Freudian Concepts and Video Games

The following is an essay originally written and submitted for grading in September of 2012. Nothing has been changed.

Technology has advanced exponentially since Sigmund Freud’s last idea was written, and now Freudian concepts are being applied to much more than psychology. Literature has become a forefront for the use of Freud’s psychoanalysis, and with the evolution of technology Freud’s ideas are being applied to television, movies, and video games. Freud’s ideas were originally crafted to further understand the human mind, but his ideas are smoothly transitioned into the world of video games.

Freud is notorious for many things; one of his most noteworthy works is The Uncanny. Unbeknownst to Freud, his ideas presented in The Uncanny would adapt to a technology that did not exist at the time of writing it. That leads one to ponder what is the uncanny, and how can it apply to video games. In The Uncanny, Freud writes, “the ‘uncanny’ is that class of terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar.” (1-2). The idea of the uncanny translates excellently to video games, as contemporary video games are set in a familiar location with familiar characters, but put the player in extraordinary situations which are often terrifying, depending on the perspective of the player. Freud states that when he wrote, “In the Herodotus story our thoughts are concentrated much more on the superior cunning of the master-thief than on the feelings of the princess. The princess may well have had an uncanny felling, indeed she very probably fell into a swoon; but we have no such sensations, for we put ourselves in the thief’s place, not in hers.” (19). Freud is saying the uncanny does not just exist because of something familiar, yet terrifying. The perspective of the player is very much a factor when considering if a work is uncanny. There is no genre of video games which showcases this more than that of survival-horror.

Survival-horror games are renowned for taking the mundane and breathing a horrifying new life into it. Ewan Kirkland writes about this in his piece Horror Videogames and the Uncanny. Kirkland describes the town of Silent Hill from the video game of the same name to display Freud’s uncanny when he wrote, “It is a place of white picket fenced houses and corner cafes, motels, petrol stations, apartment blocks and parks… A key dynamic of Silent Hill is the shift from this ordinary space to a dark doppelganger other world where walls become covered in dirt and rust, floors are transformed into rotting scaffolding” (3). As Kirkland wrote, Silent Hill is designed to be something wholly familiar to the player, but changes itself into a place of nightmares, thus completing its transformation into the uncanny. Kirkland’s article provides evidence of the uncanny in survival-horror games’ architecture, but the uncanny lives in more than just the settings, it is also in the characters and monsters.

Survival-horror games are compelling for many reasons, as stated earlier, the settings provide the uncanny to survival horror games, but there is more to it than just where the games take place. The uncanny is reliant on perspective; therefore playing the game through the perspective of one who is unfamiliar with the world and creatures around them allows the uncanny to exist within the game. Metro 2033 is a game that does this better than most. Giving the player control of Artyom, a person who has lived their entire life in the Russian metro and thrusting him into the heart of a post-apocalyptic Moscow, having only the familiarity of pictures of how Moscow used to look is the definition of uncanny. Even as the player, knowing how Moscow looks in comparison to the ruins presented in the game is uncanny on top the uncanny from Artyom’s perspective. But the creatures in the world of Metro 2033 present the uncanny far better than the setting. Due to nuclear war, the creatures that live on the surface and are exposed to radiation are familiar, yet monstrous. The most common presented in the game are reminiscent of a common rat, but the size of two men, and much fiercer. Metro 2033 focuses on animal like mutants as the one mentioned above, but the most ominous are the Dark Ones. The Dark Ones are humanoid in appearance, but whenever Artyom comes into contact with them he experiences hallucinations. It is evident that survival-horror games present Freud’s uncanny in every way, from the settings to creatures, but that is not the only genre of video games that support Freud’s ideas.

Condensation is an idea Freud presents in his book The Interpretation of Dreams, which can also be applied to video games, much like the uncanny. Condensation is the idea that no matter how much a work is analyzed it will never be fully interpreted, this is evident as Freud wrote, “If a dream is written out it may perhaps fill half a page. The analysis setting out the dream-thoughts underlying it may occupy six, eight or a dozen times as much space… I have already had occasion to point out that it is in fact never possible to be sure that a dream has been completely interpreted.” (296-297). Freud’s psychoanalysis and condensation has been applied to literature, allowing infinite ways to uncover the hidden meaning of a text, and there is no reason it cannot be applied to video games. Contemporary video games focus heavily on the story, often having a script lengthier than that of movies and novels, which allows Freudian psychoanalysis to be applied to them.

Author Arthur Asa Berger also believes Freud can be applied to video games, as he wrote in his book Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon. Berger wrote, “His notion that play and dreams might be related opens up video games, I would suggest, to the same kinds of analysis Freud made of dreams. There are often, let me suggest, deeper meanings to these games than we might imagine.” (12.) The Metal Gear Solid video game franchise, for example, is a stealth game about a global nuclear arms race. But upon further interpretation one could discover limitless ideas and meanings in the game. For instance, the focus on stealth gameplay, and non-lethal means of dispatching the opposition in Metal Gear Solid could be interpreted as means of peace, instead of violence in a world focused on war. It could also be interpreted as an unconscious vision the series creator has about the way the world is going. With ever increasing violence and war in the news, it is extremely possible the creator unconsciously put how he predicts the future into his games. Condensation allows those who play video games to come up with an unlimited number of meanings hidden within games.

Bob Rehak, author of chapter 5, Playing at Being Psychoanalysis and the Avatar, in the book The Video Game Theory Reader made a connection to Freud’s fort / da game from Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Rehak wrote, “the game of fort / da in which an object that ‘stands in’ for a lost and desired other is repeatedly tossed away, retrieved, and tossed again.” (8). Rehak is making the argument of fort / da is similar to repetition found in video games, more specifically that avatar one plays as. In video games one can die frequently, but they can always return and continue playing the game. Having constantly being taken out of the game world via dying, one will want to continue returning, such as fort / da explains.

It is clear that Freud’s ideas are easily applicable to technology far beyond his imagining from the time he thought of them. Video games can be interpreted through psychoanalysis as easily as literature is. Video games, books and movies will continue to be analyzed and discussed using Freud’s ideas and practices. As technology advances it is certain that new means of storytelling will be created, much like video games were, and perhaps Freud’s ideas will still apply.

Berger, Arthur Asa. Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon. New Brunswick, NJ:

Transaction, 2002. Print.

Freud, Sigmund, and James Strachey. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Norton, 1989.

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Freud, Sigmund, and James Strachey. The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Basic, 2010.

Print.

Freud, Sigmund. "The "Uncanny"" Web.mit.edu. MIT, n.d. Web. 30 Aug. 2012.

<http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf>.

Kirkland, Ewan. "Horror Videogames and the Uncanny." Digra.org. Kingston University, n.d.

Web. 30 Aug. 2012. <http://www.digra.org/dl/db/09287.25453.pdf>.

Rehak, Bob. "Playing at Being: Psychoanalysis and the Avatar." The Video Game Theory

Reader. By Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge, 2003. N. pag. Print.