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In the cine-essay The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, popular Lacanian cultural critic and philosopher Slavoj Žižek makes the point that toilets are a rather loaded symbol, a kind of terrifying portal to some secret and disgusting underworld and cultural subconscious that we know exists yet want desperately not to think about.
Following that logic, bathroom signs [...]

Mothering is a phenomenon we’re all quite familiar with (if you ask Hitchcock, it leads straight to being a gay murderer). As Neatorama’s listicle of 6 Mamma’s Boys demonstrates, the effects of mothering can be emotionally crippling, endlessly empowering, or (more often) some mix of the two.
Like Elvis, who seems to have benefitted from being [...]

A while ago we alerted you, dear readers, to knowledge that already lay waiting deep in your subconscious: the buildings we inhabit, vehicles we travel in and weapons we fight with are loaded with repressed sexual symbolism.
Well, as you’ve likely noticed the visual punditry can be extended to foods. Yes, many have made dirty jokes [...]

As we’ve reported in previous editions of our weekly psychoanalysticle Freudian Fridays, phallic forms are among the most potent and clearly legible symbols of power in our patriarchal capitalist society. Though it’s strategically dangerous to represent phallic power with an actual penis (which is perpetually vulnerable and, by and large, not that impressive), elongated objects [...]

Looking over this year’s Best Picture nominees at the Oscars, one legendary female character archetype – the phallic mother – looms large in The Reader and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (is Harvey Milk a proxy phallic mother to the gay rights movement in Milk? discuss). We’ll therefore be taking this edition of our [...]

We’ve often focused our weekly psychoanalysticle, Freudian Fridays, on the symbolism of the spaces we travel, work and celebrate in to demonstrate that architecture and design are full of psychosexual implications. This isn’t limited to buildings and vehicles though, even furniture in your home can reveal a lot about, say, your relationship to your mother.
That’s [...]

Last time our weekly psychoanalysticle ended on a video of an airplane flying suggestively through a monument. Though the video served to help illustrate the idea that some monuments derive symbolic power from their yonic shape, it turns out to have been uncannily prophetic. That Freudian slip foreshadowed this week’s installment of Freudian Fridays, which [...]

Some time ago, in an earlier edition of our weekly psychoanalysticle Freudian Fridays, we looked at some of the most overt, excessive and unsubtle phallic monuments built by man. While the need to put power, potency and might into concrete (and steel and glass) expression smacks of typical late-capitalist chauvinism, it would be a mistake [...]

Now that the socialized collective year-end orgasm of popping champagne bottles of frothy fizz and massive fireworks explosions is over, it’s time for our weekly psychoanalysticle, Freudian Fridays. In this issue we indulge an urge we’ve been sublimating for some weeks now; we’re joining the trend of year-end lists by taking a Freudian look at [...]

Now that the madness of Christmas is over – don’t get us started on what Freud would have thought of candy canes, big red boxes, tube socks full of “gifts” and celebrating a young man’s sacrifice in the name of his father – we can get back to our weekly psychoanalysticle, Freudian Fridays. This week, [...]