Psychoanalytic

criticism
 Psychoanalytic literary criticism refers to
literary criticism which, in method, concept,
theory, 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 rich and
heterogeneous interpretive tradition.
 It is a literary approach where critics see the
text as if it were a kind of dream.

 Psychoanalytic criticism is any form of

criticism that draws on psychoanalysis, the
practice of analyzing the role of unconscious
psychological drives and impulses in shaping
human behavior or artistic production
 Three main schools of
psychoanalysis
 Freudian criticism

 Jungian criticism

 Lacanian criticism
 Freudian criticism
 The view of art as the imagined fulfillment of
wishes that reality denies. According to Freud,
artists sublimate their desires and translate their
imagined wishes into art. We, as an audience,
respond to the sublimated wishes that we share
with the artist. Working from this view, an
artist’s biography becomes a useful tool in
interpreting his or her work. “Freudian criticism”
is also used as a term to describe the analysis of
Freudian images within a work of art.
 Freud's model of the psyche
 Id - completely unconscious part of the psyche that
serves as a storehouse of our desires, wishes, and
fears. The id houses the libido, the source of
psychosexual energy.
 Ego - mostly to partially conscious part of the psyche
that processes experiences and operates as a referee
or mediator between the id and superego.
 Superego - often thought of as one's "conscience";
the superego operates "like an internal censor
[encouraging] moral judgments in light of social
pressures"
 Jungian criticism
 A school of criticism that draws on Carl Jung’s
theory of the collective unconscious, a
reservoir of common thoughts and experiences
that all cultures share. Jung holds that
literature is an expression of the main themes
of the collective unconscious, and critics often
invoke his work in discussions of literary
archetypes.
 Lacanian criticism
 Criticism based on Jacques Lacan’s view that
the unconscious, and our perception of
ourselves, is shaped in the “symbolic” order of
language rather than in the “imaginary” order
of prelinguistic thought. Lacan is famous in
literary circles for his influential reading of
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.”
 Lacan's model of the psyche
 Imaginary - a preverbal/verbal stage in which a child (around 6-18 months
of age) begins to develop a sense of separateness from her mother as well
as other people and objects; however, the child's sense of sense is still
incomplete.
 Symbolic - the stage marking a child's entrance into language (the ability
to understand and generate symbols); in contrast to the imaginary stage,
largely focused on the mother, the symbolic stage shifts attention to the
father who, in Lacanian theory, represents cultural norms, laws, language,
and power (the symbol of power is the phallus--an arguably "gender-
neutral" term).
 Real - an unattainable stage representing all that a person is not and does
not have. Both Lacan and his critics argue whether the real order represents
the period before the imaginary order when a child is completely fulfilled--
without need or lack, or if the real order follows the symbolic order and
represents our "perennial lack" (because we cannot return to the state of
wholeness that existed before language).
 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, that a literary work is a
manifestation of the author's own neuroses.
 The author's own childhood traumas, family
life, sexual conflicts, fixations, and such will
be traceable within the behavior of the
characters in the literary work.

 all such characters are projections of the

author's psyche.
 How to Read a Text using
Psychoanalysis
 The job of the psychoanalytical critic is to see
which concepts are operating in the text that will
yield a meaningful psychoanalytic
interpretation. For example:
 You might focus on the work’s representation of
oedipal dynamic of family dynamics in general
 You might focus on what work tells us about
human beings’ psychological relationship to
death or sexuality
 You might focus on how the narrator’s
unconscious problems keep appearing over the
course of the story.
 Use the characters in the text!
 A great way to practice psychoanalytical
criticism is to analyze the behavior of the
characters in the text.
 Often the characters’ behavior represents the
psychological experience of the author or of
human beings in general.
 An important thing to keep in
mind:
 To some extent, all creative works are a
product of the author’s conscious and/or
unconscious mind.
 Any human production that involves images,
that seems to have narrative content, or relates
for the psychology of those who produce or
use it can be interpreted using psychoanalytic
tools
Some Questions Psychoanalytic
Critics Ask about Literary Texts
 What unconscious motives are operating in the
main characters? What is being repressed?
Remember that the unconscious mind consists
of repressed wounds, fears, unresolved
conflicts, and guilty desires
 Is it possible to relate a character’s patterns of
adult behavior to early experiences in the
family (as represented in the story)? What do
these behavior patterns and family dynamics
reveal?
Some Questions Psychoanalytic
Critics Ask about Literary Texts
 How can characters’ behavior, narrative
events, and/or images be explained in terms of
regression, projection, fear of or fascination
with death or sexuality?
 If you are familiar with the works of Emily
Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe, you can have
a field day with this question
Some Questions Psychoanalytic
Critics Ask about Literary Texts
 In what ways can we view a literary work as a
dream? How might recurrent or striking dream
symbols reveal the ways in which the narrator/author
is projecting his unconscious desires, fears, wounds,
or unresolved conflicts onto other characters or the
events portrayed?
 What might a given interpretation of a literary work
suggest about the psychological motives of the
reader?
 Look for symbols relevant to death and sexuality
(phallic symbols)