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Abstract. This chapter develops the idea about the importance of genre by comparing texts by Freud and Conrad, specifically in terms of their engagement with (notions of) the ‘dark continent’. It begins by examining elements of Africanism in Freud's works of psychoanalytic theory.
The evocative phrase dark continent connotes a geographic space that is murky and deep, one that defies understanding. Freud borrowed the expression from the African explorer John Rowlands Stanley's description of the exploration of a dark forest — virgin, hostile, impenetrable.
A well-known example from Freud’s own clinical practice is the failure in the treatment of Dora, a young hysterical woman the founder of psychoanalysis treated for about three months in late 1900 (1905e).
Freud’s use of the term “dark continent” to signify female sexuality is a recurrent theme in feminist theory. The phrase transforms female sexuality into an unexplored territory, an enigmatic, unknowable place concealed from the theoretical gaze and hence the epistemological power of the psychoanalyst. Femininity confounds knowledge while ...
22 maj 2007 · Freud, a self‐described ‘conquistador’, discovered the workings of that great ‘dark continent’ the unconscious mind. Using Reason and Science to shed light on the ‘terra incognita’ within us, he pr...
27 maj 2019 · In Freud's first theory of the instincts, sexualization is subservient to and anaclitically dependent on the self-preservation that governs biological and mental life.
Sigmund Freud infamously referred to women's sexuality as a "dark continent" for psychoanalysis, drawing on colonial explorer Henry Morton Stanl...
