Krystal said she would take the MTA bus to class today. She ran down her apartment building stairs, passing by her neighbor’s door who blasted rock music 8 in the morning. He chose rock music today. Off she goes, running to class thought Nick Laurent (who knows her from seeing her entering and leaving the building). Right outside her building is the bus stop she needed to take. Krystal inserted her Metrocard into the machine and then crumpled the receipt into her pocket. She stood with the 15 other commuters around the bus stop waiting for the Select Bus to arrive with their hair flying around. 8 minutes later, the bus pulled up and Krystal hurried to an entrance. She was one of the first people on the bus and she chose to stand in the middle. Why did she choose to stand with a heavy laptop in her bag when there were so many seats opened? She watched the high schoolers chatting to each other on the bus before they got off the next stop. Krystal walked down 25th street until she hit the plaza on 3rd Avenue. As she crossed the plaza, she passed the corner bagel store smelling the familiar scent. When is the last time she ate a bagel? She climbed onto a chair at the age of 5 at her grandmother’s house in Astoria reaching for the many fresh bagels purchased at the local shop. She fought with her cousins over the limited option of spreads until one succeeded and covered their bagel. Krystal entered the Vertical campus while searching her ID and swiped in.

As the title of the talk reads, translating Morocco was the topic of today’s talk. The author Foud Laroui spoke about his book The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers which is being translated from French to English by Emma Ramadan, and the reason it was written in French as a Moroccan writer as opposed to Arabic (the official language of Morocco). The easiest and most coherent explanation he gave for not writing in Arabic was “a Catholic person would not read or write in Latin as nobody would understand what they were talking about”, if he wrote in Classical Arabic nobody would understand, as very few read or write in classical Arabic in Morocco. Although French is a foreign language to him, it is an inherited language to Moroccans, and if not all, most understand French. During the talk Laroui brought up an important topic which directly addresses an identification issue he faced, “Moroccans do not have a language where they feel at home”, this being said I’d go a step further by rewording the talk as, ‘Translating Moroccan, from a language to a way of life’ as the title does not address why a country would need to be translated.

Although the author is more than twice my age he addresses issues such as reality, identification and intersectionality which many people who are immigrants and live in metropolitan cities experience as their reality including myself. Being second generation British and on top of this a New York implant, I face constant identification issues but also intersectionality (the idea of overlapping identities and living in-between places without having a comfort zone) on a daily basis. Laroui has many identities, as being second generation Algerian, born and raised in Morocco, encouraged by his father to speak French from a young age (forcing the rest of his family to also speak french to communicate), French educated in Morocco, relocated to Paris, currently residing in Amsterdam, and later in life realized he had lost his Arabic roots and so relearned Arabic. During the talk he explains how he came to settling with Holland over Paris or Morocco, he explained that he felt a foreigner in Paris and no matter how good of the language he spoke he would always be considered as the ‘Muslim immigrant’ despite never stepping foot into a mosque his entire life and speaking better French than most French people themselves. He has settled with Amsterdam because in my own words it is a ‘happy medium’, literally no questions asked about his identification. It sounded as if he liked the idea of blending in and from the sounds of it, he is accepted.

The most interesting question asked during the talk was addressed to Laroui himself, the question asked was lengthy and was spoken in French as the lady asking could not speak English very well. The question was answered as an explanation explaining a Mexican tv show shown on Moroccan TV. The TV show was originally dubbed in classical Arabic as the producers did not know what the politically correct language should be. Shortly after realizing no-one could understand they dubbed it into Moroccan Arabic, which was also a problem especially for Islamic Moroccans as it gave Arabic women a reason to feel liberated.
His summary of the show and it’s language issues better explains why he writes in French as a Moroccan writer.

– Sarah Boateng

I think there are two struggles when one is coming into their own individuality, the internal and the external. I grew up in a suburban, New Jersey town where there was no crime or diversity into a traditional immigrant family. My desire to be more American caused an internal struggle, how to fit in while being proud of my heritage. I often struggled with this, seeing as my brother was so proud to be the son of Chilean immigrants. I just wanted to fit in instead of being picked on for speaking Spanish and having an uncommon name. The internal struggle of my identity lead to an external struggle with my parents when I decided to move to New York City. It’s diversity and broad acceptance of others attracted me, along with the excitement one can only find outside of the suburbs. My parents were horrified I hadn’t chosen to stay home and attend community college. I was the youngest child, taking on the traditional American college route, leaving home before my older brother had. Coming into my own life, I realized I didn’t want the life my parents had had. I wanted to live my life on my own terms. The decisions I make without any influence from my parents are still a source of tension between us. And the tension pulls me between living my life and living the life they want for me. The conflicts I have experienced with my parents require that I have a solid plan for everything I do, to ensure my individuality and independence are protected.

Feud connects the liberation of an individual to being a norm in society that is achieved by someone in a normal state. This liberation occurs when this individual is no longer under the authority of their parents. The conflict, in which their is a disagreement / argument, occurs when the individual begins to compare his own parents with other parents. As a result of this the child begins to doubt the parents love and affection, and begins to become dissatisfied with certain things. This is because the the other parents may have a certain characteristic that may be superior the characteristic of the child’s parents. The idea of individuality comes into play when this individual decides that he or she needs a certain quality in order to be unique. Freud backs this idea when he says “…the whole progress of society rests upon the opposition between successive generations.” This essentially means that each generation has the urge to be unique in their own ways. In both examples of conflict and individuality we see that the individual is looking for better qualities from both society and the peers that surround them.

In Sigmund Freud’s essay “Family Romances”, he discusses the interesting psychological relationship between a child and their parents. The lines “For a small child his parents are at first the only authority and the source of all belief. The child’s most intense and most momentous wish during these early years is to be like his parents (that is, the parent of his own sex) and to be big like his father and mother.” were quite interesting to me in the sense that freud is basically saying that parents are the 1 and only factor that comes to the development of a child in both thought and behavioral aspects of their life. In addition, Freud mentions how, depending on sex, the child hopes to be like the parent of their own sex, and later wants to push them away during maturity, and then stays attached to the other parent of the opposite sex.

Freud mentions that even though the child sees so highly of his parents before puberty, after puberty their outlook on life and his parents change. He writes “the child’s imagination becomes engaged in the task of getting free from the parents of whom he now has a low opinion and of replacing them by others”. This is interesting because at this point, a child is older and seeking individuality and seeks identity through creating conflict with the parents they ones idolized in every way. I believe that to truly have individuality, you must create conflict, minor is acceptable, against your makers (parents) because without showing your own beliefs and your own identity that differs from those you’ve been with your entire life, you will just sink in to the background and not obtain individuality.

In Freud’s Family Romance, part of Freud’s idea is: a child would learn everything from his/her parents and want to be exactly like his/her parents at the child’s early years, but would come back to criticize the parents later after he/she gets to know more other parents.

Isn’t this the way we learn everything?

In my opinion, a child would learn everything from his/her closest guardian/caretaker/food provider, because that’s the most convenient and accessible way to learn anything at all. So before the child gets to access to different ideas and opinions, it is not surprising that the child would hold on to his ONLY opinion of many things, which he/she copied from his/her guardian. But as the child grows, he would be exposed to many other ideas inevitably. That’s when the child realizes there’s more than one way to see things. And it is also at that moment, the child begins to doubt his/her previous learned ideas. Therefore, conflicts are started. The child is forced to contemplate the correctness of the different ideas and make decisions on choosing one to follow. I believe this is called critical thinking. In the process of evaluating different ideas and opinions, the child also starts to form his/her individuality.

So the connection between individuality and conflicts would be: you have to go through conflicts to find individuality.

An example would be:

Mom and dad are right! (before getting to know other opinions)

Mom and dad are right?(get to know other opinions and start to doubt)

Mom and dad are right. (after assessing different opinions and make his/her decision)

Dave Cen

Freud is the father of psychology laying many of the foundations of the modern psychology used today. Though many of Sigmund Freud’s concepts and theories are not seen as accurate or not used like it was before, the influence Freud has had on culture can not be disputed. In his work “Family Romances” Freud describes the conflict between the child’s individual development and his place in the family. His idea is that the first real push into individuality begins when the child first realizes that his parents are not the perfect beings of knowledge is quite fascinating. Many children see their parents as the world and seeing flaws with them and realizing they are only human can be a hard and shaking experience. Freud believes that this moment in one of the most important moments in a child’s life because if the moment never completely happens or is too traumatic it can cause major problems in a child’s development. This idea that individuality begins when the leaders one trusts turns out to not be infallible is an interesting theory that may apply to much more then children.

Freud then begins to relate this push to individuality with other pushes in human development which is both incredibly fascinating and more likely to not be used in the psychiatric community. He viewed that children day dream of having different noble parents, being parent-less, or being separated by their parents because they wish to be more independent and leave behind their old flawed parents. He states that this is not due to malice but because the child is trying to explore ideas of independence and want to go back to seeing their parents as perfect. This is incredibly fascinating because it shows the want to be their own person while not having to loose their safety and the family they care about.

In Sigmund Freuds “Family Romance, a discussion of conflict and individuality evident. He discusses how the parents of a child have such a high influence on the child. However, he begins to discuss the development of the child as he grows into different contradictory stages of life. These stages put him in conflict with his real surroundings and offer different internal attitudes towards his life. Throughout his work though he informs the reader that this conflict is an essential aspect to the child’s development. It is through this progress in the child’s life stages that enables him or her to reach a “Normal State”.

It is interesting to see how the role of sexuality persists and changes in different phases of the child’s life. Once he or she is at an age of personal recognition the child begins to attain a level of sexual conflict with his parents. This internal struggle could lead to hostility or other behaviors that are geared towards the child’s parents. As the child grows, this sexuality begins to grow into fantasy and imaginative scenarios. The child becomes involved in all sorts of thoughts including parents’ comparisons and the fulfillment of their wishes. The child grows far from the parents and begins to hold harsh feelings towards the parents until he moves past this stage of development. It is interesting to note how these inner struggles of children define their natures as they get older. These feelings begin to mold them as individuals. Although the same feeling will ultimately dull down, they will still have an internal belief system that will define their personalities as they age.

In his essay “Family Romances,” Freud presents the relationship between a child and his/her parents. Freud says that young children tend to see their parents as their only source of knowledge and their only authoritative figure. This ties into the idea of nature vs. nurture. Children are nurtured into their parent’s way of thinking until they became wise and mature enough to see beyond their parent’s ways. Young children lack true individuality because all of their beliefs are based on those of their parent’s. The child’s only true identity is his parents and the child’s only role model is his parents. As children become exposed to all of what life has to offer, they become conflicted. As Freud explains, “But as intellectual growth increases, the child cannot help discovering by degrees the category to which his parents belong. He gets to know other parents and compares them with his own, and so acquires the right to doubt the incomparable and unique quality which he had attributed to them…” Thus, as the child progresses and matures, he/she will doubt the perfection of his/her parents. The child will see all of the flaws in his/her parents in relation to other parents and other adult figures. The child’s lack of individuality provokes conflict within the child. The child then has to fend for his/her self to discover true sources of knowledge and wisdom. It is only appropriate for the child to undergo conflict and confusion in many ways, especially skepticism, sexual rivalry and fantasies. All of these are necessary for the child to learn and develop a sense of true individuality.

In Family Romances, Sigmund Freud talks about the connection a child has with his parents and his need to be liberated from them. Freud describes this developmental process as both necessary and painful. “For a small child his parents are at first the only authority and the source of all belief. The child’s most intense and most momentous wish during these early years is to be like his parents (that is, the parent of his own sex)” (237). My first thought of these sentences from the text is that a child’s perception of their parents is that they are big fish in a small pond. As the child matures and his world expands, he begins to see that here are flaws in his parents and that there are other better options available. Freud also mentions that a boy is more likely to feel hostile impulses towards his father rather than his mother. I think this can be attributed to the fact that as a parent, they have the responsibility of “molding” another human being and the parent of the same sex is more vocal in this process because they have already walked the road the child would one day walk as well. This is where, I believe, the struggle for individuality takes place. A child may not appreciate that they are worked on like a project nor do they want to be a reflection of someone else. This is where the child feels the need to separate from the parent’s grasp in order to become an independent individual. I think the fantasies, that Freud says are created, are to negate this newfound perception of the child’s parents. The fantasies are to bring them back to a state of mind where they have an admirable figure with no flaws to emulate in life.