Psychoanalytic Criticism

Psychoanalytic literary criticism is a method created by Sigmund

Freud ​which argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret
unconscious desires and anxieties of the author and society, and how a
literary work is a manifestation of those components.

● Major Characteristics Include:

- Analysis of th​e ​author​ an​d/ or a major character

- Analysis of subconscious issues or emotions
- Seek evidence of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences, and
so forth
- Interpret dreams or potential symbols in the text which can reveal hidden messages
- Don’t consider ‘what the author intended’, but what the author ​never ​intended

Assumptions Concerning Literature and Culture

-Society’s desires manifested through works of literature

-Allows fulfillment, and demonstration of wishes repressed by society
-Expresses ideologies about culture and the current period of time
-Calls for interpretation of deeper meaning of the psyche
-Reflects ideas of society and humanity in symbols or figures

Applied in the Novel Frankenstein

- A function of two realms, one public, dominated by

language and law, and the other private, outside
society and language
- Victor’s passage from the Imaginary order into the
Symbolic realms