When reading Freud’s Family Romances, there were a variety of instances in which the relationship between conflict and individuality were present. First, Freud begins by talking about how children grow up viewing their parents as the “source of all belief,” but then the child begins to reconsider the role their parent plays in their lives. This represents conflict because the child grows out of their original thoughts. As such, their mind has changed its opinion on their parents, and this is a conflict because on one hand, parents are often the most influential beings in a child’s life, but then, as they grow and develop, children yearn for individuality and do not want their parents to play such roles in their lives.

Another example of the relationship between conflict and individuality is when Freud says that a boy is “far more inclined to feel hostile impulses towards his father” than he is to his mother. This represents conflict because a fatherly figure is the type of person the boy wishes to become some day, and likely will become similar to, as they are both males. However, the boy is still his own individual person, and therefore becomes more hostile towards his father. As an individual, Freud’s viewpoint repels against individuality and causes conflict because although a boy will one day become a figure similar to that of his father, he still has harsher feelings against him than he does his mother. In other instances as well, such as when a boy attributes “his mother as many fictitious love-affairs,” the relationship between individuality and conflict is present because the boy needs to have his own love affairs, as an individual, yet at the same time, he is faced with conflict because he views a family member in his love affairs. Therefore, there is a strong relationship between conflict and individuality in Freud’s essay.

In Sigmund Freud’s “Family Romances,” he discusses the stages of child growth which is considered both a “painful” yet essential development. At first, the child views his parents as the main source of both power and confidence. As the child grows and learns of other parents, the idea of comparison occurs where the child then realizes their parents are not as unique as they once seemed. This leads to doubt towards their parents. Later on, the child begins to feel neglected by their parents and develops negative feelings towards them. They decide to pay them back through their imagination of belonging to wealthier parents. I believe this is where the connection of conflict and individuality takes place. The child undergoes “conflict” when they feel abandoned by their parents revealing a lack of individuality as they are still very dependent on their parents. Progression from this stage arises when the child has learned about child birth which assures their mothers role in their life. This also results in the insecurity of the role of their father. The idea of the Oedipus complex takes place when the child begins to have sexual fantasies with their mother engaging in infidelity. Freud ends his “Family Romances” with the idea that all of these events have taken place only because the primary intention of the child is to relive their happiest moments with their parents. The connection of conflict and individuality is clearly present throughout “Family Romances” as it is clear that all along the child feels conflict due to lack of individuality from his parents.

In Discourse on the logic of language, it says that the slave owners should try to keep their slaves from communicating with each others, so that they can’t plot against the slave owners together. This idea is also shown in Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: “if you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.” 

Johnson O’Connor once said, “Words are the instruments of thought by which men and women grasp the thoughts of others, and with which they do most of their thinking.” Frederick Douglass learned how to read and write by himself through variegated endeavors, and that certainly gave him the power to strive for what he wanted.

The very same idea was manifested in China thousand years ago too. The first emperor in China, YingZheng, burned numerous books, buried hundred of scholars alive after he conquered all the lands in order to create a united, big China. The idea was “if you can control their languages, you can control their thoughts .” Unfortunately, it worked, many people were enslaved, and we have the Great Wall built. Many died building it. This strategy is so effective that China is still using it thousand years later. Government censorship has been an interesting topic in China for many years. Now I think of it, it’s kind of funny for me to talk about this in my father tongue.

The importance of language is expressed in both “Discourse on the Logic of Language” by M. NourbeSe Philip and “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass. They both emphasized the way language shapes identity, community and a sense of self. Throughout her poem, Philip repeats the idea of a “mother tongue” and “father tongue” along with transforming the words of “English language” to “foreign language” to “anguish”. The mother tongue, which can be describes as the language of one’s ancestors, is said to have been denied from the slaves, therefore impacting and altering their connection to their past and their family. Which Philip discusses. Instead, slaves needed to know English, which is the foreign father tongue. Language is a necessary part of human connection, and to deny someone the ability to learn the language of their ancestral past is to deny them a part of themselves. And to deny someone the ability to read and write is a way to deny someone from building community and strong human understandings. The way Philip emphasizes the sounds of language as well as the familial connections of language gives the poem an emotional undertone. Overall it serves to show the way slaves were stolen of their identity through this aspect of language.

Frederick makes similar connection in his narrative. He was inspired to begin learning to read and write firstly by his lesson with Mrs. Auld, and secondly by Mr. Auld’s forbidding of any further lessons. Douglass realized that one of the sources of power for white slave-owner’s was the slave’s denial of education and ability to read and write. These skills became a sources of personal power for Douglass as well as gave him something to work towards for his own identity. Later on he was able to teach other slaves those skills at a Sabbath school while with Master Freeland. One thing Frederick said about that school was how “They came because they wished to learn. Their minds have been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness” (49). To give someone the ability to learn, is to give someone the ability to get power and the ability to create ideas for themselves; both things which slave holders knew and therefore kept away from the slaves.

Reading the words of M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Discourse on the Logic of Language” I envision her reenacting how Frederick Douglas would have taught himself how to read. M.NourbeSe Philip repeats the word language continuously throughout her poem however she bre aks the word into two parts as if she is making sense of the word to create a deeper understanding of it. The words she continuously repeats throughout her poem are languish and anguish, meaning;
languish – suffer from being forced to remain in an unpleasant place or situation, and
anguish – severe mental or physical pain or suffering.
The two words which eventually form the word language play a heavy role in the life and upbringing of Frederick Douglas he suffered mental and physical pain from his master Colonel Lloyd but also suffered immensely in the living conditions as a slave.

Reading Edict I, Philips explains as Frederick had explained that the slave owners did not want them to learn how to read or write as if they do learn they will eventually rebel against their masters, this was the reason why Frederick wanted to learn how to read and write, he wanted the opposite of what his master both wanted and rejected.

Along with the words she repeats, I hear the early life of Frederick Douglas before learning how to read and write. As a child growing up Frederick and most young children were not allowed to grow with their mothers, they were separated and the use of tongue represents the connection Frederick had with his own mother which was broken as if it were a synonym for an umbilical cord. The connection with the word tongue and the mother plays a large role in both the life of Frederick Douglas and Philip’s Discourse on the Logic of Language.

In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, Frederick Douglass discusses growing up as a slave. Most of us learned in history class, that slaves were not allowed to use their mother tongues to speak to each other. If caught by their masters, they would be punish, which is something M. NourbeSe Philips mentions in her poem. There are many reasons for this like the fear of uniting and rebelling against the masters, talking behind their backs, and forcing them to stay quiet. However, this did not stop the slaves from speaking in their mother languages especially when they sang songs, which had hints/clues to helped them to escape slavery. I remember this one song we learned in music class that referred to a constellation that if you follow, it leads you to the North. Frederick Douglass also mentions that slaves around him would sing songs as they work on the fields. The songs mention the evils of slavery and masters in their native language so their masters cannot understand.

Using their mother tongue was a important step to gaining freedom, but in addition so is learning the language of the people who are controlling you. Masters did not educate their slaves for many reasons like the fear of  making slaves smarter and harder to control. Frederick Douglass learned that after one of his mistresses Sophia Auld got caught teaching him how to read and write. Sophia Auld supposedly never had a slave before so she has not yet been corrupted, but once her husband found out about her lessons, he stopped her immediately. However, this taught Douglass that learning their language as well as his own mother language is the key to his freedom.

After listening to poem written by Phillip’s what grabbed my attention over and over again was how she transformed the word land into language and from language into anguish. Anguish in this case refers to learning a language foreign to you “father tongue”. It is interesting to see how slaves developed their own language to communicate secretly. I have often being told how the tongue is mightier than sword. What is sad was to learn how sword prevailed by removing the tongue of those caught communicating this way.

I can relate to this anguish when I first came to America and struggled whit English language. At times I found myself afraid to speak and felt I would be ridiculed. Fortunately as time went by and my confidence grew, my tongue started to move. Now I find learning father tongue languages exciting. It becomes a new adventure for me.

Slave owners deprived slaves from learning the language and educating themselves, because they could easily justify slavery. Everybody thought that slaves were not capable for social life, because they had a lack of knowledge. Many believed that it is because they brains were smaller, than the ones of white Caucasian man. Douglass learned from Hugh Auld that knowledge is a way to freedom. Auld forbidden his wife to educate slaves, because he claims that it ruins them. At this point Douglas realized that self-education is the only weapon he can use to fight for freedom. He knew that education wont automatically give him freedom, but with learning the language, inhumane treatment of slaves could be talked about and revealed to the world outside plantations.

NourbeSe Phillips’ iteration of the poem “Discourse on the logic of language” shows the underlying theme of the power of speech to oppression. In her performance of the poem, she sets a tone that represents confusion and limitations. Each slave was brought from his or her mother language and forced into a life of a foreign situation. I think that when she speaks of the tongue, it represents more than just the speech in which they were forced into. It represents an oppression of a person’s ability to reach high heights. Every person is born with an innate ability to speak as the poem discusses the parts of the brain that are responsible for this action. It is through constant oppression and condemnation that puts down ones’ ability to speak. Thoughts lead to words and words lead to action. If you cut off a man’s words, you cut off his actions. You cut off his ability to communicate his goals and put them into reality. I think this is what the poem’s is intended to bring out. As well, I think that M. Phillips is putting the poem into perspective by reading it in a way that makes the listener feel like it is hard for her to communicate what the thoughts of the writer is.

To take this a step further, we can see the parallels between this poem and “The narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass”. Douglass has constantly pointed out how oppressive it was to learn. He understood what learning could do and understood the power of speech. Both pieces ultimately understood that is the power of language that will remove the barriers and the oppressors from themselves.

In the reading of her poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language,” Marlene NourbeSe Philip bends her words to portray the meaning of a problem of language that the slaves went through. The slaves were not allowed to speak their mother tongue or allowed to teach it to their children in order so that they wouldn’t be able to speak to each other and revolt or rebel against the slave owners. Without their native tongue, they were “dumb-tongued”. Instead of the native tongue, the slaves had the father tongue of English to speak, which was the slave owner’s language. If slaves were caught speaking to each other in their native language they would be severely punished. The word bending Marlene NourbeSe Philip does in her poem reading is with the line “English a foreign lan – lan – language- languish – anguish, English is a foreign anguish.” Here she is portraying the anguish the slaves were going through of only being allowed to speak English and not their native tongue. So English, which was a foreign language to the slaves, became a foreign anguish. This connects to Douglass’s slave narrative and highlights how difficult it was for the slaves not being able to speak to each other and not able to receive an education. This was the battle that Frederick Douglas was dealing with. He wanted to learn how to read and write in order to be able to help fight slavery. Once he learns how to read and write he teaches other slaves and when he moves to Massachusetts he becomes involved with the abolitionist movement through his writing and speaking.

Both of these works emphasize the power of language in the context of slavery. Through Douglass’s narrative, we learn about the mistreatment of slavery. This mistreatment ranged from physical abuse to mental abuse. Apart from obeying their master’s orders, many slaves were robbed of the ability to formulate their own opinions. If a slave ever disrespected their master by talking back or refusing to perform a task, punishment awaited them. In order to avoid these kinds of acts of resistance, slave owners prohibited slaves from expanding their knowledge beyond to what they were exposed to on the plantation. It was deemed “unlawful” for slaves to learn how to read or write (20). According to Mr. Auld, who was one of Douglass’ masters, if a slave became knowledgeable he would then become “unmanageable” and “of no value to his master” (20). Many slave owners feared that once a slave got a taste of freedom, he or she would no longer be satisfied with their current condition. This idea of language and resistance is also addressed in M. NourbeSe Philip’s poem titled “Discourse on the Logic of Language.” Philip’s relates the power of language to anguish, in which the expansion of knowledge causes more suffering and unhappiness than solace. This can be seen in Douglass’s narrative once Ms. Auld was instructed by her husband to stop teaching Douglass how to read. Upon being deprived of Ms. Auld’s instruction, Douglass finally “understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (20). This halt in his journey to emancipation helped him realize the true power of knowledge and language.