Beside the silent waters

  Q. Write an essay on Psychoanalysis and the stream of consciousness.  Psychoanalysis is a treatment method that follows the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud to treat mental disorders. He along with his colleague Josef Breuer found that the patients were improving from their disorder when the sources of the ideas and impulses that they experienced were brought to conscious state from the hypnotic state. Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and methods were very powerful and it has spread across in various other fields other than psychology. Freud observed that patients shared their thoughts freely without being in a hypnotic state but they hid the painful experiences from the experimenter. Thus, came the technique of free association of ideas which helped him interpret his patients’ dreams. These dreams, slips of the tongue, forgetfulness and other mistakes they made helped him understand the pain they repressed and helped them heal mentally by bringing it in their conscious

Q. Discuss the themes in world literature with reference in the poetry or texts in your syllabus in not more than 1000 words.  World literature as a genre helps us understand new socio-cultural perspectives that has been untouched by the genre that covers the mainstream literature. It refers to the works written in a particular region that is circulated beyond the place of its origin. The themes we came across from the poems in our syllabus were loss/celebration of our identity, love, desire, dullness and misery, war and nature. Each of the poets expressed their pride in being part of a dying community. Judith Wright in her poem Bora Ring is sharing with her readers the fun they had when they got together around the bora ring to celebrate their aboriginal culture. Now that it is gradually diminishing, she is poignant. In Jean Arasanayagam’s poem Two Dead Soldiers, the poet brings up the events of the civil war that took place in Sri Lanka and writes about two dead soldiers on