Freuds Influence on Lawrence
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Lawrence views the Freudian unconscious as two different versions that are not consistent with one another. In the first version, the unconscious is an enraged, unformed energy of sex, "nothing but a slimy serpent of sex, and heaps of excrement, and myriad repulsive little horrors spawned between sex and excrement." ("D.H. Lawrence and the Tyranny of Desire") In the second version, the unconscious is the structure of the Oedipus complex, that is, that Freud believed that in the phallic stage of development (i.e. between the years of 2 and 3) every boy becomes his mother's lover in his dreams. However, the boy's sexual interests are soon met with the threat of castration by their father. The successful resolution involves identification with the father and assuming an active and aggressive social role in a male- dominated society. (The life and work of Sigmund Freud, 22-23) According to Lawrence, the common element in the two versions is repression...