Overdetermination [Überdeterminierung]

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Robert Clark (The Literary Encyclopedia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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Concept (psychoanalysis)

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Date of occurrence 1895

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The idea of over-determination was one of Freud’s earliest and most seminal recognitions, first appearing in his earliest work

Studies in Hysteria

(1895) where he showed that the hysterical symptom is the consequence of many different levels of causation. Freud borrowed the term for geometry in which discipline two lines are said to determine a point and three lines to over-determine it. In his discussion of the “dream-work” in Book VI of

The Interpretation of Dreams

(1900), Freud maintained that “Not only are the elements of a dream determined by the dream-thoughts many times over, but the individual dream thoughts are represented in the dream by several elements. Associative paths lead from one element of the dream to several dream thoughts, and from one dream thought to several…

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484 words

Citation: Clark, Robert. "Overdetermination [Überdeterminierung]". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=802, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Overdetermination [Überdeterminierung]

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