Media Analysis Techniques

1. Media Analysis Technique
Psychoanalytics
By Vishnu Achutha Menon

2. Contents
1. Introduction
2. Activity
3. Oedipus complex
4. Electra Complex
5. Id, Ego & Superego
6. Dreams
7. Collective Unconscious

3. Introduction
● Media content analysis or media analysis, is a subset of content analysis.
● Content Analysis : A technique which aims at describing, with optimum
objectivity, precision, and generality, what is said on a given subject in a
given place at a given time.
● Media analysis studies texts: books, letters, videos, television shows, blogs,
movies, newspapers, etc. It looks directly at media texts (rather than
interviewing media producers) and reflects on what they collectively say
about an issue.

4. Introduction
● Media criticism and analysis is not based on personal opinions about a film,
television show, video game, or whatever. You are entitled to your taste, but
if you wish to convince others your opinions are worth considering, you
have to support them.
● Techniques of interpretation.
● Types of analysis
Semiotic Analysis, Psychoanalytic Theory, Sociological Analysis, Feminist
Analysis, Historical Analysis, Mith/ritual analysis

5. Introduction

6. Activity
● Analyse & interpret your dreams

7. Introduction
● Psychoanalytic criticism is a form of applied
psychoanalysis, a science concerned with the
interaction between conscious and unconscious
processes and with the laws of mental functioning.
● Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.
● "What is in your mind," Freud (1963) notes, "is not
identical with what you are conscious of; whether
something is going on in your mind and whether you
hear of it, are two different things" - Character and
culture (p. 189).

8. Introduction
We are not, then, aware of everything going on in our minds. In fact, only a small
portion of our mental lives is accessible to us.
● It has frequently been suggested that an individual's mental life can be
represented by an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg, that part seen above the
water, is what the person is conscious of. The remainder of the iceberg, by
far the greater part of it, lies hidden beneath the water. Although it is not
seen. it is still there.

10. Oedipus complex
● Oedipus refers to a 5th-century BC Greek mythological character Oedipus,
who unwittingly kills his father, Laius, and marries his mother, Jocasta. A
play based on the myth, Oedipus Rex, was written by Sophocles, ca. 429 BC.
● The Oedipus complex, also known as the Oedipal complex, describes a
child's feelings of desire for their opposite-sex parent and jealousy and
anger toward their same-sex parent.

11. Oedipus complex
● In simple terms, a boy feels that he is competing with his father for
possession of his mother, while a girl feels that she is competing with her
mother for her father's affections. According to Freud, children view their
same-sex parents as a rival for the opposite-sex parent's attention and
affection.
● A psychoanalytic theory proposing that children have possessive sexual
desires for their opposite-sex parent while viewing their same-sex parent
as a rival

12. Oedipus complex
● Freud's original examples of the Oedipus complex are applied only to boys
or men; he never fully clarified his views on the nature of the complex in
girls.
● At each stage, the subconscious mind is centered on pleasure related to a
certain region of the body. These stages are:
1. Oral stage: From birth to 18 months
2. Anal stage: From 18 months to three years
3. Phallic stage: From ages three to five
4. Latency: From ages five to 12
5. Genital: From ages 12 to adulthood

13. Oedipus complex

14. Oedipus complex

15. Electra Complex
● The Electra complex is a psychoanalytic term used to describe a girl's sense
of competition with her mother for the affections of her father.
● The Electra complex derives from the Greek mythological character Electra,
who plotted matricidal revenge with Orestes, her brother, against
Clytemnestra, their mother, and Aegisthus, their stepfather, for their
murder of Agamemnon, their father.

18. Id, Ego & Superego
Psychoanalysis is the process of using what we know about these three parts of
someone’s personality to analyze the ways that person behaves.
Id : The id is the part of the personality that contains our primitive impulses—such as
thirst, anger, hunger—and the desire for instant gratification or release. According
to Freud, we are born with our id. The id is an important part of our personality
because as newborns, it allows us to get our basic needs met. Freud believed that the
id is based on our pleasure principle. The id wants whatever feels good at the time,
with no consideration for the other circumstances of the situation. The id is
sometimes represented by a devil sitting on someone’s shoulder. As this devil sits
there, he tells the ego to base behavior on how the action will influence the self,
specifically how it will bring the self pleasure.

19. Id, Ego & Superego

20. Id, Ego & Superego
Ego: The ego is the part of the personality that maintains a balance between our
impulses (our id) and our conscience (our superego). The ego is based on the
reality principle. The ego understands that other people have needs and desires
and that sometimes being impulsive or selfish can hurt us in the end. It is the
ego’s job to meet the needs of the id, while taking into consideration the reality
of the situation. The ego works, in other words, to balance the id and superego.
The ego is represented by a person, with a devil (the id) on one shoulder and an
angel (the superego) on the other.

21. Id, Ego & Superego
Superego : The superego is the part of the personality that represents the
conscience, the moral part of us. The superego develops due to the moral and
ethical restraints placed on us by our caregivers. It dictates our belief of right
and wrong. The superego is sometimes represented by an angel sitting on
someone’s shoulder, telling the ego to base behavior on how the action will
influence society.

22. Id, Ego & Superego

24. Dreams
Nerve-signaling chemicals called neurotransmitters control whether we are asleep or awake
by acting on different groups of nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain.

25. Dreams
● Dreams, in Freud's view, are formed as the result of two mental processes.
● The first process involves unconscious forces that construct a wish that is
expressed by the dream, and the second is the process of censorship that
forcibly distorts the expression of the wish.
● In Freud's view, all dreams are forms of "wish fulfillment".
“ My presumption that dreams can be interpreted at once puts me in opposition
to the ruling theory of dreams and in fact to every theory of dreams…”

26. Dreams
● The manifest content refers to the remembered narrative that plays out in
the dream itself. The latent content refers to the underlying meaning of the
dream.
● During sleep, the unconscious condenses, displaces, and forms
representations of the dream content, the latent content of which is often
unrecognizable to the individual upon waking.

27. Dreams
● Freud claimed that every dream has a connection point with an experience of the
previous day.
● Though, the connection may be minor, as the dream content can be selected
from any part of the dreamer's life.He described four possible sources of
dreams:
1. mentally significant experiences represented directly
2. several recent and significant experiences combined into a single unity by the
dream
3. one or more recent and significant experiences which are represented in the
content by the mention of a contemporary but indifferent experience
4. an internal significant experience, such as a memory or train of thought, that is
invariably represented in the dream by a mention of a recent but indifferent
impression

28. Dreams
There are a number of assumptions that Sigmund Freud used to construct his dream
theory. The most significant include:
● Dreams are short. Freud believed dreams are short, like fireworks. He also
thought they were most likely to appear just before waking.
● Dreams are about the past day’s events. Freud felt that events that had occurred
during the day always appeared in dreams that night.
● Dreams are wish fulfillments. Freud’s most well-known theory, wish fulfillment,
is the idea that when wishes can’t or won’t be fulfilled in our waking lives, they
are carried out in dreams. Even anxious or punishing dreams have their roots in
wish fulfillment, according to Freud.
● Dreams are fleeting. Freud believed most people forget the majority of their
dreams.

29. Dreams
There are a number of assumptions that Sigmund Freud used to construct his dream theory. The most
significant include:
● Dreams contain a ton of sexual symbols. Freud created a long list of the many sexual symbols
dreams may contain.
● He believed the number three, for example, is a symbol for the penis, as are elongated objects
such as umbrellas, trees, sticks, and tall monuments. Freud thought that objects that can cause
harm, such as guns, swords, and knives, could also be seen as phallic symbols. Even animals,
including reptiles such as snakes, can serve as stand-ins for the male genitalia in Freudian dream
theory. Female genitalia, on the other hand, are represented by objects containing space to be
filled. Trunks, shoes, pits, caves, and the mouth are a few examples. Freud categorized certain
fruits, such as apples and pears, as representing breasts, while paper or wooden objects were
thought to symbolize women as a whole.

30. Dreams
● Dreams should be analyzed by a therapist. Freud believed that therapy
is very helpful in helping people overcome all manner of difficulties,
including troubling dreams. He also believed that the analyst, not the
patient, held the key to truly understanding dream images and symbols.

31. Dreams
Freud’s dream theory is centered around the id. Freud described the id as the
representation of the subconscious. It holds all infantile or impulsive behavior. It is
the irrational, primitive, and instinctual part of the personality. Freud believed the
id, with its repressed or unwanted desires (including sexual), was able to express itself
in dreams.

32. Collective Unconscious
● The collective unconscious is a term
coined by psychoanalyst Carl Jung and
refers to the unconscious mind shared
by all of humanity.
● It is composed of archetypes, which are
simple representations of universal
figures and relationships.
● Examples of archetypes include the
mother-child relationship and the
father-child relationship.
● The images contained in the
unconscious are frequently manifested
in dreams.

33. Collective Unconscious
● Jung believed that dreams provided an important window into the collective
unconsciousness and that many symbols contained in dreams had a
universal, uniform meaning.
● Dreams of birth, for example, might represent the birth of a new idea or
development of a new part of oneself.

34. References
1. Freud, Sigmund (1965). James Strachey (ed.). The Interpretation of Dreams.
Translated by James Strachey. New York: Avon.
2. Berger, A. A. (1982). Media analysis techniques. Beverly Hills: Sage
Publications.
3. Carl Jung – Collective unconscious. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.carl-
jung.net/collective_unconscious.html