Sigmund Freud

Psychoanalytic Criticism by: Florence Margaret Paisey

Overview
Definition Origins Interpretation of Dreams Core Concepts Experience, Consciousness, and Personality Dreams The Uncanny Summary

What is Psychoanalytic Criticism?

Aims to discover and interpret art in terms of psychoanalytic concepts and processes In literature, Freudian methodology analyzes characters in terms of their psychological reality as real people Significant issue relates to the conscious and the unconscious in character and action what are unconscious motives? The individual psychic drama is primary, not the sociocultural or historical drama

Definitions and Origins

Psychoanalytic criticism aims to understand characters through the enigmatic association between the conscious and the unconscious in literary characters. The basis of Freuds psychoanalytic approach emphasizes the unconscious and the key role it plays in a person or characters life (Oedipus; Hamlet; Ahab, MobyDick; The Homecoming) In the real world, such behaviors as jokes, slips of the tongue (Freudian slip), forgetfulness suggest unconscious wishes (in Freudian theory)

Core Concepts and Premises

Rationality does not motivate most human behavior The conscious impulses over which a person attends are limited and self-directed only to the extent that a person or character understands them, accepts them, and integrates them Incest and its prohibition nature and culture (raw and cooked) form inherent problems in the riddle of the unconscious

Core Concepts: Psychic Process

Freud conceived of the human psyche as structured in three levels of consciousness
Consciousness awareness or attention to something immediate Preconscious mental processes that are normal, but latent. Most of a persons mental processing is on this level. Unconscious mental processes are submerged, scrambled, often deeply repressed; Freud viewed the unconscious as a meaningful riddle to be decoded -- the unconscious can be the seat of complex pathology. It is usually not easily accessible.

Experience and Consciousness

Three personality sectors filter a persons experience
ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO. These three elements of a personality interact and govern how a person or character will deal with experiences, including traumas.

ID represents the libido and pleasure principle. EGO represents the conscious person organized, integrated, and rational; the ego mediates between the id and the superego the extent of organization and integration determines the strength of a characters ego and balance (Ego Strength) SUPEREGO represents the conscience of a person or character social and cultural totem and taboo.

Core Concepts: Trauma

Deep inner conflict lodged in the unconscious (struggle between id and superego) is the root of pathology, hysteria, and madness disintegration (Ahab in MobyDick) A character may or may not be aware of this conflict Becoming aware of the conflict does not resolve it as in Sophocles Oedipus Rex.
After Oedipus finally becomes aware that he has killed his father and married his mother, he blinds himself. In Freudian psychoanalytic terms, the burden of guilt was too devastating.

Core Concepts: Sexuality

Social taboos regarding human sexual impulses are powerful and fundamental; they often lead to conflicted feelings, guilt, trauma, and repression (submerged memory at the unconscious level) The libido or human sexuality is the primary psychic impetus underneath personality development and behavior; its expression and conduct are socially and culturally monitored

Psychoanalytic Ideas & Literature

Freuds conception of the enigmatic unconscious forms the basis for psychoanalytic methodology and interpretation One interpretive technique involves dream analysis -- language and imagery of peoples dreams Freud views dreams as works of art born of a compromise between the conscious and the unconscious (Uncanny p. ix) E.T.A. Hoffmans short story The Sandman exemplifies the way an unresolved trauma (death of Nathaniels father) is distorted in a dream Freud discusses this story within the concept of the uncanny or something hidden, secret, and uncomfortablerepressed in the unconscious

The Uncanny & Delusions & Dreams

These works are Freuds most developed thought in literary criticism Believed that the psychological mechanisms operative in dream-work also operate in the process of imaginative writing Believed psychoanalysis could offer an intelligence or visibility into the process of dreams and creative writing The Creative Writer and Daydreaming was first interpretation of artistry built on day-dreaming (Uncanny 23)

The Uncanny
Relates to what is unsettling, frightening what atmosphere, tone, setting, language arouses dread and horror Opposite of the Sublime what is beautiful, transcendent Individual differences in the perception and sensitivity to the uncanny Creative or imaginative writing of fantasy draws on inventing an aura of the fantastic or dichotomy of the uncanny

Elements of The Uncanny

Atmosphere or characters must lose a sense of poetic reality or material reality Character feels attracted to and repelled by the same object or person id vs. superego creates ambivalence cognitive dissonance. Producing uncanny feelings:
Creator needs to invent superstitious conditions with a sense of balance to reality then transgress or violate the readers trust Uncanny or fearful feelings emerge from memories that have been surmounted (repressed feelings are difficult to arouse)

The Birds
Associated with the notion of the sandman a creature that throws sand in childrens eyes when they wont sleep The eyes of children jump out of their heads all bleeding The sandman then takes the eyes in a sack to the half moon to feed his children the children sit in their nest with curled beaks; these children use their beaks to peck out naughty girls and boys eyes The sandman is associated with evil a terrifying unconscious fear

Dreams and Poetics

Dreams are viewed as a means of evading conscious awareness and understanding In the Interpretation of Dreams Freud viewed dreams as cryptic texts aesthetic works of everyday life Lionel Trilling referred to Freudian psychology as a mental system that makes poetry indigenous to the soul (223) Psychoanalysis aims to describe mechanisms of dreams and decipher them

Dream Analysis
In talking about dreams (or analyzing fantasy) a person or character builds up an associative network (language, imagery, symbolism) that illuminates the dream thoughts or unconscious desires wishes. These dream thoughts reveal the person or characters trauma and the way the repressed, unresolved experience has unconsciously affected the character Dreams elude consciousness and distort reality in four ways: Condensation, Displacement, Representation, Secondary Editing

Dreams: Eluding Consciousness

Condensation
Compression of dream thought or experiences into brief, cryptic riddles or unconscious messages

Displacement
Transference of desires or wishes from one person or object to another One is angry with a person and slams a door rather than confront the person (too threatening)

Means of Representation
Entangled dream content and dream thought are combined into a single event

Dreams: Accessing the Buried

Purpose of interpreting dream thought or analyzing characters unconscious (as in The Sandman) is to restore realistic connections Understand the motivations and language revealed in imagery, symbolism Screen Memories essay on the dynamics of memories; what is recalled and what is screened off -- submerged memories

Summary
Psychoanalytic criticism analyzes and interprets literary characters as realistic persons The central issues in psychoanalytic interpretation are the primacy of sexuality and unconscious desires wishes. The ego mediates between the id (suppressed primal drives) and the superego (socio-cultural mors) Dreams are viewed as a means of evading conscious awareness and understanding they are a reservoir of repressed conflicts or memories

Summary cont
One psychoanalytic interpretive technique involves dream analysis -- language and imagery of peoples dreams or fantasies Freud views dreams as works of art borne of a compromise between the conscious and the unconscious Psychoanalytic theory aims to describe mechanisms of dreams and decipher them as expressions of unconscious conflicts and consequent action or behavior