Refers to literary criticism which, in method, concept, theory, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalytic reading has been practiced since the early development of psychoanalysis itself, and has developed into a rich and heterogeneous interpretive tradition.

Born Sigismund Schlomo Freud, was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for curing psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.

 Adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts.  It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses.  One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche.

 Literary critics sometimes analyze the action of literary characters using the 3 personality structures that Freud identified.  As critics explore the ego, superego and id of characters in a work, they focus on a ways that these parts of the characters personalities influence the work as a whole.

 "What is Hamlet's problem?”  Freud suggested that an unconscious oedipal conflict caused Hamlet's hesitations.

The Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, is a group of largely unconscious (dynamically repressed) ideas and feelings which centre around the desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex and eliminate the parent of the same sex. The complex is named after the Greek mythical character Oedipus, who (albeit unknowingly) kills his father and marries his mother. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex is a universal phenomenon, built in phylogenetically, and is responsible for much unconscious guilt