Psychoanalytic

Criticism

Lit 400
Fall 2021
What is Psychoanalysis?
• A system of psychological theory and
therapy which aims to treat mental
disorders by investigating the interaction
of conscious and unconscious elements in
the mind.

• It works by bringing repressed fears and

conflicts into the conscious mind by
techniques such as dream interpretation
and free association.
 Psychoanalysis
• Psychoanalytic literary criticism is a critical theory which
is influenced by the tradition
of psychoanalysis established by Sigmund Freud.
• 'Psychoanalytic literary criticism does not constitute a
unified field. However, all variants endorse, at least to a
certain degree, the idea that literature is fundamentally
entwined with human psyche.
• Critics may view fictional characters as case studies that
need analysis. They examine a person's unconscious mind
to discover the hidden causes of their psychological
problems
• They attempt to understand how Freudian concepts as
the Id, ego and superego influence the thoughts and
behaviors of fictional characters.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• An Austrian neurologist and the founder of
psychoanalysis, who created an entirely
new approach to the understanding of the
human personality.

• He is regarded as one of the most

influential - and controversial - minds of
the 20th century.

• Freud’s ideas influenced the literature and

culture of the twentieth century.
The Origins of Psychoanalysis
• Sigmund Freud was the first psychoanalyst and a true
pioneer in the recognition of the importance of
unconscious mental activity.

• In 1896, Freud coined the term "psychoanalysis," and for

the next forty years of his life, he worked on thoroughly
developing its main principles, objectives, techniques,
and methodology.

• His theories on the inner workings of the human

mind were revolutionary at the turn of the century

• Now his theories are widely accepted by most schools of

psychological thought.
•Freud’s Theory
Freud developed the theory that humans have an
unconscious in which sexual and aggressive
impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy
with the defenses against them.

• In 1900, his major work 'The Interpretation of

Dreams' was published in which Freud analyzed
dreams in terms of unconscious desires and
experiences.
 Freud’s Psychoanalysis
• His findings revealed that the emotions
linked to traumatic life experiences do not
manifest themselves openly but are hidden
in the unconscious mind.

• These repressed memories, fears, and desires

stuck in the unconscious must be brought up
to the conscious so that they no longer need
to manifest themselves through symptoms.
 The Unconscious
• The unconscious is that part of the mind that lies
outside the boundaries of consciousness

• It is constructed in part by the repression of that

which is too painful to remain in consciousness.

• Not everything in the unconscious is repressed.

However, repression is the ego's primary defense
against disruption.

• Freud focused on the study of the inner forces, conflicts

or instincts of the unconscious that may affect behavior
Free Association of Ideas
• Psychoanalysis is often
known as the talking cure.

• Typically Freud would

encourage his patients to
talk freely (on his famous
couch) regarding their
symptoms, and to describe
exactly what was on their
mind.
• Freud’s patients provided him with
associations leading back to
repressed childhood experiences,
wishes and fantasies that had
resulted in unconscious conflicts;
once brought into consciousness
these conflicts could be analyzed, and
the symptoms then dissolved.
•The
LaterPsyche
in his career Freud suggested a
three-part, rather than a two-part,
model of the psyche, dividing it into
the ego, the super-ego, and the id,
• These three 'levels' of the personality
roughly corresponding to, respectively,
the consciousness, the conscience, and
the unconscious.
The Iceberg
The Human Psyche
 Superego is
made up of the
conscience
(which helps us
Id - driven by the
Ego - lies at the distinguish right
visible surface of your
'pleasure principle' -
personality - what
from wrong)
the demand to fulfill and the ego-
you show to society.
your biological needs
immediately.
It develops with life ideal (which
experience.
Unconscious
Conscious
contains the
ideal view of
your self).
Unconsciou
s
 The Ego
• The Ego
develops out of
the id's
interaction with
the external
world
(superego)
 Mechanisms

• Several key terms concern what might be called

psychic processes, such as transference, the
phenomenon whereby the person under analysis
redirects the emotions recalled in analysis
Mechanisms:
• Repression, denial, projection, displacement,
regression, sublimation
• The Freudian slip, which Freud himself called the
'parapraxis', whereby repressed material in the
unconscious finds an outlet through such everyday
phenomena as slips of the tongue, slips of the pen,
or unintended actions.
Mechanisms Description Example

Repression Repression is an unconscious mechanism During the Oedipus complex

employed by the ego to keep disturbing or aggressive about the same sex parents
threatening thoughts from becoming are oppressed
conscious
Denial Denial involves blocking external events Smokers may refuse to admit to
from awareness. If some situation is just too themselves that smoking is bad for
much to handle, the person just refuses to their health.
experience it.

Projection This involves individuals attribute their own You might hate someone, but your
unacceptable thoughts, feeling, and motives superego tells you that such hatred is
to another person. unacceptable. You solve the problem
by believing that they hate you.

Displacement Satisfying an impulse (e.g. aggression) with a Someone who is frustrated by his boss
substitute object. maygo home and kick the dog.

Regression This is a movement back in psychological
time when one is faced with stress.
Sublimation Satisfying an impulse with a substitute
object in a socially acceptable way.
Children may begin to suck their
thumb again or wet their bed when
they need to spend some time at
hospital
Sport is an example of putting our
emotions into something constructive.
 Dream Interpretation
• Freud relied heavily on dream
analysis

• He believed dreams revealed the

unconscious mind's contents
which needed to be released in
order to resolve inner conflict.

• Access to the repressed is gained

often through dream
interpretation, where the
manifest content in dreams is
Dream Interpretation
• The meaning of these dreams was not clear-cut and
had to be interpreted via symbols by a
psychoanalyst.

• According to Freud, the dream must be interpreted,

for the manifest dream content always condenses,
displaces, or elaborates the latent content and
replaces feelings with visual images.

• In interpretation, the analyst ignores surface

confusion and waits for the central theme to emerge
from the dreamer’s retelling.
Dream Interpretation
• Dreams are "guardians of sleep", i.e. wish fulfillments that
arise in response to inner conflicts and tensions whose
function is to allow the subject to continue sleeping.

• Dream-Work is the production of dreams during sleep -- the

translation of demands arising from the unconscious into
symbolic objects of the preconscious and eventually the
conscious mind of the subject.
• Dream Interpretation is the decoding of the symbols
(manifest content) and the recovery of their latent content,
i.e. the unconscious and, hence, hidden tensions and conflicts
that give rise to the dreams in the first place.
 Dream Interpretation
• It was because his patients spoke of dreams
so often that Freud began this area of
investigation.
• According to Freud, the dream must be
interpreted, for the manifest dream content
always condenses, displaces, or elaborates
the latent content and replaces feelings with
visual images.
• In interpretation, the analyst ignores surface
confusion and waits for the central theme to
emerge from the dreamer’s retelling.
• In sleep people regress; the conscious mind
idles at its customary control, and the mind
returns to something like the womb.
 Dream Work
• The dream work is the process by which real events or
desires are transformed into dream images. These include:
1. Displacement, whereby one person or event is
represented by another which is in some way linked or
associated with it, perhaps because of a similar sounding
word, or by some form of symbolic substitution
2. Condensation, whereby a number of people, events, or
meanings are combined and represented by a single
image in the dream. Thus, characters, motivation, and
events are represented in dreams in a very 'literary' way,
involving the translation, by the dream work, of abstract
ideas or feelings into concrete images.
• The purpose of devices like displacement and
condensation is two-fold.
• Firstly, they disguise the repressed fears and
wishes contained in the dream so that they can get
past the censor which normally prevents their
surfacing into the conscious mind.
• Secondly, they fashion this material into something
which can be represented in a dream, that is, into
images, symbols, and metaphors.
• Dreams don't say things, they show things.
In this sense especially, they are very like
literature.
• Hence the interest of literary critics in
Freudian methods of interpretation.
 Psychoanalytic Criticism
• Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of
"reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to
interpret texts.

• It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret

unconscious desires and anxieties of the author

• Analyzes literature to reveal insights about the way the

human mind works.

• Works well as a method of analyzing characters’

actions and motivations.
Psychoanalysis in Literature
• The coupling of literature and psychoanalysis goes back
to Freud himself.

• He observed that the creative faculty draws on drives

and fantasies buried in the unconscious

• Those provide the clue to understanding the imaginative

mind as well as individual works.

• Freud noted the parallels between literary composition

and such common activities as children's play and
daydreaming, and between literature and myths
 Psychoanalysis in Literature
• Freud thought that the force of works like Oedipus
Rex and Hamlet derived from the fact that their
central themes touched on the psychic
experience of modern man.

• Freud's greatest contribution, however, was

probably in the subtle application of his theories
and discoveries to individual writers and artists
Dreams & Literature

• Dreams, just like literature, do not usually

make explicit statements. Both tend to
communicate obliquely or indirectly,
avoiding direct or open statement, and
representing meanings through concrete
embodiments of time, place, or person.
Aspects of Sexuality
• Many of Freud's ideas concern aspects of sexuality.

• Infantile sexuality, for instance, is the notion that

sexuality begins not at puberty, with physical
maturing, but in infancy, especially through the
infant's relationship with the mother.

• Connected with this is the Oedipus complex,

whereby, says Freud, the male infant conceives the
desire to eliminate the father and become the sexual
partner of the mother.
 Oedipus Complex
• In psychoanalytic theory, it is a desire for sexual involvement with
the parent of the opposite sex and a sense of rivalry with the parent
of the same sex; a crucial stage in the normal developmental process.

• Sigmund Freud introduced the concept in his

Interpretation of Dreams (1899).

• The term derives from the Theban hero Oedipus of Greek legend,
who unknowingly slew his father and married his mother

• The female analogue is the Electra complex, named for another

mythological figure, who helped slay her mother.

• Freud attributed the Oedipus complex to children of about the ages

three to five. He said the stage usually ended when the child
identified with the parent of the same sex and repressed its sexual
instincts.
 Oedipus Complex
• If previous relationships with the parents were relatively loving and
non traumatic, and if parental attitudes were neither excessively
prohibitive nor excessively stimulating, the stage is passed through
harmoniously.

• In the presence of trauma, however, there occurs an “infantile

neurosis” that is an important forerunner of similar reactions during
the child’s adult life.

• The superego, the moral factor that dominates the conscious adult
mind, also has its origin in the process of overcoming the Oedipus
complex. Freud considered the reactions against the Oedipus
complex the most important social achievements of the human mind.

• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Oedipus-complex
What Freudian psychoanalytic critics do?

1. They give central importance, in literary interpretation, to

the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious
mind. They associate the literary work's 'overt' content with
the former, and the 'covert' content with the latter, privileging
the latter as being what the work is 'really' about, and aiming
to disentangle the two.
2. They pay close attention to unconscious motives and
feelings, whether these be (a) those of the author, or (b) those
of the characters depicted in the work.
3. They demonstrate the presence in the literary work of
classic psychoanalytic symptoms, conditions, or phases, such
as the oral, anal, and phallic stages of emotional and sexual
development in infants.
What Freudian psychoanalytic critics do?
4. They make large-scale applications of psychoanalytic
concepts to literary history in general, for example, Harold
Bloom's book The Anxiety of Influence (1973) sees the
struggle for identity by each generation of poets, under the
'threat' of the greatness of its predecessors, as an enactment
of the Oedipus complex.

5. They identify a 'psychic' context for the literary work, at

the expense of social or historical context, privileging the
individual 'psycho-drama' above the 'social drama' of class
conflict. The conflict between generations or siblings, or
between competing desires within the same individual
looms much larger than conflict between social classes, for
instance.
What Freudian Critics do:

1. the distinction between conscious and unconscious

2. uncovering the unconscious motives of characters

3. seeing in the literary work an embodiment of

classic psychoanalytic conditions.
Questions for Psychoanalytic Criticism
• What forces are motivating the characters?
• Which behaviors of the characters are conscious ones?
• Which are unconscious?
• What conscious or unconscious conflicts exist between
the characters?
• Given their backgrounds, is the characters’ behavior
reasonable?
• Are the theories of Freud applicable to this work?
How?
• Do any of the characters correspond to the parts of the
tripartite self? (Id, ego, superego)
Questions for Psychoanalytic Criticism
• What roles do psychological disorders and dreams play in
this story/ play/poem?
• Are the characters recognizable psychological types?
• How might a psychological approach account for different
responses in female and male readers?
• How does the work reflect the writer’s personal
psychology?
• What do the characters’ emotions and behaviors reveal
about their psychological states?
• How does the work reflect the unconscious dimensions of
the writer’s mind?
• How does the reader’s own psychology affect his response
to the work?