Tag: sigmund freud
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What is the Madonna-Whore Complex?
The Madonna-Whore Complex is a psychological concept, first identified by Sigmund Freud, describing the male tendency to divide women into two categories: the “Madonna” (pure, virtuous, worthy of love and respect) and the “Whore” (sexual, available, degraded). A man with this complex desires the whore but cannot love her, and loves the Madonna but cannot…
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Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny”: When Psychoanalysis Discovered That the Doll Was Alive—and We Were the Ones Who Made It So
“The uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.” —Sigmund Freud, *The Uncanny*, 1919 There is a strange symmetry here. In 1816, E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote “The Sandmann,” a story about a young man who falls in love with a doll named Olympia,…