FIQWS 10008

09/06- Freud touches on three main ideas that connect to hysteria and its development and overall symptoms. The first idea being patients diagnosed with hysteria have symptoms that resulted from past life events. Freud states “ our hysterical patients suffer from reminiscences. Their symptoms are residues and mnemic symbols of particular (traumatic) experiences”(Freud 2206). This denotes that past trauma can affect their hysterical episodes. Breuer’s patient for example had trauma from nursing her sick father, so there was no pathological connection between that and her hysteria. For Freud however he says “But in other cases – such as that of the tic that I treated myself, where the determinants dated back more than fifteen and ten years – the feature of an abnormal attachment to the past is very clear” (Freud 2206) this clearly is resulted not from only trauma but pathological changes, which affected that patient’s hysteria. The next idea Freud touches upon was how hysteria affects the emotions a person feels. Hysteria can often exaggerate and have a person produce extreme emotions. “Hysterical conversion exaggerates this portion of the discharge of an emotionally cathected mental process; it represents a far more intense expression of the emotions…”Freud (2207). The last main idea that Freud mentions is hysteria is tied to other pathological events. For example Breuer’s patient displayed other abnormalities that put her in a state of confusion. “Breuer adopted a hypothesis that hysterical symptoms arise in peculiar mental conditions to which he gave the name of ‘hypnoid’.” These instances can then further develop into more severe pathogenic cases.

09/13- The relationship between the narrator and her husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is unhealthy and based off of miscommunication and an imbalance in their marriage. Although, the narrator believes her husband, John is in her favor and treats her with such love and admiration, “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction”(P. 648). Although John has love for his wife he is unintentionally hurting her mentally and emotionally and puts his patriarchal status above his wifes needs. In the beginning of the story Johns character is shown as he treats his wife like a child “John laughs at me…You see he does not believe I am sick!”(P. 647). He pays little to no consideration to what she is feeling and going through. The narrators husband believes that due to him being a physician and an expert in medicine the narrator is perfectly fine and doesn’t suffer from any organic disease. In Freud’s Lecture 1 he states “Medical skills in most cases are powerless against severe diseases of the brain; but neither can doctors do anything against hysterical disorders” (P. 2201). This coinciding with the situation the narrator is in due to her husbands ignorance. The Narrator states, “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him” (P. 649). John lacks to understand what the problem really is and doesn’t attempt to find it either. He is content with the lifestyle he and his wife leads and doesn’t see what negatives there could be.  Johns manipulation and apparent ignorance plays a vital role as to why the narrator experiences nervous depression and is in a dysfunctional relationship. 

FIQWS 10108

09/13- A situation where language was being weaponized against another is media regarding Uighur Muslims as well as other groups of muslims. The media uses terms such as “ethnic cleansing” instead of genocide to ease the matter at hand. However when it came to Christians in Syria and Iraq they state it was a “genocide” committed by ISIS. The media uses terms that the public hold onto and label a certain group with that word or phrase. Uighur muslims in China are victim to this because the media doesn’t use terminology that fits the situation. Labeling concentration camps as “re education centers”, which lessens the severity when reaching the public. 

source: “Concentration camps and forced labor: China’s repression of the Uighurs, explained” https://www.vox.com/2020/7/28/21333345/uighurs-china-internment-camps-forced-labor-xinjiang

09/27- Peer review is important and crucial for knowledge making because it allows writers to have their work to be seen from different perspectives. There is room for criticism and growth when feedback is given from other individuals. This being vital to “knowledge making” as it broadens our horizons regarding writing. Mistakes that a writer cannot see in their work or feed back they cannot provide to themselves, peer review helps with this.

11/18- Mind map

11/22- In Mark Danner’s “Words in a Time of War” he argues we live in “a grim age, this age of rhetoric”, this statement has a negative connotation, meaning that the society we live in is revolved around a certain bias, used to persuade the public, in this case in terms of war. Danner says “The real weapon that day was not box cutters, or even airliners, but the television set, which reproduced and conveyed that astonishing picture”. The media manipulates situations we see and hear, from Iraq bombings to the topic of war in general, in order to hide the reality of these situations. An example of a bias and persuasion would come from “the rhetoric-major president” who convinced the public that these war tactics will result in an astonishing outcome. Words can be twisted to mask reality and in this day and age, we have presented this idea of rhetoric.