#overdetermination

Criminologists face a problem that’s common in many fields: overdetermination. Why does someone commit a crime? Was it peer pressure, poverty, a broken family, broken windows, bad genes, bad parenting, under-policing, leaded gasoline, Judas Priest? “You could just keep stepping back and back and back and back, and you wonder when, ultimately, you’re going to draw a line,” Lauritsen told me. “It could be drawn at probably thousands of points.” Criminologists aren’t the only researchers who study overdetermined subjects: biologists, who have long sought specific genes for diseases, have come to realize that many traits and illnesses may be “omnigenic”—determined by countless genes. The sociologist David Matza summed up the difficulty, in 1964: “When factors become too numerous, we are in the hopeless position of arguing that everything matters.”

Freud’s early explorations of the causes of behaviour revealed that actions could be caused by the unconscious processes of the mind. The complex web of memories, associations, and beliefs buried deep in the unconscious mind drive behaviour, sometimes without the individual being aware of why they are doing what they are doing. Initially, Freud called this ‘overdetermination’ but was later referred to as the ‘principle of complication of causes’, which is somewhat more self-explanatory (Kran 2010, p.9-11).

As artists are blind to all causes of their odd, disturbing, or strange behaviour, they are unable to apply rational thought processes to their unconscious misalignments. 

When one discovers Edward Gorey’s ‘The Gashlycrumb Tinies’ in a Japanese book shop and falls in love with it, what does it say about them?

Freudian psychoanalysis holds that overdetermination is an aspect of subjectivity in which a subject’s recurring actions are an emergence of unconscious phenomena (Mansfield, 2000, p. 29). It dismisses the insignificance of seemingly quotidian behaviour, holding that it instead indicates the repression of subliminal negative energies and conflicts that are resurfacing. An overdetermination of Van Gogh’s work involves associating the frequent portrayal of himself with familial replacement, through which he reaffirms his identity in light of his stillborn brother that was born exactly a year prior to himself and was of the same name. Psychoanalysts connect this to Van Gogh’s unconscious myth that he was a replacement child (Blum, 2010, p. 1316).

Overdetermination describes the analysing of seemingly insignificant, quotidian behaviours in an attempt to discover the psychological reasoning behind them.

It can be regarded as over-analysing, turning the trivial to the tragic, however, Freud theorised that these behaviours are overdetermined. This means that they withhold an abundance of intense psychological energy that can be researched in order to gain further insight into one’s unconscious.

Dismissing the incomprehensible material within the depths of our minds to simply irrelevant actions when it may surface in our everyday life, denies the deepest experiences and speculations we may possess (Mansfield, 2000 p.29). By extension, dismissing overdetermination inhibits the possibility of knowledge concerning our deepest self and the human condition collectively.

Monet is recognised as the forefather of Impressionism, yet his obsession with light and waterlilies is demoted to solely a fascination with sublimity and aesthetic. There is the possibility, however that Monet’s intense fixation is rooted in unconscious materials.