Freud analyzes that Oedipus Rex is able to move audiences deeply, not for its tragic tale of a man unable to fight God’s will, but for its disturbing reflection of sexual repressions. Despite all mimicry, it is a play that no modern playwright is able to rival, for they cannot grasp — nor do they wish to grasp — the nature of such senseless taboos. Freud argues that King Oedipus’ fate of slaying his father Lai’us and marrying his mother Jocasta — all while unaware of their identities, is an oracle that we have all desired(…) but fortunately never fulfilled; an unconscious wish to (…)love thy mother in envy of the father who rightfully holds the right. Unlike King Oedipus, Hamlet also held the same fortune as us, whereas Freud forces an unseemly connection with the thoughtful mention that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet immediately after his father’s death; faced with the ghost of his father who seeks vengeance, Hamlet hesitates as he sees his own reflection in the man who successfully stole away his mother — although sexual desires had remain repressed until the end, Hamlet’s self-reproach proved Freud’s analysis true — they were all sinners. With this conclusion that shared no imaginable connection to the play’s plot but was nevertheless true within its own complexity, Freud had displayed the strange multiplicity(overdetermination) of dream interpretation as he translated the unconscious into the conscious. 

While others analyze dreams as pictorial compositions through their manifest content, Freud sees an alternative as he creates a new task. He considers latent content as the key to dream interpretation, hence he must seek the connection between the manifest content displayed within dreams and the latent dream-thoughts that influence the essence of those dreams. Freud compares dream content to a rebus puzzle — it is the transcript of coherent dream-thoughts into pictographic script filled with absurd senselessness; when faced with such distortions dreams must be read through their symbolic relations rather than their pictorial values. However, transcribing dream-thoughts into dream content is a process of condensation where unconscious thoughts that have been plaguing the mind from a range of days to years are compressed into a brief dyslexic dream that may not even last eight hours. Therefore, overdetermination is never truly “over-” no matter how complete or logical the proposed material is because one cannot determine the degree of condensation and neither can they truly ever finish translating a dream. With this in mind, forced and far-fetched connections that bear no visible relation to the dream’s content like Freud’s idea of sexual repression within Hamlet — which neither I nor the audience ever thought of — are necessary to break away from what Freud calls the censorship of endopsychic defense — the displacement that turns dreams into code.

Within “The Mirror Stage As Formative”, Lacan describes the 8-16 month infant as losing in intelligence to a Chimpanzee, based on their differing reactions when they see their own reflections in the mirror. They are both able to perceive themselves in their reflections and recognize that as “I”; the Chimpanzee may recognize a possible mate or rival at first as he gets excited within the illusive motions, but when he eventually recognizes himself he loses all interest for an image that has suddenly become empty as the formation of the “I.” In contrast, the child with a similarly empty image will do everything in his power to keep it animated, for he does not perceive his reflection as empty. In other words, while the Chimpanzee is able to see his reflection for what it is — an empty reflection of his visage, unable to process its own emotions and only capable of mimicking his motions — the child sees his reflection as everything but what it is in a similar nature to the arbitrariness of language. Lacan defines the child’s ability to recognize his reflection as the expression of situational apperception; it is an identification where the child sees his image as imago heavily influenced by his motor incapacity and nursling dependence (primal needs), where the concept of “I” is precipitated in a primordial form. Ironically, despite its similar nature to language, this stage is created within the absence of it — where the “I” has not yet acquired its function as subject.

Lacan argues how the conception of the mirror stage contradicts the philosophy of the Cogito — “ I think, therefore I am.” In response to this concept that rationalizes thinking in the implication that thought guarantees existence and creates human reality, Lacan asserts thought as the seemingly death of self in the spin-off quote “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think.” Ironically, despite impersonating a real person in all his animation of life, the image that the child sees in the mirror is fictional. In relation to “I” as a primordial form, the image that the child admired within the mirror is an “Ideal-I.” It is a secondary identification influenced by desires or libidinal normalization in Lacan’s words, where a discordance is made as the mirror reflects an ego incongruent with the child’s reality. Within the mirror stage the mirror stops being a true reflection and becomes a mirage containing power which the child is yet to acquire — a Gestalt. The mirror-image symbolizes the threshold of the visible world as the child finds his existence somewhere in between the mirror and his physical body in his attempt to unite the “I” with the Gestalt. Lacan argues that the existence of the Gestalt is necessary for maturation; for the development of its gonad, the female pigeon needs to see one of its kind — whether it be male, female, or even its own mirror reflection. In a similar concept, the modern adult creates a social media persona in relation to the mirror-image for the development of their self-esteem and ego. Therefore, the mirror-image becomes not only the threshold of the visual world but also a transition from the solitary to the gregarious form.

Within the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels describe the wretchedness of the Working man as Capitalism has become the bane of our existence. Capitalism isn’t fair — while it separates people into the property owners and the propertyless workers, competition has always favored property owners as even the Worker’s wages are based around their interests, ultimately hindering the movement of social classes. The Worker, in essence, has become a commodity whose labor is sold. However, Marx and Engels point out a morbid irony as we see the Worker’s production become his own competition — as if the employer weren’t enough competition -– creating an inverse proportion as it gains a higher value at the Worker’s devaluation. In other words, the more one works the poorer one is. 

This paradox is a direct result of appropriation as, “Whatever the product of his labour is, he [the Worker] is not.” The product — a material object — is alien to its producer; Therefore, to the Worker, the act of labor is a loss of reality where one not only sells their time but also gives up that part of their life along with their power to the object, stripping them of their authenticity such that they are unable to feel happy nor at home when in labor. To the Worker, competition is the objectification of labor; It is the instance where the product actively confronts the worker as hostile — in its independence it forces the worker to increase his labor to make ends meet, despite simultaneously depriving them of the means to life as competition increases and the supply to meet one’s physical subsistence decreases. Consequently, the Worker engages in forced labor, an act of self-sacrifice where one is a slave to their object — an act that would not exist without compulsion. Appropriation is alienation; as the Worker sells his time, labor, and creation, in the end even his autonomy is lost as he belongs to another. To Marx and Engels, the man who no longer governs his actions for the sake of making ends meet under a Capitalist society, is not a man but an animal.

In his story, Nietzsche defines truth as an illusion; an arrogant belief that all one knows is nothing but the truth, an absurdity that turns into irony when the intelligent being is unable to even reckon the essence of its existence. As Nietzsche points out, when they are unable to perceive their own existence — within the blood flowing through their veins and pumping their heart, to their tweaking bones and ripping ligaments, along the many other cells they will never bear knowledge of — all humans have left is nothing but their intellect to prove their fleeting animation. Even then, this existence is merely their singular perception of life as they see the world pivot around them — another irony to our knowledge that all planets pivot around the sun.

Therefore, It is irrational to believe we can capture the world around us in its entirety with mere words. To Nietzsche, language does not seek truth, it is only able to imperfectly imitate entities through the use of metaphors. A singular word like leaf, brings up the ideal image of a leaf, a concept in its primal form that disregards all differences and becomes the common word for this unique entity and all others alike. Language in itself is contradictory because a leaf is a leaf, yet without a unique feature what is so special about this entity for it to be pointed out? What about its color, its shape, is it still hanging on to its withered winter tree, has it been ridden with holes by the worms that eat its essence, or is it thriving under the wildflower that grows between the cracks? See how easily a dead language — a Roman Columbarium, as Nietzsche describes it — is brought to life, escaping classification when metaphors are used to highlight its uniqueness and. 

Truth to a human has no meaning without its relation to other individuals, to Nietzsche our inability to preserve ourselves without seeking validity from society is the fallacy of our “truth”. Throughout the centuries, as humanity established fixed conventions in the form of words and metaphors, creating their own distinction between the poor person who lies about his riches and the true rich, we have forgotten our reality within history. Nietzsche brings us back to our origin, we are all liars entranced in our illusions of the truth — money is but a piece of paper that we as a society have given value to, wealth is a manmade concept, and Capitalism is a manmade hell. Nevertheless, by some sublime obligation we willingly live within this illusion; to Nietzsche, this willingness to lie is a form of self-preservation — for without its intellect how else is the transient being able to perceive the world?