Psychoanalytic Criticism

Psychoanalysis

Focuses on the subconscious mind Explores repressed wishes and fantasies

Sigmund Freud

Besides being a doctor, he was also a literary critic.

Examples of psychoanalytic concepts

Oedipus complex—

the childhood wish to displace the parent of one’s own sex and take his or her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex

Elements from myths are interpreted as symbolic representations of this complex

Freud's Iceberg Analogy

The Three Principles

The Freudian view is that the three parts of the mind compete for superiority. Contemporary thinkers believe the id, ego and superego coexist as partners

Conflicting Desires:Thantos & Eros

Freud likens our hidden desires to enemies

Conflicting Desires:Thantos & Eros

Libido (Sexual drive) The contents of the unconscious mind consist primarily of repressed sexual desires. These desires, said Freud, are natural and insistentDeath Drive is the body's instinct to return to our dormant, pre-birth state. Freud said this drive causes us to be compulsively drawn to pain and trauma

Manifest Dream

•The manifest content of a dream is what the dreamer remembers about the dream

Most dreams occur during REM sleep in the second half of the night

Latent Dream Meaning

The real, hidden meaning of the dream is called "the latent dream"

•Freud believes that dreams are a vehicle to express feelings unacceptable to society.

Displacement

An element of dreamwork which shifts emotion from one idea to the other; often using metaphor

In language, metonomy replaces one the whole idea with a part

Freudian Slip (Parapraxes)

A mistake in speech or action in which a person shows his or her true subconscious desires: there are no accidents

Jokes always indicate hidden desires

Psychoanalysis today

•Creating a neurotic society?

•Creating a narcissistic society?

Psychoanalysis today

Has been discredited as a form of therapy as being ineffective

Freud is praised for starting psychotherapy; however psychoanalysis has virtually disappeared from the medical world …

… except in …

France – the last bastion of psychoanalysis

Psychoanalitic Criticism

Explores the author’s subconscious and unconscious mind

Appeals to the reader’s subconscious desires

What wishes and desires might be in Hamlet's unconscious mind?

Eros?

Thanatos?

How might Hamlet's desiresManifest themselves?

What might a psychoanalytical criticism reveal about the "Heart of

Darkness"?

What might the steamboat travelling up the Congo River represent?

What might constantly building uphill and sliding back mean?