Psychological/Psychoanalytical Approach to Literature Taylor, Kori, & Julia

What is it? Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and other theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author and that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own mental state (disorder). *Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Psychoanalysis: a system of psychological theory and therapy that aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association Free Association: the mental process by which one word or image may spontaneously suggest another without any apparent connection

Key Elements Very Controversial Easily Abused Everything has a Deeper Meaning

Origins Some critics argue that this approach was already used by Aristotle in his Poetics in the 4th century BC, when he defined tragedy as combining the emotions of pity and terror to produce “catharsis”. These critics argue that this is merely a sub—conscious emotional response to literature.

Benefits Problems Helps us better understand human behavior Helps us to understand works when characters have obvious psychological issues Explore new controversial areas Sexuality, Repression ect. Readers often discover characters with the complexity of real people Psychoanalyzing books can sometimes cause serious problems for the author Psychological criticism can turn a piece of work into more if a case study Not viewed as a piece of art

Children’s Story Beauty and the Beast Alice in Wonderland Beauty and the Beast represents a classic case of a kidnapping victim undergoing Stockholm Syndrome, which is when someone held captive feels affection toward their captor. Belle could also represent a person with an unstable mental state that hallucinates and imagines things (talking to utensils and everyday objects). Alice in Wonderland The stressors that Alice faces in Wonderland could represent Lewis Carroll's mental state. Alice faces problems dealing with the amount of available space and running out of time, and the abundance of these problems could represent the anxieties of Lewis Carroll. In general, Alice herself could represent a fear of adulthood and responsibility. The strange and confusing language in Alice in Wonderland could also be interpreted as making fun of how serious people take language and logic today.

Works Cited http://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/critical-lit/Psychological-Approach-to-Literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalytic_literary_criticism