What The Freud?

What is a psycho-analytical reading?

As a reading
Argues that literary texts, like
dreams, express the secret
unconscious desires and anxieties of
the author For example: William
Steig, who wrote Shrek, constructed
his characters around the
acceptance of abnormality therefore
he too may of feared his own
abnormality or was a part of an
epoch, modern society, where

 One may psychoanalyse a particular

character within a literary work, but
it is usually assumed that all such
characters are projections of the
author's psyche.
So, Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote
Finding Nemo, may have projected
his own parental issues into his film.

Ego: The ego

develops in
order to
mediate
between the
unrealistic id
and the
external real
world. It is the
decision making
component of
personality.
Ideally the ego
works by
reason,
whereas the id
is chaotic and
totally
unreasonable.

Superego:
The superego's
function is to
control the id's
impulses,
especially those
which society
forbids, such as sex
and aggression. It
also has the
function of
persuading the ego
to turn to moralistic
goals rather than
simply realistic
ones and to strive
for perfection.

Id: The id is the

impulsive (and
unconscious) part
of our psyche
which responds
directly and
immediately to the
instincts.

 The author's own childhood traumas, family

life, sexual conflicts, fixations, and such will be
traceable within the behaviour of the
characters in the literary work. But
psychological material will be expressed
indirectly, disguised, or encoded (as in
dreams) through principles such as
"symbolism" (the repressed object
represented in disguise), "condensation"
(several thoughts or persons represented in a
single image), and "displacement" (anxiety
located onto another image by means of
association).

 Despite the importance of the author here,

psychoanalytic criticism is similar to New
Criticism in not concerning itself with "what
the author intended." But what the
authorneverintended (that is, repressed) is
sought. The unconscious material has been
distorted by the censoring conscious mind.
The author of the terminator yearned for
what?

Terminator