LEARNER’S HANDOUT!
ID - Motivated by instinct, the id contains the
PSYCHOANALYTIC LITERARY
CRITICISM
- Adopts the methods of "reading" employed by
Freud and later theorists to interpret texts.
- Seeks evidence of unresolved emotions,
psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences,
that a literary work is a manifestation of the
author's own neuroses
- Author's own childhood traumas, family life,
sexual conflicts, fixations, and such will be
traceable
- Validates the importance of literature, as it is
built on a literary key for the decoding.
FOUNDER
There are two influential psychoanalytical theorists:
Sigismund ‘Sigmund’ Schlomo Freud (May 6,1856 to
September 23, 1939)
• The founder of psychoanalysis, was born in
Austria and spent most of his childhood and adult life in
Vienna (Gay, 2006). He entered medical school and
trained as a neurologist, earning a medical degree in
1881.
• Soon after his graduation, he set up in private
practice and began treating patients with psychological
disorders. His colleague Dr. Josef Breuer’s intriguing
experience with a patient, “Anna O.,” who experienced a
range of physical symptoms with no apparent physical
cause (Breuer & Freud, 1895/2001) drew his attention.
• Dr. Breuer found that her symptoms abated
when he helped her recover memories of traumatic
experiences that she had repressed from conscious
awareness. This case sparked Freud’s interest in the
unconscious mind and spurred the development of some
of his most influential ideas.
PROPOSED:
1. The unconscious mind
According to Freud, the unconscious is a part of the
mind that you are not aware of. It sits outside the
conscious mind and contains elements of repressed
or forgotten memories and urges that the individual
either cannot acknowledge or refuses to
acknowledge in their conscious mind.
libido along with urges and impulses that we
typically do not give into.
EGO - acts as the intermediary between the id
and the socially oriented external world.
SUPEREGO - the voice of our conscience and
also our self-criticism.
2. Dreams
Freud thought of dreams as the ultimate insight into
an individual’s unconscious mind. This was based
on a dream that he had in 1895 about a patient, Irma,
who was not responding well to treatment. Freud
dreamt that Irma’s condition was caused by an
infected syringe that was used by her previous
doctor. This lead Freud to conclude that dreams
function as a wish fulfilment exercise for our
unconscious mind.
Dream terminology
two types of content:
manifest - the dreamer’s memories that have
materialised in their dream
latent - the symbolic or underlying interpretation of that
dream
Displacement involves dreaming of one thing as another
thing, usually with that thing taking on a symbolic
meaning.
Condensation is the act of combining multiple images
or symbols into one thing. This allows for symbols in
dreams to take on multiple meanings.
Freud calls the process of translating an individual’s
unconscious desires into the manifest content
dreamwork. Dreamwork transforms the wishes of the id
(which may be forbidden or socially unacceptable) into a
more palatable form in an individual’s dream.
Secondary elaboration refers to the unconscious mind
ordering a sequence of wish-fulfilment events into an
order that is believable to the dreamer, thus hiding the
latent content of the dream.
3. Oedipus complex
The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) was when
Sigmund Freud first introduced the theory of the
Oedipus complex. The Oedipus complex is named
after the eponymous main character of Sophocles’
Oedipus Rex (429 BC). Oedipus was abandoned as
an infant after a prophecy that he would grow up to
kill his own father and marry his own mother. He
was eventually rescued and adopted by another
King until he came across the prophecy himself and,
unaware that he was adopted, left his parents in
order to protect them from his fate. On the journey
away from his supposed parents, Oedipus
unknowingly meets his biological father and kills
him in an argument. He then arrives at Thebes,
where he solves a riddle from the Sphinx and
marries the newly widowed Queen Jocasta, as a
reward. After a plague strikes Thebes, Oedipus
makes the gradual discovery that he has married his
own mother, whom he widowed by killing his own
father, thus fulfilling the oracle’s prophecy.
Drawing from this story, Freud puts forward the
suggestion that both modern and classical audiences
were captivated by Oedipus as it depicts a
subconscious desire that all humans experience as
children. According to Freud, all sons and daughters
develop a sexual attraction to their parent of the
opposite sex. Not only do they desire that parent,
but they also desire to kill the other parent due to
viewing them as competition for their desired
parent’s affection. For Freud, this was an essential
part of a child’s development process.
PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
• Oral
• Anal
• Phallic
• Latency
• Genital
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (April 13, 1901 to
September 9, 1981)
• He was a major figure in Parisian
intellectual life for much of the twentieth century.
Sometimes referred to as “the French Freud,” he is
an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis.
• His teachings and writings explore the
significance of Freud’s discovery of the
unconscious both within the theory and practice of
analysis itself as well as in connection with a wide
range of other disciplines.
• He re-conceptualized Freud’s theory of the
unconscious by delving into the self as the human
being is created through social interaction i.e.
culture (language) which creates desire.
Mirror stage
This refers to the period when a child develops a sense
of self through noticing a distinction between the self
and the other. Lacan named this stage the ‘mirror stage’
as it is around this period that a child will recognise their
own image in a mirror, suggesting that they have
developed the concept of self identity. This is also the
stage in which language emerges.
Three ‘orders’ to the mind: the symbolic, the
imaginary, and the real.
Symbolic is a register that encapsulates things like the
law, language, and tradition. It is the symbolic register
that affords us names and the ability to communicate
through language, and our relationship with our own
relatives are governed by the symbolic register.
Real As Lacan explains, whatever we do not say or
symbolise through communication, we leave in the ‘real’
register.
Imaginary is the relation between the self and the self
image. Lacan theorised that when identifying one’s
image in the mirror, the disharmony between the
cohesive image and the fragmented self produces the ego
(not to be confused with Freud’s definition of the ego).
Psychoanalytic literary criticism focuses on the
following:
1. The mind of the author: psychoanalytic
literary criticism treats the work of the
author as a manifestation of their own
unconscious desires. A psychoanalytic
reading may attempt to relate certain aspects
of a text to its author’s life to give the text a
psychoanalytically biographical meaning.
2. The mind of the characters:
psychoanalytic literary criticism can be used
to analyse and explain the motivations and
actions of certain characters in an author's
 work. This is the most common form of
analysis, which we will apply to Hamlet
(below).
3. The mind of the audience: Freud makes
references to universal anxieties and desires
that we, as human beings, all innately share.
Psychoanalytic literary criticism can be used
to explain why certain works are very
appealing to a wide audience, as it appeals to
the universal unconscious mind.
4. The text: psychoanalytic literary criticism
can be used to analyse why certain linguistic
and symbolic choices are made by the author
to be used in a text.
Theory Benefit:
Outside of knowing of the author’s life to understand the
text, psychologically, readers can also understand the
character/s’ mind by what they go through within the
story, especially if they have psychological problems.
Theory Disadvantage:
Theorists tend to ask questions that relate to the author’s
past and the mind state of the reader when interpreting
the text which poses problems if the reader’s state of
mind is in the positive or negative of what the author’s
state of mind was or the condition of what the story is.
Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism - Key
takeaways
• Psychoanalytical readings focus on the
relationship between literature, the
unconscious mind and our conscious actions
and thoughts.
• There are two influential psychoanalytical
theorists: Sigmund Freud and Jaques Lacan.
• Freud developed theories on the Oedipus
Complex and the interpretation of Dreams.
He also developed ideas about our
unconscious mind and separated our psyches
into the id, ego and superego.
• Lacan expanded on Freud through
developing the mirror stage theory, and
separating the psyche into the symbolic, real
and imaginary realm.

Questions of Psychoanalytic Theorists to Interpret a

Text:

Through understanding the text’s author and

characters readers can begin to understand their own
psyche and how it plays out in society.

• How do operations of repression structure

the world of the text? What repressed
desires/wounds lie underneath?
• Where are there oedipal (family/sexual)
dynamics? Where are the patterns in
behaviors in the character/s?
• Can character’s behavior/motivation be
explained psychologically? Is this behavior
a product of the culture it’s around?
• What dreamlike symbols can be
identified? Are there any phallic symbols?
• What do these repressed symbols/desires/
fears suggest about the author?
 The Lottery
The villagers of a small town gather together in the square on June 27, a beautiful day, for the town lottery. In
other towns, the lottery takes longer, but there are only 300 people in this village, so the lottery takes only two
hours. Village children, who have just finished school for the summer, run around collecting stones. They put
the stones in their pockets and make a pile in the square. Men gather next, followed by the women. Parents call
their children over, and families stand together.

Mr. Summers runs the lottery because he has a lot of time to do things for the village. He arrives in the square
with the black box, followed by Mr. Graves, the postmaster. This black box isn’t the original box used for the
lottery because the original was lost many years ago, even before the town elder, Old Man Warner, was born.
Mr. Summers always suggests that they make a new box because the current one is shabby, but no one wants to
fool around with tradition. Mr. Summers did, however, convince the villagers to replace the traditional wood
chips with slips of paper.

Mr. Summers mixes up the slips of paper in the box. He and Mr. Graves made the papers the night before and
then locked up the box at Mr. Summers’s coal company. Before the lottery can begin, they make a list of all the
families and households in the village. Mr. Summers is sworn in. Some people remember that in the past there
used to be a song and salute, but these have been lost.

Tessie Hutchinson joins the crowd, flustered because she had forgotten that today was the day of the lottery.
She joins her husband and children at the front of the crowd, and people joke about her late arrival. Mr.
Summers asks whether anyone is absent, and the crowd responds that Dunbar isn’t there. Mr. Summers asks
who will draw for Dunbar, and Mrs. Dunbar says she will because she doesn’t have a son who’s old enough to
do it for her. Mr. Summers asks whether the Watson boy will draw, and he answers that he will. Mr. Summers
then asks to make sure that Old Man Warner is there too.

Mr. Summers reminds everyone about the lottery’s rules: he’ll read names, and the family heads come up and
draw a slip of paper. No one should look at the paper until everyone has drawn. He calls all the names, greeting
each person as they come up to draw a paper. Mr. Adams tells Old Man Warner that people in the north village
might stop the lottery, and Old Man Warner ridicules young people. He says that giving up the lottery could
lead to a return to living in caves. Mrs. Adams says the lottery has already been given up in other villages, and
Old Man Warner says that’s “nothing but trouble.”

Mr. Summers finishes calling names, and everyone opens his or her papers. Word quickly gets around that Bill
Hutchinson has “got it.” Tessie argues that it wasn’t fair because Bill didn’t have enough time to select a paper.
Mr. Summers asks whether there are any other households in the Hutchinson family, and Bill says no, because
his married daughter draws with her husband’s family. Mr. Summers asks how many kids Bill has, and he
answers that he has three. Tessie protests again that the lottery wasn’t fair.

Mr. Graves dumps the papers out of the box onto the ground and then puts five papers in for the Hutchinsons.
As Mr. Summers calls their names, each member of the family comes up and draws a paper. When they open
their slips, they find that Tessie has drawn the paper with the black dot on it. Mr. Summers instructs everyone to
hurry up.

The villagers grab stones and run toward Tessie, who stands in a clearing in the middle of the crowd. Tessie
says it’s not fair and is hit in the head with a stone. Everyone begins throwing stones at her.
QUESTIONS:

1. How does the ritual of the lottery serve as a manifestation of the collective unconscious desires
of the town's residents? What psychological factors might contribute to their participation in this
tradition?
2. 3How does the pressure to conform to the town's customs influence their actions? What
underlying psychological motivations might drive this conformity?
3. How do the black box and stones represent repressed emotions, collective guilt, or unconscious
desires within the community?
4. How might the shared experience of the ritual shape their collective psyche and influence their
perceptions of right and wrong?