PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

Sigmund Freud Jacques Lacan

PSYCHOANALYSIS A theory about human mind. A form of mental therapy which aims to cure mental disorders ‘ by investigating the interaction of the conscious and unconscious elements of the mind.’

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM Criticism related to Psychoanalytic concepts that are prevalent in our everyday life. Came into being during the 1920s Idea behind the emergence of Psychoanalytic Criticism is that literature is an expression of its author’s persona. The psychoanalytic view of human behaviour is relevant to our experience of literature.

BASIC NOTIONS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): Austrian medical practitioner who developed the techniques of psychoanalysis and his ideas ,in turn, have greatly influenced various disciplines. The impulse to avoid all unpleasure (i.e., to increase pleasure) governs all psychic activity and all other activities are prompted by this wish for pleasure. This , Freud calls, is the Pleasure Principle.

RELEVANT TERMS 1. The Unconscious: a crucial notion in Freudian theory, is a primary process that seeks immediate gratification. This could be through, sometimes, even hallucination, but the end result is always disillusionment and unpleasure. The unconscious is driven by the Id which operates at the behest of the pleasure principle and is linked to creative thought.

2. The Pre-conscious: the secondary process that takes a more circuitous route to gratification through temporary toleration of unpleasure. Ego (i.e., ‘I’), the link between the unconscious and the preconscious, consists of what is a part of Id and is associated with reason and common sense. The unconscious and preconscious constantly interact. 3. The Conscious: It is related to presence and represents reason and logical thought.

Repression: a storehouse of all unfulfilled desires or traumatic past events and experiences that are forced out of the conscious- preconscious into the realm of the unconscious. This storehouse of traces has a strong influence on all human actions. When repressed feelings are sublimated, they become ‘noble’ or ‘great’. The Super-Ego in Freud represents the ‘conscience’, social morality (that which is beyond ‘I’).

Neurosis: the result of a conflict between the ego and the Id and is a state in which a person is at war with himself/herself. Psychosis: the outcome of a similar disturbance between the ego and the outside world. Dream Work: refers to the ways by which real events are transformed into dream images. They are displacement and condensation. Events are represented in a dream very much like they are represented in literary works.

PHASES OF PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM In the Classical Freudian Criticism, the work of literature was likened to a dream or fantasy of the writer. The focus is on the psychoanalysis of the author. In the second phase, the emphasis is on the reader. Its ancestory can be traced to I.A. Richards who, in the 1920s, spoke of the impact of an art experience on the reader.

JACQUES LACAN (1901-81) A French psychoanalyst, became famous as a ‘structural psychoanalyst’. He is interested in re-writing, re-interpreting classical Freudian psychoanalysis in the light of poststructuralist theories. He replaces Freud’s concepts of condensation and displacement with Roman Jakobson’s metaphor and metonymy.

According to Lacan, the unconscious is the ‘kernel of our being’ According to Lacan, the unconscious is the ‘kernel of our being’. It is structured like language, and language exists as a structure before the individual enters into the system of language. His method of psychoanalysis involves searching the text for uncovering contradictory suggestions of meaning, which, like the unconscious, lie beneath the overt text.

AFTER FREUD Subsequent psychologists and literary critics, developing Freud’s ideas, extended the field of psychoanalytic criticism to encompass: Analysis of the motives of an author, of readers and fictional characters, relating a text to features of the author’s biography such as childhood memories, relationship to parents,

the nature of the creative process, the psychology of reader’s responses to literary texts, Interpretation of symbols in a text, to unearth latent meanings, analysis of the connections between various authors in a literary tradition, examination of gender roles and stereotypes, the functioning of language in the constitution of the conscious and unconscious.

LEGACY OF FREUD’S IDEAS I.A. Richards, William Empson, Lionel Trilling, Kenneth Burke, and Edmund Wilson , in various ways, searched texts for latent content. Harold Bloom’s theory of literary influence as mediated through “anxiety” drew upon Freud’s account of the Oedipus complex.

Poets and critics such as Robert Graves and W. H Poets and critics such as Robert Graves and W.H. Auden also had recourse to Freudian concepts in their prose writings. Freud’s ideas can be seen in the very conception of character in many modern novelists, such as William Faulkner and James Joyce. D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers figure Oedipal feelings powerfully. Simon O. Lesser (1909-1979) furnished a psychoanalytic account of the reading process.

Infuenced by Lesser, Norman Holland used ego psychology and the notion of the literary text as fantasy to elaborate his version of reader-response criticism , studying the manner in which texts appeal to the repressed fantasies of readers. Feminist critics such as Juliet Mitchell have used Freud’s ideas in their explanations of the operations of patriarchy. Julia Kristeva has modified Freud’s notions in undertaking her analysis of language and gender.

Members of the Frankfurt School of Marxist thinkers have enlisted Freudian concepts in their analyses of mass culture and ideology. The extension of the genuine implications of Freud’s theories was furthered by the structuralist Marxist Louis Althusser, who adapted Lacan’s insights in his account of the workings of the ideological apparatus of the political state, thereby exploring the connections– which are merely latent in Freud– between the unconscious and social structures.

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