PSYCHOANALYTIC

AL
Approach

to

Litera
ry

Freud
(1856 1939)
As the father of modern
psychology, Freud has had
an impact on many areas of
human thought and
analysis.
Freud also helped shape our
thoughts toward sexuality.
He is most widely known for

Freud
(1856 1939)
Freuds beliefs about
human psychological
motivations can be
applied directly to
analyzing authors and
characters in literature.

Freud is NOT the Father

of the Psychoanalytical
Approach to Literature

But he has
heavily
impacted the

Aristotle used a psychological approach in Ancient

Greece.
Sir Philip Sidney talked about the moral effects of
poetry. He was analyzing how poetry can have a
psychological impact on readers.

What is Psychoanalytical
Literary Criticism
criticism
is an us
IfPsychoanalytical
psychoanalysis
can help
approach
to
literary
criticism
which
better understand human
uses techniques of psychoanalysis in
behavior,
then
it
must
certainly
be
the interpretation of literature.
able to help us understand literary
Psychoanalytical Criticism shows how
texts,
which
are
about
human
human behavior is relevant to our
behavior.
experience of literature.

Freuds
Theories:
The
Origins
of
the
What is the Unconscious Mind?
Unconscious
The
unconscious
is the storehouse
those our
painful
The goal
of psychoanalysis
is to help usofresolve
experiences and emotions, wounds, fears, guilty
psychological
problems (called
disorders
ornot want to
desires,
and unresolved
conflicts
we do
know
about
dysfunctions).
We
develop
our
unconscious
mind
at
a
very
young
Psychoanalysts
focus
on
correcting
patterns
of
behavior
age through the act of repression
that are destructive.
Repression
is the expunging of the conscious mind of
all
unhappy
psychological
events
Oneour
of Freuds
most
radical insights
was the notion that
Our
unhappy
memories
do by
notunconscious
disappear desires,
in the
human
beings are
motivated
unconscious mind; rather, they exist as a dynamic
fears, needs,
and conflicts.
entity
that influences
our behavior

Id, Ego, and Superego

Our desires and our unconscious conflicts give rise to three areas of
the mind that wrestle for dominance as we grow from infancy, to
childhood, to adulthood:

id - "...the location of the drives" or libido

ego - "...one of the major defenses against the power
of the drives..." and home of the defenses listed above
superego - the area of the unconscious that houses
judgement (of self and others) and "...which begins to
form during childhood as a result of the Oedipus
complex" (Richter 1015-1016)

Family
Conficts

The Oedipus Complex: young boys

betweenbelieved
the ages all
of 3-6
developmust
a
Freud
children
sexual
attachment
to
their
mothers.
The
Electra
Complex:
young
girls
successfully pass through these
The
young
boy
competes
with
his
compete
mothers for
stages inwith
ordertheir
to develop
father for his mothers attention until
the
affection
of their
fathers.
normally.
Freud
also
believed
he passes through the castration
that
a childs
sensibility
complex,
whichmoral
is when
he
and
conscious
appear
formother
the
abandons
his desire
for his
out oftime
fear during
of castration
by his father.
first
this stage.

Dreams

Our defense mechanisms do not operate in the

same way while we are asleep as they do when we
are awake. This is why psychoanalysts are so
interested in dream analysis
When we are asleep, the unconscious mind is free
to express itself and it does so in the form of
dreams
Dream displacement: when we use a safe
person, event, or object as a stand-in to
represent a more threatening person, event, or
object.
For example, dreaming about a child almost
always reveals something about our feelings
toward ourselves, toward the child that is still
within us and that is probably still wounded in
some way.

The Meaning of Death

Death is a difficult subject to analyze, often
because we have a tendency to treat death as an
abstraction.
By treating death as an abstraction, we can
theorize about it without feeling its force too
intimately because its force is much too
frightening.
Freud theorized that death is a biological drive
which he referred to as the death drive
The death drive theory accounted for the
alarming degree of self-destructive behavior Freud
observed in individuals

The Meaning of
Sexuality
The
superego
is isinadirect
opposition
to
Sexual
behavior
product
of our culture
because
our
culture sets down
the rules
of
the
id, the
psychological
reservoir
of our
proper sexual
conductThe
andid
the
instincts
and libido.
is definitions
devoted to
of normal/abnormal
sexual behavior
gratifying
all our prohibited
desires (sex,
power,
Societys
amusement,
rules and definitions
food, etc.)
concerning
sexuality the
formidacontains
large partdesires
of our
Because
superego.
The
word
superego
implies
regulated
or forbidden
by some
socialof the
feeling guilty
(even though
convention,
the superego
time we shouldnt)
becausedetermines
we are
which
the id to
willfeel
contain
sociallydesires
programmed
guilty when
we break
a social
value between
(pre-marital
The
ego plays
referee
thesex,
id
for example).
and
the superego; it is the product of
the conflict we feel between what we

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 works 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 narrators
unconscious problems keep appearing over the
course of the story.

oA great way to practice

Use the
psychoanalytical
character criticism is to analyze
s in the
the behavior of the
text!
characters in the text.
oOften the characters
behavior represents the
psychological

To some extent, all creative works

are a product of the authors
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

An important
thing to keep
in mind!

In what
can wemotives
view a
Whatways
unconscious
literary
work as a
are operating
in dream?
the main How
SOME QUESTIONS
characters?
is being dream
PSYCHOANALYTIC
might
recurrentWhat
or striking
CRITICS ASK ABOUT
repressed?
Remember
that
symbols
reveal
the
ways
in
LITERARY TEXTS
the
unconscious
mind
which the narrator/author is
consists of repressed
projecting
his
unconscious
wounds, fears, unresolved
desires,
fears,
or
conflicts,
andwounds,
guilty desires.
Is it possible to
Look
for
conflicts onto other
relate a characters unresolved
How
can
characters
What
might
a
given
characters
or
the
events
patterns of adult
symbols
behavior, narrative
portrayed?
interpretation of a
behavior to early
events, and/or images be
relevant
to
experiences in the
literary
work
suggest
explained
in
terms
of
family
(as
death and
about
theprojection,
regression,
represented in the
sexuality
(yonic
fear
of or fascination with
story)? What
do
psychological

Emily Dickinsons Theres a certain slant of light

Theres a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons, That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference Where the meanings are.
None may teach it anything,
Tis the seal, despair,- An imperial affliction Sent us of
the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath; When it goes, t is like the
distance On the look of death.

Analysis
In the psychoanalysts mind everyones
actions are governed by sexual/pleasure
seeking motives.
Dickinson would have these desires and since
they cannot be expressed in society she must
sublimate them in her creative outlet, poetry.
With Freuds theories in mind, we might draw
the conclusion that Dickinson got a sexual
pleasure from pain.