Psychoanalysis Criticism

Sigmund Freud 1856 -

1939Austrian

psychiatrist and founder

of psychoanalys

is

Dreams

The unconscious activities of our mind

Sexual desires

Guilt

FEAR

Shameful experience

s

The Conscious Mind

Freud believed our unconscious was revealed through dreams. The idea being in our sleep we are more emotionally unstable, and our repressed fears and desires can come to surface.

Archetypes in Dream

• Freud’s theories were similar to Jung’s, and believed certain symbols or situations that appeared in dreams were specific representations of our unconscious.

• Dream interpretation was taken up as part of psychoanalysis at the end of the 19th century; the perceived, manifest content of a dream is analyzed to reveal its latent meaning to the psyche of the dreamer.

Examples

• Falling: this dream is common in people who are having a major life problem with work, relationships, or elsewhere.

• Showing up school/work naked: The experts largely agree that this dream represents vulnerability and anxiety.

• Being chased:  this dream is supposed to encourage the dreamer to finally face a problem that has been hanging over his or her head.

• Flying: the dream encourages a person to let go of current issues and allow things to ”fall naturally into place.” Similarly, flying is a sign that there is an out of control situation in real life.

Personality Model

• In a later generations, psychoanalytic critics analyze characters within the novel using Freud’s famous Personality model.

• Critics see them as a projection of author’s psyche

• Personality structure:• Id –unconscious part of the psyche that serves as a

storehouse of our desires, wishes, and fears. • Superego – the conscience, criticizes and prohibits

his or her drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions.• Ego – the thinking part of both id and superego, the

“reality”

The Beginning of Psychoanalytic Criticism

• Freud’s belief in the significance of dreams leads to the study of psychoanalysis

• Psychoanalytical criticism applies Freud’s theories to literature

• They are also revealed in creative arts – such as in literature

“A work of literature is a fantasy or a dream”

Analyzing Literature (in Depth)

• Manifest content – the surface of a work

• Latent content – the real desire (hidden)• because writers often express their (or their characters’)

unconscious desires and anxieties indirectly in text

• Psychoanalytic literary critic tries to expose the latent content of a work

Analyzing Literature (in Depth)

• Symbolism - the repressed object represented in disguise

• Condensation – thoughts or persons condensed into a single image

• Displacement – anxiety or wish displaced onto the image of another

Common Strategies

• Oedipus/Electra Complex

• Phallic Symbols

• Central Problems—associated with sexual awakening, dependence/independence conflict, inferiority complex, separation/desertion anxiety.

Activity

“I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about [to] expound this dream…I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream.” (IV, i, 215-224)

With your knowledge of psychoanalysis and dreams, your group will be assigned to analyze the “dream” of one of the characters.

Using your notes, determine the latent desires of the character that is revealed through their actions and dialogue in the forest/dream.

Summarize your finding into a ballad, or song, to share with the class.

• Chapter from “How to Read Literature like a Professor”

• Pan’s Labyrinth

• Phallic Symbols

• Say Anything

• The Use of Force

Questions?