In “The Interpretation of Dreams” Sigmund Freud proposed a new way of studying dreams. He believes they hold more significance than most people believed. In the beginning, he explains the Oedipus complex to support his theory. The Oedipus complex believes that naturally, humans project their first sexual desires upon their mother and their first feelings of hatred and murderous instincts onto their father. Oedipus tries to run from his fate but ends up doing exactly what he tried so hard not to unintentionally. Many people praise the work for its themes that “supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts of mankind to escape the evil that threatens them.” but Freud proposed that it is the myths’ relatable content and its ability to recognize our own inner minds and see the fulfillment of our childhood wishes that draws so many to the myth over those that have similar themes of fate v. humanity.

Freud believes that the story has such great ability to resonate with the true nature of many people because it centers on two “typical dreams” at its core. Freud believes art / this story “ sprang from some primeval dream-material which had as its content the distressing disturbance of a child’s relation to his parents owing to the first stirrings of sexuality.”

In the section “ The Work of Condensation” he explains the difference in the “length” of dream-content and dream-thoughts if they were both being written down. He believes the actual content of the dream may be “quick” or have little the describe, but has a lot of significant meaning to draw out of it nonetheless.

In to me the most interesting part of the piece, “The Means of Representation in Dreams” Freud talks about the concept that “For the most part dreams disregard all these conjunctions, and it is only the substantive content of the dream-thoughts that they take over and manipulate.” He proposes that sometimes dreams are unable to represent logical relations but instead use a combination of pictures to illustrate a dream-wish. These are not always very clear to us or logical but they represent and “form a group in the conceptual sense.” He also helps us frame clarity under confusing and contradicting aspects of dreams. For example, he talks about how the use of the word “or” when describing a dream is inaccurate and is most likely an “and”. He says “In such cases, the rule for interpretation is: treat the two apparent alternatives as of equal validity and link them together with an ‘and’.”

Concepts and conversations around ideology have been centered around Marxist concepts on ideology and restructuring focusing them. Althusser argues that Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) is a “societal mechanism for creating pliant, obedient citizens who practice dominant values” they are described as civil institutions “that have legal standing (hence their designation as “state” apparatuses), including churches, schools, the family, courts, political parties, unions, the media, sports the arts.” Althusser believes that it is through these things we learn, especially church and school, how to be good productive members of capitalist society and these structures keep order of deviation from the expectations of “good citizens” 

Althusser talks about labor power, the reproduction of labor and how both are dependent on each other. The promise of labor power and its reproduction is not enough if the product won’t be suitable to serve the capitalist machine and process of production, meaning the children / new generation are useless unless they learn the skills, rules and expectations of them. He compares the class division and labor dynamic of the capitalist regime to serfdom and slavery. Althusser further builds this point by asserting the basics taught in school are mere early training for different and specific roles in labor production.

Even the behaviors, attitudes, morals and civic and professional conscience we learn in school is credited to something serving the capitalist machine by laying out the foundations for class division and domination.

Althusser uses this example to show “the reproduction of labour power requires ,not only a reproduction, of its. skills., but, also,at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order,” He’s proposing every institution can and does work against us to form ideological sets that keep us in line with the capitalist regime. This aligns with Marxist writings about the state. Althusser even cites the Communist Manifesto and the Eighteenth Brumair saying “The State is explicitly conceived as a repressive apparatus. The State is a ‘machine’ of repression, which enables the ruling classes (in the nineteenth century the bourgeois class and the ‘class’ of big landowners) to ensure their domination over the working class. thus enabling the former to subject the latter to the process of surplus-value extortion”

Althusser recognizes The State in action repressing the working class and upholding ideas of capitalism as Ideological Apparatuses. There are ISA’s in many facets of society like religion, education, family life, legal stuff, political stuff, trade unions, communications and culture. Althusser notes, often these things are privatized but always they still function in society to enforce “bourgeois law and authority”

In Melville’s Fist, Barbara Johnson deconstructs and refocuses the conversation and criticism surrounding Herman Melville’s Novella “Billy Bud”. Johnson observes the state of criticism surrounding the piece and how critics often fall into two different camps: those who see it as a “testament of acceptance” and those who consider it a “testament of resistance” or “ironic social criticism” (2319). She goes on to explain the critical obsession with the good/evil dichotomy between the two characters Billy and Claggart and how when they veer from their roles and their actions reverse the expectations. Johnson says “discrepancy between character and action that gives rise to the critical disagreement over the story” (2321) It is the discrepancy between the characters’ established nature and their actions that catapult the conflict and plot of the story. Melville positions this story of polar opposites clashing and reversing roles as the playground for a commentary on judgment and criticism.

Throughout, Johnson uses Saussure’s theory of signifiers/signified to clarify the difference between the two twos of readers that Billy and Claggart are. Saussure proposes “Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems.” (825) Language, the exchange of signs and how each read them causes conflict. This theory is used as Johnson explains the difference between the two readers. The central struggle between Billy and Claggart is the differences in how they communicate, read situations, and how they process and demonstrate signs. Johnsons says “it might be helpful to view the opposition between Billy and Claggart as an opposition not between innocence and guilt but between two conceptions of language, or between two types of reading” (2322). There is a disconnect between Billys motivated signs and how Claggart reads them. Billy reads everything at face value and “never questions the meaning of appearances” which makes it impossible for him to effectively read signs. According to Johnson “, Billy is symbolically as well as factually illiterate.” Billy is what Johnson explains as a “literal reader”. Billy also puts a lot of value on signifying goodness. Claggart on the other hand is an “ironic reader” who often assumes signs to be “reverses the value signs of appearances and takes a daisy for a mantrap” which causes problems between Billy and Claggart because Claggart reads the signs from Billy as dubious.

In Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”, He explores the genesis of Truth, Lies, the differences between the two and how they intersect in more ways than we believe. Nietzsche begins the piece with a jarring truth about humanity, The universe existed before us and it will continue after us. He proposes human intellect is “purposeless and arbitrary” within nature and only serves and exists within the bounds of humanity. (752)  He argues our intellect is merely a tool for survival as the horns or teeth would be on another animal and its main function being “concealment and dissimulation” making “deception” more natural than truth. (753) In fact, he proposes ideas of shared “truths” created language which was birthed from “necessity and boredom” that left humans wanting to build societies.

Nietzsche believes language, which is constructed on a collective social “peace treaty” and is the foundation of the first laws of truth, as well as cognition is heavily reliant on deception. (753) Humans perceive the world in forms, and that informs our limited ability to categorize and create “metaphors” for there existence. Nietzsche explores the flaws in languages ability to accurately describe nature. According to Nietzsche, each word becomes a concept and concepts are created by “dropping individual differences arbitrarily,” (755) So “concepts” like “leaf” “tree” “flower” are born, but Nietzsche clarifies “nature knows neither forms nor concepts and hence no species, but only an ‘X’ which is inaccessible to us and indefinable by us.” (755) further arguing that truth isn’t something natural rather a human invention. There is no link between language and reality so it is all deception and metaphors accepted as truths. It is through language that deception is possible because language dictates what is “true” and “not true”. Language imposes meaning on nature, and since we shape language to fit our needs for survival, truth is not fixed. Nietzsche talks of how truths can contradict each other and often do and how what was once deception or metaphors can become truth overtime.

Self dissimulation is human nature, it saves us from misery and is a survival tool. Nietzsche says,

That drive to form metaphors, that fundamental human drive which can- not be left out of consideration for even a second without also leaving out human beings themselves, is in truth not defeated, indeed hardly even tamed (759)

Nietzsche observes dissimulation and deception as something humans often welcome and seek out as long as it is not harmful. He says “…human beings themselves have an unconquerable urge to let them- selves be deceived,” (760) and cites the fascination of one listening to a fairytale or epic poem. We know it is not true, but are drawn to it nonetheless.