弗洛伊德的精神分析与体育谱系

IF 1.6 Q2 ETHICS Sport Ethics and Philosophy Pub Date : 2023-11-10 DOI:10.1080/17511321.2023.2279151
Jernej Pisk
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Decoding symbols in sport (e.g. scoring a goal) shows us that sport is a derivative of the libido and has an unconscious sexual structure. Unveiling the hidden unconscious sexuality of sport shows us that (male) sport was created for the sake of women, so that men (as winners) could gain a privileged status in female desire. Sport turns out to be a symbolic substitute for the satisfaction of human sexual needs. However, to better understand the competitive nature of sport, one must include the Oedipus and castration complex. It is castration anxiety that drives sporting competition. Victory is symbolically linked to the castration of the opponent. Next we turn to Freud’s concept of transference. It helps us to understand the complexity of the relationship between the athlete and the coach. This has a strong influence on athletic success. When things do not go as planned for an athlete and unexpected injuries occur, Freud’s concept of ‘advantage through illness’ can help us understand the athlete’s ‘escape into injury’.KEYWORDS: Sportdreamssymbolspleasuretransference AcknowledgmentsI am grateful to Sandra Meeuwsen for her encouragement to participate and for her comments on early versions of the paper. I am also deeply indebted to Roman Vodeb for his help and suggestions. Finally, I am very grateful to the reviewers for their careful reading, as their comments helped me a lot to improve the paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. Our second reference is the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Roman Vodeb and his psychoanalytic interpretation of sport. Vodeb is known for trying to follow the original Freud faithfully, so he is often considered a radical thinker (Kreft Citation2015, 222).2. The link between sexual repression and the rise of sport was recognised as early as the mid-nineteenth century in Victorian England. Organised sport (especially football) went hand in hand with the repression of sexuality, which had an important educational moment (Winner Citation2013, 9). Similarly, Collins wrote in his book How Football Began (Collins Citation2019, 18): ‘Healthy minds were those seen as free of sin and moral weakness, and vigorous football was promoted as a reliable antidote to the great triangular fear of the Victorian public schools: masturbation, effeminacy and homosexuality’.3. Freud very slowly came to accept that there was an instinct which was entirely independent of anything sexual (Storr Citation1989, 65). Beside eros or the sexual instincts there is also thanatos or the death-instinct, a natural desire to ‘re-establish a state of things that was disturbed by the emergence of life’ (Freud Citation1923, 25; Freud Citation1920a freud Citation1920b). In this paper we will focus on sexual instinct. For possible implication of thanatos in sport see Meeuwsen (Citation2020, 122–129).4. It is worth noting that sport was a (physical) cultural activity of humanity from the beginning.5. As early as 1926, Helene Deutsch, a student of Freud, understood sport as a kind of safety valve for human beings (Deutsch Citation1992, 152).6. Freud himself recognised that ‘small actions which are performed apparently by chance and without any purpose—habits of playing or fiddling with things, and so on—[are] revealed … as “symptomatic actions” linked with a hidden meaning and intended to give unobstrusive expression to it’ (Freud Citation1906, 105).7. In his psychoanalytic interpretation of football, Oakley (Citation2007) also links sport to dreams, but in a somehow different way. Psychoanalysis and football function as a dream space. Football is the living of a dream and the modern day Roman coliseum in which gladiators rip apart the opposition. Football, as is analysis, is about enabling a capacity to dream and express and think through difficult emotions and impulses.8. In psychoanalysis, the superego is the faculty that seeks to police what it deems unacceptable desires; it represents all moral restrictions” (Felluga Citation2015, 301–302). ‘The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more intense the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of discipline, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the more exacting later on is the domination of the super-ego over the ego—in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt’ (Freud Citation1923, 34).9. Historically, sport was primarily a male activity—men invented sport out of their desire. There were already some competitions for women in ancient Greece. However, they did not play an important role in the development of sport in the broader sense. However, as we will show below, Freud’s psychoanalysis can also interpret contemporary women’s sport, which differs in many ways from men’s sport.10. For this reason, sex before competition can have a negative effect on an athlete’s performance in competition. An athlete who has ‘won’ the night before a competition, i.e. has sexually conquered a woman, does not need to prove himself further in the competition itself. The libidinous energy and thus also the aggressiveness therefore decrease. On the other hand, sexual abstinence or quarantine essentially increases desire and excitement, which is related to increased pleasure in the game, but also has an effect on increased aggressiveness in the fight with the opponent and thus on better performance.11. In this respect, we could say that there are sports that are closer to the feminine nature. These are sports of aesthetics and elegance, such as rhythmic gymnastics, figure skating, dance, etc.12. According to Freud, Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex illustrates a formative phase in the psychosexual development of every human being. In this phase, the child, the boy, directs his libido towards his mother and accordingly feels a jealous hatred for his father with a simultaneous tendency to identify with him. In response to such tendencies, the child develops castration anxiety, a fantasy of losing his penis as punishment for aggressive tendencies towards his father. According to Freud, this fear drives libidinous development one stage further: the boy’s aggressive tendencies towards his father are transformed into the adoption of parental authority into his own personality; the libido of the Oedipus complex loses much of its sexual character and is ‘sublimated’, transformed into tender feelings. In effect, the superego emerges and represents the internalisation of the father and his prohibitions—and therefore manifests as conscience and guilt. The psychoanalytical interpretation of the ethics of sport is based on the establishment of the superego.13. In classical Greek drama, Electra gets her brother Orestes to have the boy murder their mother, Clytemnestra, who has murdered her husband and their father, King Agamemnon.14. Transference in psychoanalysis means that the patient transfers his past psychosexual conflicts (the conflicts that led to the symptoms) to the relationship between the analyst and the patient (the analysand). The essence of transference is the ‘transference of emotions to the person of the physician’ (Freud Citation1920a, 382). For example, someone who is still trying to work through the Oedipus complex may transfer his or her feelings for the father (e.g. hatred) to the analysand and thus act them out in the talking cure. Once the earlier conflict is acted out in this way, the analyst strives to make the patient realise that he is thus transferring his feelings to the analyst (trying to make the patient aware of what was previously repressed in the unconscious); the analyst also tries to guide the patient to an alternative, healthier resolution of the original conflict, leading to the elimination of the symptom.15. There are two very well-known examples from Slovenia: The best alpine skier Tina Maze fell in love and married her coach Andrea Massi. Also the best cross-country skier Petra Majdič fell in love and married her coach Ivan Hudač. For many other cases see Wertheim (Citation2001).","PeriodicalId":51786,"journal":{"name":"Sport Ethics and Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Freud’s Psychoanalysis and the Genealogy of Sport\",\"authors\":\"Jernej Pisk\",\"doi\":\"10.1080/17511321.2023.2279151\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"ABSTRACTFreudian psychoanalysis offers us often neglected but unique and very fruitful possibilities for an original interpretation of sport. In this article we first look at some basic Freudian concepts, such as the role of sexuality, the unconscious and dreams. In doing so, it becomes clear that sport can and should be interpreted in a similar way to Freud’s interpretation of dreams. Just as dreams need to be decoded and interpreted, sport needs to be decoded and interpreted in order to understand it. On this basis, we then build a system for understanding sport that also incorporates the other important concepts of Freud’s psychoanalysis. The concepts of repression, symptom formation and the role of symbols prove to be particularly relevant for understanding sport. Decoding symbols in sport (e.g. scoring a goal) shows us that sport is a derivative of the libido and has an unconscious sexual structure. Unveiling the hidden unconscious sexuality of sport shows us that (male) sport was created for the sake of women, so that men (as winners) could gain a privileged status in female desire. Sport turns out to be a symbolic substitute for the satisfaction of human sexual needs. However, to better understand the competitive nature of sport, one must include the Oedipus and castration complex. It is castration anxiety that drives sporting competition. Victory is symbolically linked to the castration of the opponent. Next we turn to Freud’s concept of transference. It helps us to understand the complexity of the relationship between the athlete and the coach. This has a strong influence on athletic success. When things do not go as planned for an athlete and unexpected injuries occur, Freud’s concept of ‘advantage through illness’ can help us understand the athlete’s ‘escape into injury’.KEYWORDS: Sportdreamssymbolspleasuretransference AcknowledgmentsI am grateful to Sandra Meeuwsen for her encouragement to participate and for her comments on early versions of the paper. I am also deeply indebted to Roman Vodeb for his help and suggestions. Finally, I am very grateful to the reviewers for their careful reading, as their comments helped me a lot to improve the paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. Our second reference is the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Roman Vodeb and his psychoanalytic interpretation of sport. Vodeb is known for trying to follow the original Freud faithfully, so he is often considered a radical thinker (Kreft Citation2015, 222).2. The link between sexual repression and the rise of sport was recognised as early as the mid-nineteenth century in Victorian England. Organised sport (especially football) went hand in hand with the repression of sexuality, which had an important educational moment (Winner Citation2013, 9). Similarly, Collins wrote in his book How Football Began (Collins Citation2019, 18): ‘Healthy minds were those seen as free of sin and moral weakness, and vigorous football was promoted as a reliable antidote to the great triangular fear of the Victorian public schools: masturbation, effeminacy and homosexuality’.3. Freud very slowly came to accept that there was an instinct which was entirely independent of anything sexual (Storr Citation1989, 65). Beside eros or the sexual instincts there is also thanatos or the death-instinct, a natural desire to ‘re-establish a state of things that was disturbed by the emergence of life’ (Freud Citation1923, 25; Freud Citation1920a freud Citation1920b). In this paper we will focus on sexual instinct. For possible implication of thanatos in sport see Meeuwsen (Citation2020, 122–129).4. It is worth noting that sport was a (physical) cultural activity of humanity from the beginning.5. As early as 1926, Helene Deutsch, a student of Freud, understood sport as a kind of safety valve for human beings (Deutsch Citation1992, 152).6. Freud himself recognised that ‘small actions which are performed apparently by chance and without any purpose—habits of playing or fiddling with things, and so on—[are] revealed … as “symptomatic actions” linked with a hidden meaning and intended to give unobstrusive expression to it’ (Freud Citation1906, 105).7. In his psychoanalytic interpretation of football, Oakley (Citation2007) also links sport to dreams, but in a somehow different way. Psychoanalysis and football function as a dream space. Football is the living of a dream and the modern day Roman coliseum in which gladiators rip apart the opposition. Football, as is analysis, is about enabling a capacity to dream and express and think through difficult emotions and impulses.8. In psychoanalysis, the superego is the faculty that seeks to police what it deems unacceptable desires; it represents all moral restrictions” (Felluga Citation2015, 301–302). ‘The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more intense the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of discipline, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the more exacting later on is the domination of the super-ego over the ego—in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt’ (Freud Citation1923, 34).9. Historically, sport was primarily a male activity—men invented sport out of their desire. There were already some competitions for women in ancient Greece. However, they did not play an important role in the development of sport in the broader sense. However, as we will show below, Freud’s psychoanalysis can also interpret contemporary women’s sport, which differs in many ways from men’s sport.10. For this reason, sex before competition can have a negative effect on an athlete’s performance in competition. An athlete who has ‘won’ the night before a competition, i.e. has sexually conquered a woman, does not need to prove himself further in the competition itself. The libidinous energy and thus also the aggressiveness therefore decrease. On the other hand, sexual abstinence or quarantine essentially increases desire and excitement, which is related to increased pleasure in the game, but also has an effect on increased aggressiveness in the fight with the opponent and thus on better performance.11. In this respect, we could say that there are sports that are closer to the feminine nature. These are sports of aesthetics and elegance, such as rhythmic gymnastics, figure skating, dance, etc.12. According to Freud, Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex illustrates a formative phase in the psychosexual development of every human being. In this phase, the child, the boy, directs his libido towards his mother and accordingly feels a jealous hatred for his father with a simultaneous tendency to identify with him. In response to such tendencies, the child develops castration anxiety, a fantasy of losing his penis as punishment for aggressive tendencies towards his father. According to Freud, this fear drives libidinous development one stage further: the boy’s aggressive tendencies towards his father are transformed into the adoption of parental authority into his own personality; the libido of the Oedipus complex loses much of its sexual character and is ‘sublimated’, transformed into tender feelings. In effect, the superego emerges and represents the internalisation of the father and his prohibitions—and therefore manifests as conscience and guilt. The psychoanalytical interpretation of the ethics of sport is based on the establishment of the superego.13. In classical Greek drama, Electra gets her brother Orestes to have the boy murder their mother, Clytemnestra, who has murdered her husband and their father, King Agamemnon.14. Transference in psychoanalysis means that the patient transfers his past psychosexual conflicts (the conflicts that led to the symptoms) to the relationship between the analyst and the patient (the analysand). The essence of transference is the ‘transference of emotions to the person of the physician’ (Freud Citation1920a, 382). For example, someone who is still trying to work through the Oedipus complex may transfer his or her feelings for the father (e.g. hatred) to the analysand and thus act them out in the talking cure. 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引用次数: 0

摘要

佛洛伊德精神分析为我们提供了一种经常被忽视但独特而富有成效的对体育的原创性解释的可能性。在这篇文章中,我们首先看一些基本的弗洛伊德的概念,如性的作用,无意识和梦。在这样做的过程中,很明显,体育可以而且应该用弗洛伊德对梦的解释类似的方式来解释。就像梦需要解码和解释一样,体育运动也需要解码和解释才能理解它。在此基础上,我们建立了一个理解体育的系统,该系统还结合了弗洛伊德精神分析的其他重要概念。压抑、症状形成和符号作用的概念被证明与理解体育特别相关。解码运动中的符号(例如进球)向我们表明,运动是性欲的衍生物,具有无意识的性结构。揭示体育运动中隐藏的无意识性向我们展示了(男性)体育是为了女性而创造的,这样男性(作为胜利者)就可以在女性欲望中获得特权地位。事实证明,体育是满足人类性需求的象征性替代品。然而,为了更好地理解体育的竞争本质,我们必须包括俄狄浦斯和阉割情结。正是阉割焦虑驱使着体育竞赛。胜利象征着对对手的阉割。接下来我们转向弗洛伊德的移情概念。这有助于我们理解运动员和教练之间关系的复杂性。这对运动员的成功有很大的影响。当事情没有按照运动员的计划进行,意外受伤发生时,弗洛伊德的“通过疾病获得优势”的概念可以帮助我们理解运动员“逃避受伤”的原因。感谢Sandra Meeuwsen鼓励我参与并对论文早期版本提出的意见。我也非常感谢Roman Vodeb的帮助和建议。最后,我非常感谢审稿人的认真阅读,他们的意见对我的论文有很大的帮助。披露声明作者未报告潜在的利益冲突。我们的第二个参考文献是斯洛文尼亚哲学家和精神分析学家罗曼·沃德布和他对体育的精神分析解释。Vodeb以忠实地遵循弗洛伊德的原型而闻名,所以他经常被认为是一个激进的思想家(Kreft Citation2015, 222)。早在19世纪中期维多利亚时代的英国,人们就认识到了性压抑与体育运动兴起之间的联系。有组织的体育运动(尤其是足球)与性压抑密切相关,这有一个重要的教育时刻(Winner Citation2013, 9)。同样,柯林斯在他的书《足球是如何开始的》(Collins Citation2019, 18)中写道:“健康的思想是那些被视为没有罪恶和道德弱点的人,而充满活力的足球被宣传为一种可靠的解药,可以解决维多利亚时代公立学校的巨大三角恐惧:手淫、柔弱和同性恋。”弗洛伊德慢慢地接受了一种完全独立于性的本能(Storr Citation1989, 65)。除了爱欲或性本能之外,还有死亡本能或死亡本能,一种“重建被生命出现所干扰的事物状态”的自然欲望(弗洛伊德引文1923,25;弗洛伊德引文(1920b)。在本文中,我们将重点讨论性本能。关于thanatos在体育运动中的可能含义,见Meeuwsen (Citation2020, 122-129)。值得注意的是,体育运动从一开始就是人类的一种(体育)文化活动。早在1926年,弗洛伊德的学生Helene Deutsch就把体育理解为人类的一种安全阀(Deutsch citation1992.152)。弗洛伊德自己也认识到,“看似偶然的、没有任何目的的小动作——玩耍或摆弄东西的习惯,等等——[被]揭示出来……作为“症状性行为”,与隐藏的意义联系在一起,并试图给予它不引人注意的表达”(Freud Citation1906, 105)。在他对足球的精神分析解释中,Oakley (Citation2007)也将运动与梦想联系起来,但以某种不同的方式。精神分析和足球是一个梦的空间。足球是梦想的生活,是现代罗马斗兽场,角斗士在其中撕碎对手。足球和分析一样,是一种通过困难的情绪和冲动来实现梦想、表达和思考的能力。在精神分析学中,超我是一种能力,它试图控制它认为不可接受的欲望;它代表了所有的道德约束”(Felluga Citation2015, 301-302)。 “超我保留了父亲的性格,而俄狄浦斯情结越强烈,它屈服于压抑的速度越快(在纪律、宗教教义、学校教育和阅读的影响下),后来超我对自我的统治就越严格——以良心的形式,或者可能是一种无意识的内疚感”(弗洛伊德引文1923,34)。从历史上看,体育最初是一项男性活动——男性出于自己的欲望发明了体育运动。在古希腊就已经有一些女子比赛了。然而,他们并没有在更广泛意义上的体育发展中发挥重要作用。然而,正如我们将在下面展示的,弗洛伊德的精神分析也可以解释当代女性的运动,这在许多方面不同于男性的运动。因此,比赛前的性行为会对运动员在比赛中的表现产生负面影响。一名运动员如果在比赛前一晚“赢了”,即在性方面征服了一名女性,就不需要在比赛中进一步证明自己。性欲的能量和攻击性也因此减少。另一方面,性节制或性隔离本质上增加了欲望和兴奋,这与游戏中增加的乐趣有关,但也会增加与对手战斗时的攻击性,从而提高表现。在这方面,我们可以说有更接近女性天性的运动。这些都是审美和优雅的运动,如艺术体操、花样滑冰、舞蹈等。根据弗洛伊德的说法,索福克勒斯的戏剧《俄狄浦斯王》说明了每个人性心理发展的形成阶段。在这个阶段,这个孩子,这个男孩,把他的性欲指向他的母亲,相应地对他的父亲产生一种嫉妒的仇恨,同时又倾向于认同他。作为对这种倾向的回应,孩子产生了阉割焦虑,一种失去阴茎作为对他父亲的攻击倾向的惩罚的幻想。根据弗洛伊德的理论,这种恐惧驱使性欲进一步发展:男孩对父亲的攻击倾向转化为对父母权威的接受;俄狄浦斯情结的性欲丧失了许多性特征,被“升华”,转化为温柔的感情。实际上,超我的出现代表了父亲和他的禁令的内化,因此表现为良心和内疚。对体育伦理的精神分析解释是建立在超我的基础之上的。在古典希腊戏剧中,伊莱克特拉让她的哥哥俄瑞斯忒斯让儿子谋杀了他们的母亲克吕泰涅斯特拉,克吕泰涅斯特拉谋杀了她的丈夫和他们的父亲阿伽门农国王。精神分析中的移情意味着病人将他过去的性心理冲突(导致症状的冲突)转移到分析师和病人(被分析者)之间的关系上。移情的本质是“将情感转移到医生身上”(Freud Citation1920a, 382)。例如,仍在努力克服俄狄浦斯情结的人可能会将他或她对父亲的感情(如仇恨)转移到被分析者身上,从而在谈话治疗中表现出来。一旦早期的冲突以这种方式表现出来,分析师就努力使患者意识到他正在将自己的感受传递给分析师(试图使患者意识到之前在无意识中被压抑的东西);精神分析师还试图引导病人找到一种替代的、更健康的方法来解决最初的冲突,从而消除症状。斯洛文尼亚有两个非常著名的例子:最好的高山滑雪运动员蒂娜·梅兹坠入爱河并嫁给了她的教练安德里亚·马西。此外,最好的越野滑雪运动员佩特拉·马吉迪涅也坠入爱河,并嫁给了她的教练伊万·胡达尼科。有关许多其他案例,请参阅Wertheim (Citation2001)。
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Freud’s Psychoanalysis and the Genealogy of Sport
ABSTRACTFreudian psychoanalysis offers us often neglected but unique and very fruitful possibilities for an original interpretation of sport. In this article we first look at some basic Freudian concepts, such as the role of sexuality, the unconscious and dreams. In doing so, it becomes clear that sport can and should be interpreted in a similar way to Freud’s interpretation of dreams. Just as dreams need to be decoded and interpreted, sport needs to be decoded and interpreted in order to understand it. On this basis, we then build a system for understanding sport that also incorporates the other important concepts of Freud’s psychoanalysis. The concepts of repression, symptom formation and the role of symbols prove to be particularly relevant for understanding sport. Decoding symbols in sport (e.g. scoring a goal) shows us that sport is a derivative of the libido and has an unconscious sexual structure. Unveiling the hidden unconscious sexuality of sport shows us that (male) sport was created for the sake of women, so that men (as winners) could gain a privileged status in female desire. Sport turns out to be a symbolic substitute for the satisfaction of human sexual needs. However, to better understand the competitive nature of sport, one must include the Oedipus and castration complex. It is castration anxiety that drives sporting competition. Victory is symbolically linked to the castration of the opponent. Next we turn to Freud’s concept of transference. It helps us to understand the complexity of the relationship between the athlete and the coach. This has a strong influence on athletic success. When things do not go as planned for an athlete and unexpected injuries occur, Freud’s concept of ‘advantage through illness’ can help us understand the athlete’s ‘escape into injury’.KEYWORDS: Sportdreamssymbolspleasuretransference AcknowledgmentsI am grateful to Sandra Meeuwsen for her encouragement to participate and for her comments on early versions of the paper. I am also deeply indebted to Roman Vodeb for his help and suggestions. Finally, I am very grateful to the reviewers for their careful reading, as their comments helped me a lot to improve the paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. Our second reference is the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Roman Vodeb and his psychoanalytic interpretation of sport. Vodeb is known for trying to follow the original Freud faithfully, so he is often considered a radical thinker (Kreft Citation2015, 222).2. The link between sexual repression and the rise of sport was recognised as early as the mid-nineteenth century in Victorian England. Organised sport (especially football) went hand in hand with the repression of sexuality, which had an important educational moment (Winner Citation2013, 9). Similarly, Collins wrote in his book How Football Began (Collins Citation2019, 18): ‘Healthy minds were those seen as free of sin and moral weakness, and vigorous football was promoted as a reliable antidote to the great triangular fear of the Victorian public schools: masturbation, effeminacy and homosexuality’.3. Freud very slowly came to accept that there was an instinct which was entirely independent of anything sexual (Storr Citation1989, 65). Beside eros or the sexual instincts there is also thanatos or the death-instinct, a natural desire to ‘re-establish a state of things that was disturbed by the emergence of life’ (Freud Citation1923, 25; Freud Citation1920a freud Citation1920b). In this paper we will focus on sexual instinct. For possible implication of thanatos in sport see Meeuwsen (Citation2020, 122–129).4. It is worth noting that sport was a (physical) cultural activity of humanity from the beginning.5. As early as 1926, Helene Deutsch, a student of Freud, understood sport as a kind of safety valve for human beings (Deutsch Citation1992, 152).6. Freud himself recognised that ‘small actions which are performed apparently by chance and without any purpose—habits of playing or fiddling with things, and so on—[are] revealed … as “symptomatic actions” linked with a hidden meaning and intended to give unobstrusive expression to it’ (Freud Citation1906, 105).7. In his psychoanalytic interpretation of football, Oakley (Citation2007) also links sport to dreams, but in a somehow different way. Psychoanalysis and football function as a dream space. Football is the living of a dream and the modern day Roman coliseum in which gladiators rip apart the opposition. Football, as is analysis, is about enabling a capacity to dream and express and think through difficult emotions and impulses.8. In psychoanalysis, the superego is the faculty that seeks to police what it deems unacceptable desires; it represents all moral restrictions” (Felluga Citation2015, 301–302). ‘The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more intense the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of discipline, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the more exacting later on is the domination of the super-ego over the ego—in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt’ (Freud Citation1923, 34).9. Historically, sport was primarily a male activity—men invented sport out of their desire. There were already some competitions for women in ancient Greece. However, they did not play an important role in the development of sport in the broader sense. However, as we will show below, Freud’s psychoanalysis can also interpret contemporary women’s sport, which differs in many ways from men’s sport.10. For this reason, sex before competition can have a negative effect on an athlete’s performance in competition. An athlete who has ‘won’ the night before a competition, i.e. has sexually conquered a woman, does not need to prove himself further in the competition itself. The libidinous energy and thus also the aggressiveness therefore decrease. On the other hand, sexual abstinence or quarantine essentially increases desire and excitement, which is related to increased pleasure in the game, but also has an effect on increased aggressiveness in the fight with the opponent and thus on better performance.11. In this respect, we could say that there are sports that are closer to the feminine nature. These are sports of aesthetics and elegance, such as rhythmic gymnastics, figure skating, dance, etc.12. According to Freud, Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex illustrates a formative phase in the psychosexual development of every human being. In this phase, the child, the boy, directs his libido towards his mother and accordingly feels a jealous hatred for his father with a simultaneous tendency to identify with him. In response to such tendencies, the child develops castration anxiety, a fantasy of losing his penis as punishment for aggressive tendencies towards his father. According to Freud, this fear drives libidinous development one stage further: the boy’s aggressive tendencies towards his father are transformed into the adoption of parental authority into his own personality; the libido of the Oedipus complex loses much of its sexual character and is ‘sublimated’, transformed into tender feelings. In effect, the superego emerges and represents the internalisation of the father and his prohibitions—and therefore manifests as conscience and guilt. The psychoanalytical interpretation of the ethics of sport is based on the establishment of the superego.13. In classical Greek drama, Electra gets her brother Orestes to have the boy murder their mother, Clytemnestra, who has murdered her husband and their father, King Agamemnon.14. Transference in psychoanalysis means that the patient transfers his past psychosexual conflicts (the conflicts that led to the symptoms) to the relationship between the analyst and the patient (the analysand). The essence of transference is the ‘transference of emotions to the person of the physician’ (Freud Citation1920a, 382). For example, someone who is still trying to work through the Oedipus complex may transfer his or her feelings for the father (e.g. hatred) to the analysand and thus act them out in the talking cure. Once the earlier conflict is acted out in this way, the analyst strives to make the patient realise that he is thus transferring his feelings to the analyst (trying to make the patient aware of what was previously repressed in the unconscious); the analyst also tries to guide the patient to an alternative, healthier resolution of the original conflict, leading to the elimination of the symptom.15. There are two very well-known examples from Slovenia: The best alpine skier Tina Maze fell in love and married her coach Andrea Massi. Also the best cross-country skier Petra Majdič fell in love and married her coach Ivan Hudač. For many other cases see Wertheim (Citation2001).
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