Psychoanalytic Criticism

Sigmund
Freud (1856-1939)

§
Most
significant works were The Significance of Dreams (1900) and On
Psychotherapy (1905)

§
Developed
numerous theories (or models) of human behavior.

§
For
Freud, the most powerful motivator of humans is sexuality.

o
Dynamic Model of
Human Psyche

§
Human
mind is divided into two parts

·
The Conscious Mind-rational thoughts
and controlled intellect

·
The Unconscious Mind-storehouse of
disguised truths, fears, shame, unresolved issues, passions

·
As
part of this theory, he believed that the conscious mind wanted to control or
silence the unconscious mind. Because those thoughts do want to get out, to
escape, they come out as parapraxes,
or Freudian slips, when we
“accidentally” what is really on our minds. Freud famously suggested that
“there are no accidents.”

o
The Economic Model

§
The
division in the mind can be understand as a war between two opposing forces:

·
The Pleasure
Principle:
Desire for Instant Satisfaction

·
Reality Principle: Societal
standards, social mores, law, morals

o
The Typographical Model

§
Id– Irrational,
animal, instinctual unconscious

·
An
essential part of the Id is libido, or sex drive.

§
Ego– Rational, logical, waking part of the
brain. The Ego regulates the Id and tries to balance the parts of the brain.

§
Superego– The internal
censor that is created by exposure to societal judgment in the form of laws and
morals.

·
The
Superego acts as the police of the mind, restricting inappropriate thoughts.
When it tries to cast out bad ideas, these are not eliminated, but stored in
the subconscious, repressed from our
memories.

·
This
function of the superego creates shame and doubt.

§
Development of
Sexuality

o
Oedipus Complex

§
At
the age of 3-6, boys are erotically attracted to their mothers. They perceive
their fathers as rivals for the attention of their mothers as a result.

§
Boys
then suffer a castration complex,
fearing that their fathers will eliminate their masculinity because they are
rivals.

·
This
fear leads to repressed sexuality and the desires to one day possess a woman
the way their father does.

o
Electra Complex

§
At
the age of 3-6, girls are also attracted to their mothers. Freud argues that
they feel as if they have already been castrated, and suffer a feeling of penis envy.

§
The
girl then turns her attention to her father, fails to achieve this goal, and
begins to identify with her mother.

§
Dreams

o
Freud
argues that dreams are the place where the mind releases repression and
shameful events, as well as fear. This
unconscious release manifests itself in a series of acceptable symbols.

§
Displacement: In our dreams, we
convert an idea into something more acceptable. For example, if one was angry
with Mr. Applebee, he/she might dream of a rotting apple.

§
Condensation: Many issues
(fears, anger, shameful events) may manifest themselves as one thing or event.

o
Failure
to resolve conflicts in our dreams leads to neuroses.

o
Freudian
criticism argues that one could interpret a literary work as one would
interpret a dream—searching for symbolic meanings that reveal the workings of
the author or character’s psyche.

Carl
Jung (1875-1961)

§
“As far as we can
discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the
darkness of mere being.”

§
Student
of Sigmund Freud for 7 years, before he broke from Freud over his increasing
focus on sexuality.

§
Jung’s
Model of the Psyche

o
Personal Conscious-each moment of our
lives exists as a slideshow, each moment being a new slide

o
Personal
Unconscious-
past slides are stored in the personal unconscious

o
Collective
Unconscious-
The cumulative knowledge, experiences, and images of the human species. Material
in the collective unconscious is like this: inherited. It never came from our current
environment. It is the part of the mind
that is determined by heredity. So we
inherit, as part of our humanity, a collective unconscious; the mind is
pre-figured by evolution just as is the body.

o
Archetypes– Psychological
archetypes are thus first prints, or patterns that form the basic blueprint for
major dynamic counterparts of the human personality. For Jung,
archetypes pre-exist in the collective unconscious of humanity. They repeat themselves eternally in the
psyches of human beings and they determine how we both perceive and behave.