Psychoanalytical criticism aims to show that a literary or cultural work is always structured by complex and often contradictory human

desires. Whereas New Historicism and Marx-inspired Cultural Materialism analyze public power structures from respecti!ely the top and bottom in terms of the culture as a whole psychoanalysis analyzes microstructures of power within the indi!idual and within small-scale domestic en!ironments. "hat is it analyzes the interiority of the self and of the self#s kinship systems. $y analyzin% the formation of the indi!idual howe!er psychoanalysis also helps us to understand the formation of ideolo%y at lar%e&and can therefore be extended to the analysis of !arious cultural and societal phenomena. 'ndeed for this reason psychoanalysis has been especially influential o!er the last two decades in culture studies and film analysis. Psychoanalysis is complicated by the fact that it has under%one numerous transformations at the hands of hi%hly influential indi!idual psychoanalysts. 't is therefore necessary as with many of the theories currently influencin% scholarship and teachin% to differentiate between indi!idual thinkers. (or the purposes of studyin% literature and culture the most influential theorists today are )i%mund (reud *+,-.-+/0/1 2ac3ues 4acan *+/5+-+/,+1 and 2ulia 6riste!a *+/7+-81. (reud wrote se!eral important essays on literature which he used to explore the psyche of authors and characters to explain narrati!e mysteries and to de!elop new concepts in psychoanalysis *for instance 9elusion and 9ream in 2ensen#s :radi!a and his influential readin%s of the ;edipus myth and )hakespeare#s Hamlet in "he 'nterpretation of 9reams1. "he criticism has been made howe!er that in his and his early followers# studies #what calls for elucidation are not the artistic and literary works themsel!es but rather the psychopatholo%y and bio%raphy of the artist writer or fictional characters#. "hus #many psychoanalysts amon% (reud#s earliest adherents did not resist the temptation to psychoanalyze poets and painters *sometimes to (reud#s cha%rin#. 4ater analysts would conclude that #clearly one cannot psychoanalyse a writer from his text< one can only appropriate him#. =arly psychoanalytic literary criticism would often treat the text as if it were a kind of dream. "his means that the text represses its real *or latent1 content behind ob!ious *manifest1 content. "he process of chan%in% from latent to manifest content is known as the dream work and in!ol!es operations of concentration and displacement. "he critic analyzes the lan%ua%e and symbolism of a text to re!erse the process of the dream work and arri!e at the underlyin% latent thou%hts. "he dan%er is that #such criticism tends to be reducti!e explainin% away the ambi%uities of works of literature by reference to established psychoanalytic doctrine< and !ery little of this work retains much influence today#. 4ater readers such as Carl 2un% and another of (reud#s disciples 6aren Horney broke with (reud and their work especially 2un%#s led to other rich branches of psychoanalytic criticism> Horney#s to feminist approaches includin% womb en!y and 2un%#s to the study of archetypes and the collecti!e unconscious. 2un%#s work in particular was influential as combined with the work of anthropolo%ists such as Claude 4?!i-)trauss and 2oseph Campbell it led to the entire fields of mythocriticism and archetype analysis. Northrop (rye considered that #the literary critic finds (reud most su%%esti!e for the theory of comedy and 2un% for the theory of romance#. #"he de!elopment of psychoanalytic approaches to literature proceeds from the shift of emphasis from @content@ to the fabric of artistic and literary works#. "hus for example Hayden White has explored how #(reud#s descriptions tally with nineteenth-century

theories of tropes which his work somehow rein!ents#. =specially influential here has been the work of 2ac3ues 4acan an a!id reader of literature who used literary examples as illustrations of important concepts in his work *for instance 4acan ar%ued with 2ac3ues 9errida o!er the interpretation of =d%ar Allan Poe#s @"he Purloined 4etter@1. #4acan#s theories ha!e encoura%ed a criticism which focuses not on the author but on the lin%uistic processes of the text#. Within this 4acanian emphasis #(reud#s theories become a place from which to raise 3uestions of interpretation rhetoric style and fi%uration#.