Psychoanalytic

literary criticism

Psychoanalytic literary criticism is literary

criticism or literary theory which, in
method, concept, 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, and has developed
into a heterogeneous interpretive tradition.
As Celine Surprenant writes,
'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 the
psyche'.[1]

Overview
The object of psychoanalytic literary
criticism, at its very simplest, can be the
psychoanalysis of the author or of a
particularly interesting character in a given
work. The criticism is similar to
psychoanalysis itself, closely following the
analytic interpretive process discussed in
Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams and
other works. Critics may view the fictional
characters as psychological case studies,
attempting to identify such Freudian
concepts as the Oedipus complex,
Freudian slips, Id, ego and superego, and
so on, and demonstrate how they
influence the thoughts and behaviors of
fictional characters.

However, more complex variations of

psychoanalytic criticism are possible. The
concepts of psychoanalysis can be
deployed with reference to the narrative or
poetic structure itself, without requiring
access to the authorial psyche (an
interpretation motivated by French
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's remark
that "the unconscious is structured like a
language"). Or the founding texts of
psychoanalysis may themselves be
treated as literature, and re-read for the
light cast by their formal qualities on their
theoretical content (Freud's texts
frequently resemble detective stories, or
the archaeological narratives of which he
was so fond).
Like all forms of literary criticism,
psychoanalytic criticism can yield useful
clues to the sometime baffling symbols,
actions, and settings in a literary work;
however, like all forms of literary criticism,
it has its limits. For one thing, some critics
rely on psychocriticism as a "one size fits
all" approach, when other literary scholars
argue that no one approach can
adequately illuminate or interpret a
complex work of art. As Guerin, et al. put it
in A Handbook of Critical Approaches to
Literature,[2]
 The danger is that the serious
student may become theory-
ridden, forgetting that Freud's is
not the only approach to literary
criticism. To see a great work of
fiction or a great poem
primarily as a psychological
case study is often to miss its
wider significance and perhaps
even the essential aesthetic
experience it should provide.

Methods
Early applications …

Freud 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 (for
instance, Delusion and Dream in Jensen's
Gradiva and his influential readings of the
Oedipus myth and Shakespeare's Hamlet
in The Interpretation of Dreams). The
criticism has been made, however, that in
his and his early followers' studies 'what
calls for elucidation are not the artistic and
literary works themselves, but rather the
psychopathology and biography of the
artist, writer or fictional characters'.[3] Thus
'many psychoanalysts among Freud's
earliest adherents did not resist the
temptation to psychoanalyze poets and
painters (sometimes to Freud's chagrin').[4]
Later analysts would conclude that 'clearly
one cannot psychoanalyse a writer from
his text; one can only appropriate him'.[5]

Early psychoanalytic literary criticism

would often treat the text as if it were a
kind of dream. This means that the text
represses its real (or latent) content
behind obvious (manifest) content. The
process of changing from latent to
manifest content is known as the dream
work, and involves operations of
concentration and displacement. The critic
analyzes the language and symbolism of a
text to reverse the process of the dream
work and arrive at the underlying latent
thoughts. The danger is that 'such
criticism tends to be reductive, explaining
away the ambiguities of works of literature
by reference to established psychoanalytic
doctrine; and very little of this work retains
much influence today'.[6]

Jungians …

Later readers, such as Carl Jung and

another of Freud's disciples, Karen Horney,
broke with Freud, and their work, especially
Jung's, led to other rich branches of
psychoanalytic criticism: Horney's to
feminist approaches including womb envy,
and Jung's to the study of archetypes and
the collective unconscious. Jung's work in
particular was influential as, combined
with the work of anthropologists such as
Claude Lévi-Strauss and Joseph Campbell,
it led to the entire fields of mythocriticism
and archetype analysis.

Northrop Frye considered that 'the literary

critic finds Freud most suggestive for the
theory of comedy, and Jung for the theory
of romance'.[7]
Form …

Waugh writes, 'The development of

psychoanalytic approaches to literature
proceeds from the shift of emphasis from
"content" to the fabric of artistic and
literary works'.[8] Thus for example Hayden
White has explored how 'Freud's
descriptions tally with nineteenth-century
theories of tropes, which his work
somehow reinvents'.[9]

Especially influential here has been the

work of Jacques Lacan, an avid reader of
literature who used literary examples as
illustrations of important concepts in his
work (for instance, Lacan argued with
Jacques Derrida over the interpretation of
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter").

'Lacan's theories have encouraged a

criticism which focuses not on the author
but on the linguistic processes of the
text'.[10] Within this Lacanian emphasis,
'Freud's theories become a place from
which to raise questions of interpretation,
rhetoric, style, and figuration'.[11]

However, Lacanian scholars have noted

that Lacan himself was not interested in
literary criticism per se, but in how
literature might illustrate a psychoanalytic
method or concept.[12]

Reader response …

According to Ousby, 'Among modern

critical uses of psychoanalysis is the
development of "ego psychology" in the
work of Norman Holland, who
concentrates on the relations between
reader and text'[13] - as with reader
response criticism. Rollin writes that
'Holland's experiments in reader response
theory suggest that we all read literature
selectively, unconsciously projecting our
own fantasies into it'.[14]
Thus in crime fiction, for example, 'Rycroft
sees the criminal as personifying the
reader's unavowed hostility to the
parent'.[15]

Charles Mauron: psychocriticism …

In 1963, Charles Mauron[16] conceived a

structured method to interpret literary
works via psychoanalysis. The study
implied four different phases:

1. The creative process is akin to

dreaming awake: as such, it is a
mimetic, and cathartic,
representation of an innate desire
 that is best expressed and revealed
by metaphors and symbolically.
2. Then, the juxtaposition of a writer's
works leads the critic to define
symbolical themes.
3. These metaphorical networks are
significant of a latent inner reality.
4. They point at an obsession just as
dreams can do. The last phase
consists in linking the writer's literary
creation to his own personal life.

On Mauron's concept, the author cannot be

reduced to a ratiocinating self: his own
more or less traumatic biographical past,
the cultural archetypes that have suffused
his "soul" contrast with the conscious self,
The chiasmic relation between the two
tales may be seen as a sane and safe
acting out. A basically unconscious sexual
impulse is symbolically fulfilled in a
positive and socially gratifying way, a
process known as Sublimation.

Anxiety of influence …

'The American critic Harold Bloom has

adopted the Freudian notion of the
Oedipus Complex to his study of
relationships of influence between
poets...and his work has also inspired a
feminist variant in the work of Sandra
Gilbert and Susan Gubar'.[17]

In similar vein, Shoshana Felman has

asked with respect to what she calls "the
guilt of poetry" the question: 'Could literary
history be in any way considered as a
repetitive unconscious transference of the
guilt of poetry?'.[18]

Cultural examples
In Small World: An Academic Romance, one
of David Lodge's satires of academia, the
naive hero Persse follows Angelica to a
forum where she discourses on Romance:
'"Roland Barthes has taught us the close
connection between narrative and
sexuality, between the pleasures of the
body and the 'pleasure of the
text'....Romance is a multiple orgasm."
Persse listened to this stream of filth
flowing from between Angelica's exquisite
lips and pearly teeth with growing
astonishment and burning cheeks, but no
one else in the audience seemed to find
anything remarkable or disturbing about
her presentation'.[19]

In A.S. Byatt's novel Possession, the

heroine/feminist scholar, while recognising
that '"we live in the truth of what Freud
discovered"', concedes that '"the whole of
our scholarship – the whole of our thought
– we question everything except the
centrality of sexuality"'.[20]

See also
Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming
René Girard
Julia Kristeva
Teresa de Lauretis
Camille Paglia
Jacqueline Rose
Ella Freeman Sharpe
Peter Brooks
Slavoj Žižek
Footnotes
1. Celine Surprenant, 'Freud and
Psychoanalysis' in Patricia Waugh ed.,
Literary Theory and Criticism (OUP
2006) p. 200
2. Guerin, Wilfred L., et al., A Handbook of
Critical Approaches to Literature
(Harper & Row, 1979). ISBN 0-06-
042554-7
3. Waugh, p. 200
4. Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time
(London 1989) p. 764
5. Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (London
1994) p. 45
 6. J. Childers/G. Hentzi eds., The
Columbia Dictionary of Modern
Literary and Cultural Criticism (New
York 1995) p. 247
7. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
(Princeton 1973) p. 214
8. Waugh, p. 203
9. Waugh, p. 208
10. Ian Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to
Literature in English (Cambridge 1995)
p. 767
11. Waugh, p. 208
12. Evans, Dylan (2005). "From Lacan to
Darwin" in The Literary Animal;
Evolution and the Nature of Narrative,
eds. Jonathan Gottschall and David
Sloan Wilson, Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 2005, pp.38-55.
13. Ousby ed., p. 767
14. L. Rollin/M. I. West, Psychoanalytic
Responses to Children's Literature
(2008) p. 12
15. Michael Shepherd, Sherlock Holmes
and the Case of Dr Freud (London
1985) p. 26
16. Des métaphores obsédantes au mythe
ersonnel
17. Childers/Hentzi eds., p. 248
18. Shoshana Felman, Jacques Lacan and
the Adventures of Insight (Harvard
1987) p. 50
19. David Lodge, Small World (Penguin
1985) p. 322-3
20. A. S Byatt, Possession: A Romance
(London 1990) p. 254 and p. 222

References
Barthes, Roland. Trans. Stephen Heath.
“The Death of the Author.” The Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed.
Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 2001.
Bowie, Malcolm. Psychoanalysis and the
Future of Theory. Cambridge, MA: B.
Blackwell, 1994.
de Berg, Henk: Freud's Theory and Its Use
in Literary and Cultural Studies: An
Introduction. Rochester, NY: Camden
House, 2003.
Ellmann, ed. Psychoanalytic Literary
Criticism. ISBN 0-582-08347-8.
Felman, Shoshana, ed. Literature and
Psychoanalysis: The Question of
Reading: Otherwise. ISBN 0-8018-2754-
X.
Frankland, Graham. Freud’s Literary
Culture. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2000.
Freud, Sigmund. Trans. Alix Strachey.
“The ‘Uncanny.” The Norton Anthology of
Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B.
Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2001.
Freud, Sigmund. Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud. 24 Volumes. Trans and
ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth
Press, 1953-74.
Hertz, Neil. “Freud and the Sandman.”
The End of the Line: Essays on
Psychoanalysis and the Sublime. Aurora,
CO: The Davies Group, Publishers, 2009.
 Muller and Richardson, eds. The
Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida and
Psychoanalytic Reading. ISBN 0-8018-
3293-4
Rudnytsky, Peter L. & Ellen Handler
Spits, Eds. Freud and Forbidden
Knowledge. New York: New York
University Press, 1994.
Smith, Joseph H. Ed. The Literary Freud:
Mechanisms of Defense and the Poetic
Will. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1980.

External links
Traditional Freudian Criticism
 Classical Freudian Literary Criticism: An
Introduction (lecture by Henk de Berg,
2015)
Reconceptualizing Freud
Theory of Psychotherapy and other
Human Sciences (Documents No. 8 and
9 in English)
Psychoanalytical Literary Criticism in the
Yahoo! Directory
Mauron Metaphors (in French)

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