Arrested Development and Philosophy, page 5
The preconscious is the accessible middle ground between the entirely accessible conscious level of the mind and the completely blocked-off unconscious level of the mind. It is much easier for preconscious thoughts to enter into consciousness than it is for the unconscious to enter into consciousness. The preconscious includes memories that we are not conscious of at the moment but that we can retrieve at any time. So if Lucille did not have too much to drink at last year’s Motherboy celebration, the events of that day would be preconscious for her. Preconscious ideas and thoughts may also contain words that are residues from a failed repression. Therefore, the content of the preconscious is not fully repressed, while unconscious ideas and thoughts are completely unknown and repressed.3
The preconscious could be explained, again, through George Sr.’s presence in the attic. Except this time let’s take George Sr.’s presence in the attic as being known only by George Michael in the episode “Good Grief!”
Michael: Well, I meant it. So no more secret trips up to the attic, right?
Narrator: George Michael didn’t want to betray his grandfather, but it appeared that his father already knew the truth.
George Michael: I have Pop-Pop in the attic.
Michael: What? The mere fact that you call making love “Pop-Pop” tells me you’re not ready.
The idea of hiding George Sr. in the attic was latent, or held back from consciousness in the realm of the preconscious. It only becomes fully conscious when Michael realizes that George Michael was not calling sex with Ann “Pop-Pop.” He was actually referring to George Sr. This middle ground of Michael being told and yet not knowing that George Sr. was hiding in the attic is precisely where ideas of the preconscious lie. Ideas in the preconscious are neither fully known nor fully unknown, but they may eventually become known.
Freud’s Company Model
Freud’s second model, while influenced by the topographical model, is more familiar to casual readers of Freud. This second model was the structural model, which involved the id, the ego, and the super-ego. Freud uses the German words “Es,” “Ich,” and “Über-Ich,” but English translations use their Latin equivalents—id/Es means “it,” ego/Ich means “I,” and super-ego/Über-Ich means “Super I” or “Over I.” The id dwells only in the realm of the unconscious, while the ego and super-ego are located both in the preconscious and the unconscious.
The id, located in the realm of the unconscious, is the “oldest” part of our mental agencies. It contains the instincts, or the needs that require satisfaction and that are the cause of all activity.4 Because of the external world, not all instincts or needs can be met or fulfilled the way the id would prefer them to be. The ego functions as a diplomat between the external world and the id, deciding when, where, and if these satisfactions should be met.
Michael provides a good model for what the ego does if we think of the Bluth Company as an individual. When the company stock is unfrozen in “Whistler’s Mother,” every family member begins clamoring for fulfillment of their individual “needs.” Gob needs a yacht, Lindsay needs a club membership, and Tobias needs (is?) the Queen Mary. Michael, playing the role of the ego, tries to regulate the needs of his family, who are playing the role of the id, by delaying the satisfaction of those needs.
And then there’s the super-ego. The super-ego is just another burden for the ego. Freud explains that the super-ego is developed by the parents, who offer love and threaten punishments, which are “signs to the child as a loss of love.”5 George Michael’s relationship to his father is a good example of what the super-ego (Michael) demands of the ego (George Michael). The demands of the super-ego limit the satisfaction of the ego. Take, for example, the exchange between George Michael and Michael in the episode “Motherboy XXX,” where George Michael wishes to go to the Christian camp “The Promise Land” with Ann.
Michael: It–It’s not about school, pal. It’s more about family. Your Uncle Buster’s been very depressed lately, and you haven’t visited him. Family first. Or did they not teach you that at the Promise Land?
George Michael: I don’t know. You won’t let me go.
The ego is pulled in every direction, and must juggle demands from the super-ego, the id, and the external world. Freud explains, “An action by the ego is as it should be if it satisfies simultaneously the demands of the id, of the super-ego, and of reality—that is to say, if it is able to reconcile their demands with one another.”6
Prove It: Baiting the Unconscious
Freud believed that parapraxes, or everyday errors, betray unconscious impulses. We all fall victim to parapraxes such as slips of the tongue, slips of the pen, bungled actions, and misreadings. You don’t have to be crazy to have a parapraxis or two every once in a while, but they are exceedingly common in the Bluth family.7 As Tobias, the queen of parapraxes, says, “I suppose that we all do expose our inner desires, don’t we?”
There aren’t enough pages in this book to catalog all of Tobias’s homoerotic actions and statements. So let’s focus on Tobias’s gaff in the pilot episode: mistaking a group of flamboyantly dressed men for pirates. Freud would say that this was no coincidence—Tobias had unconsciously intended to spend time with homosexuals, though perhaps not necessarily to protest the local yacht club’s discriminatory policies.
In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud tells the story of a man who, in wanting a day to himself, had to nevertheless pay a visit to someone that he would otherwise prefer not to see. After begrudgingly boarding the train to his destination, the man inadvertently transfers to the wrong train, and goes back to his home, where he would rather spend his time.8
Freud would no doubt say that Tobias has repressed homosexual urges (“No, I’m not gay, Lindsay . . . how many times . . . must we have this . . . ”). Tobias, thinking he is dressing as a pirate when he is actually dressing in Lindsay’s clothing, is one thing. Joining a group of homosexuals for a protest is another. Tobias, like the man who transferred to the wrong train, is satisfying an unconscious urge. Freud believes that when it comes to making errors, there are very few coincidences. We pretty much have to agree with him in the case of Tobias, who says questionable things like, “Oh, I can just taste those meaty leading man parts in my mouth!” so frequently that Michael even suggests that Tobias tape record an entire day’s worth of dialogue, thinking that he “might be surprised by some of [his] phrasing!”
Shémale and Misreadings
Freud maintains that many misreadings are caused by the reader’s expectation of what’s coming next. Consider Freud’s example of a man who had read Homer so much that he always read “Agamemnon” instead of the German word for “supposed,” angenommen. This is precisely the reason why we read “Shemale” (SHE-Male) instead of “Shémale” (Shuh-MAL-ay) on Lindsay’s T-shirt, and why we, the audience, experience a parapraxis of our own.
The T-shirt, a gift from Maeby, is read as “Shemale” (SHE-Male) by the viewers and by Maeby because of Lindsay’s voice. Lindsay’s voice was gravelly and manly throughout this episode (“Sad Sack”) due to a night of excited drunken screaming at a single’s bar. Regardless, Steve Holt (!) finds Lindsay attractive. Maeby, fearful of losing her crush to her mother, lies to Steve Holt (!), telling him that her mother is actually a man who thinks that he can pass as a woman. Believing the shirt to be a heartfelt gift, Lindsay is oblivious to the joke being played on her.
Michael, Marta, Ann Other Freudian Slips
A slip of the tongue—a Freudian slip—occurs when a person intends to say one thing but says something else that sounds or seems similar to the original intended word. Recall the exchange between Michael and Marta in the episode “Marta Complex.”
Marta: So you’re saying there’s no one that you’re even interested in?
Michael: There was somebody for a little while, but it was too much of a brother . . . bother.
“Brother” and “bother” sound similar and betray an embarrassing thought or desire. Michael, of course, was in love with Marta, but couldn’t do anything about it without ignoring his mantra that “family comes first.” But the slips didn’t stop there. After the chants of “Speech! Speech! Speech!” (for no one in particular) at a family party, Michael gives in. He closes with an even more telling slip, “To Gob and Marta. To love and happiness. I love you all, Marta.”
In addition, Michael is always forgetting Ann’s name (Her?). On one occasion, Michael calls Ann “Egg”—another example of a Freudian slip. What inspires this slip? Ann’s eating habits. George Michael tells us all about it.
George Michael: Oh, it’s so cute. She sometimes takes a little pack of mayonnaise, and she’ll squirt it in her mouth all over, and then she’ll take an egg and kind of . . . Mmmm! She calls it a “mayonegg.” [concerned pause] Are you okay?
Michael: I don’t feel so good.
Michael was decidedly not okay. Later in that same episode, “The One Where They Build a House,” Michael inadvertently replaces Ann’s name with “Egg” when George Michael asks about buying the diamond cream that Lindsay mentioned earlier in the episode (“A million ∗∗∗∗ing diamonds!”).
Michael: George Michael, I’m sure that Egg is a very nice person. I just don’t want you spending all your money getting her all glittered up for Easter.
Due to the disgust and nausea induced by Ann’s “mayonegg,” Ann and the snack were inextricably linked in Michael’s mind. This caused Michael, who has trouble recalling Ann’s name in the first place, to refer to her as “Egg”—a reference, hold the mayonnaise, to what made Michael ill earlier in the episode.
Motherboy, or the Oedipus Complex
Although parapraxes provide good evidence for the existence of the unconscious, a lot of what goes on in the unconscious is unknown to us. The Oedipus complex is one example.
Motherboy, while awkward, is nothing compared to Freud’s Oedipus complex. Motherboy, of course, is what Lindsay calls the “I’m in love with my mother dance thing” and is the main event in the episode “Motherboy XXX.” According to Freud, the Oedipus complex is very important in the development of a boy’s psychology. The complex derives its name from the Greek tragic hero, Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother—though the true identity of both his parents were unknown to him at the time.
Freud believed that every boy experienced the Oedipus complex. Put simply, the Oedipus complex manifests itself as the resentment of the young boy towards his father, who disrupts the child’s enjoyment of his mother’s affection.9 Because of this resentment, the boy wishes his father would disappear. But the father steps in and prohibits anything from happening. The child would like to take the mother for his wife, but the father poses a daunting threat. This causes the child to repress or turn away from the Oedipus complex. In other words, the complex is pushed into the realm of the unconscious. The frustration toward the father and the affection toward his mother remain unknown to the child, that is, unless we’re talking about Buster Bluth—but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Ernest Jones, Freud’s official biographer, writes that a failed repression of the Oedipus complex might result in the boy being abnormally attached to his mother and therefore “unable to love any other woman.”10 Even if the boy could detach himself from the love for his mother, the weaning would always be incomplete and the boy would perpetually fall in love “only with women who in some way resemble the mother.”11 Buster’s relationship with Lucille Two is a perfect example of this: Not only is Lucille Two around Lucille One’s age, they also share the same name! Buster makes no bones about his relationship with Lucille Two in the episode “Marta Complex.”
Buster: Our relationship doesn’t work?
Lucille 2: No, not as long as you keep getting me all mixed up with your mother.
Buster: It is exactly the opposite. I’m leaving my mother for you. You’re replacing my mother.
George Sr. even needs to remind Buster of the father’s prohibition in the episode “Justice Is Blind.” Hours before his arrest, he says to Buster:
George Sr: No, no, no. Let me help you with that, son. Enjoy yourself tonight. Because you are out of here. I’m not going to spend my retirement watching you wipe your nose on your sleeve.
Buster: I can’t breathe, Dad.
George Sr: (Gritting his teeth) Neither can I!!
From Buster’s Motherboy mission “Operation Hot Mother” to calling his sister his new mother (“And is it just me, or is she looking hotter, too?”), most of Buster’s behavior exemplifies his failed repression of the Oedipus complex. Take, for instance, his picture with Lucille in the Balboa Bay Window magazine in the “Marta Complex” episode. Included in the magazine is an article written by a young Buster, titled “Why I Want to Marry My Mother.” This same article causes Stan Sitwell to comment later in the episode, “You know, it could be worse. He could want to marry your mother. (Laughs.) Oh, I’m sorry. Is your family not laughing at that yet?”
Totem . . . : Boyfights
Looking for the origin of the totem animal, an object of worship that watches over the tribe or clan, Freud examined primitive culture using psychoanalysis in his book Totem and Taboo. Charles Darwin (1809–1882) inspired Freud’s answer: the primal horde. Darwin proposed that at one point, humanity was similar to bands of gorillas. One older male would live among many females and would drive out the younger males, much like the prohibitive father in the Oedipus complex. According to Darwin, this would prevent “interbreeding within the limits of the same family.”12 According to Freud, this angered the young males—so they devised a plot to unite and eat the tyrannical father after killing him. Sounds little like the sibling rivalry on Arrested Development. The plot of the episode “Making a Stand” echoes the unification of the brothers against the tyrannical father. Of course, instead of killing and eating George Sr., Gob and Michael hire J. Walter Weatherman (George Sr.’s one armed “scare-toy”) to teach George Sr. a “lesson” about pitting them against each other.
According to Freud, with the obstacle to sexual desires gone, the brothers become divided. Such desires do not unite men—they divide men.13 Each of the brothers wished to possess all of the females, as the murdered tyrannical father once did. Think of Marta from the “Marta Complex” episode—Gob, Michael, and even Buster (“Will somebody please punch me in the face?”) fight over Marta. Sexual desires certainly do not unite men, as George Michael shows us in the series finale by punching Gob in the face for dating Ann (Her?).
According to Freud, because of this division, the brothers could afford no alternative but to renounce the women they all desired, the women who drove them to the murder of the tyrannical father in the first place. The totem animal—the sacred animal of the tribe—is a replacement of the lost father. The tribe worships the totem animal by murdering, consuming, and subsequently mourning it. But even within the ritual there is an attempt at self-justification: “If our father had treated us in the way the totem does, we should never have felt tempted to kill him.”14
. . . and Taboo: Les Cousins Dangereux
Freud also wrote about incest outside of the Oedipus complex in the book Totem and Taboo. The primal brothers become divided after murdering their tyrannical father, and so the taboo of incest was meant as a remedy that would keep them from fighting over women in their own tribe. Whatever its true origin, the prohibition against incest remains with us. For example, if you were to sing a karaoke rendition of “Afternoon Delight” with a relative—say, your niece or nephew—you might get some strange looks.
George Michael is concerned with the prohibition of incest to the point of asking if kissing Maeby is illegal in the pilot episode. Strangely enough, each time they break the taboo, George Michael and Maeby return to the prohibition against incest. After kissing Maeby, in the first episode, George Michael yells, “I knew it was against the law!” when the SEC shows up.
In the episode “The Righteous Brothers,” George Michael kisses Maeby and “steals second.” Their fun is ruined, however, when Gob walks in and says, “Dad’s gonna be crushed!” referring to George Sr., who he hid in the crawlspace beneath the collapsing model home. George Michael, panicking, responds, “We don’t have to tell him!” thinking that Gob was talking about Michael.
Gob has a similar reaction to the idea that he has transgressed the prohibition of incest. In the episode, “Family Ties,” Michael is investigating Nellie—NOT Tobias—and discovers three things: (1) Nellie is possibly his sister, (2) Nellie is a prostitute, and (3) Gob/Franklin is her pimp. Gob offers Michael a “family discount” for her services. Michael responds, “Family discount is right, Gob. This is the sister that I’ve been talking about.” Gob responds tearfully, “Maybe I should have been getting a family rate. Oh my God.”
