Psychoanalytic literary criticism is literary criticism which, in method, concept, theory or form, is influenced by

the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalytic reading has been practiced since the early
development of psychoanalysis itself.

Freud himself wrote several important essays on literature, which he used to explore the psyche of authors and
characters, to explain narrative mysteries, and to develop new concepts in psychoanalysis. His sometime disciples
and later readers, such as Carl Jung and later Jacques Lacan, were avid readers of literature as well, and used
literary examples as illustrations of important concepts in their work.

A psychoanalytic approach reveals a hidden truth about a work of literature that it bears a hidden burden of proof.
The readers ask, Why this behavior/speech/event has to be the product of hidden psychological causes rather than
obvious rational causes. A psychoanalytic approach give preference to textual evidence that are to be explained as
a part of a larger pattern of behavior that is not likely the product of rational processes and predict non-rational
events elsewhere in the text based on that pattern.

The above processes involve weeding out the likely proposed rational counter-explanations, and doing that
succinctly in introduction will put readers' minds at rest regarding thoroughness and tends to confirm the argument.