Viewer’s pleasure of appreciating the art derives from the satisfaction of desire, perceiving from the vision of their desires. Freud believed that art is actually sexual instinct impulse of sublimation of "seeing and being seen", considering the nature of literature and art is the instinct of a man and the unsatisfied sublimation of desire. Freud also puts forward the idea that literature and art can make people temporarily escape from the reality of pain. Works of art for individual inner "Oedipus complex" and "the castration complex" have provided symbolic representation, so that the individual is able to reduce mental fear and anxiety. This view is reflected in the aesthetic activity. Freud holds that beauty is the life of those who almost can not bear a difficult buffer, becoming independent individuals in the outside world through internal satisfaction. For the function of art, Freud believes that art has anesthetic effects on individual and can temporarily offset depression; through literature and art activities, real compensation for repressed desires can be realized.Freud’s oppression and the sublimation theory of later generations produced extensive and profound influence on aesthetics theory, providing a new train of thought to the research of aesthetics, literature and art as a supreme spiritual phenomenon and creating a deep interpretation of artists and literary research method. Affected by that, the western aesthetics in the20th century sees the first psychological steering.Freud’s emphasis on individual original childhood experience has brought great inspiration to exploring the significance of literary, provides a theoretical perspective as a link between art and psychology, greatly widens the perspective of literary criticism and domain, inspires literary critics to understand and evaluate literary works from different angles and it is widely used in the literary research and criticism practice.Freud’s repression of sublimation theory from the perspective of psychology explains the essence of literature and art, motivations of literary and artistic creation and acceptation of art works. When the instinct of a man’s demands cannot be met, the subjective desire is depressed and individuals are unable to realize themselves because of the social repression, we can not passively accept the fact of the wronged, but can use sublimation to realize our own ideal through the pursuit of beauty. When artists change the emotions filled with pain with the formal beauty on display in front of us, we could get the mold of beauty together with the artist to remove the inner depression, achieving psychological balance.But the limitations of Freud’s theory are extremely obvious. Its main flaw is that too much emphasis bas been put on sexual instinct desire but ignoring the aesthetics of literature and art, which makes the spiritual beauty into an animal instinct.The most important characteristic of literature and art is its aesthetic. Various angles can be adopted to review and study literature and art, at no time ignoring its basic attribute.As the widespread academic theory of the20th century, Freud’s repressive sublimation theory can not be judged with an accurate evaluation with a single scale and standard. We should be practical and carry out realistic analysis.