PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

1.                   The Background of Psychoanalytic Criticism

Psychoanalytic Criticism is a form of literary criticism which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature.  Psychoanalysis itself is a form of therapy which aims to cure mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind. This theory was developed in Vienna, Austria, by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He developed his theories during the end of the 19th and the early part of the 20th centuries when he was a practicing physician specializing in neurological disorders. Continuing his research of the mind and the unconscious, Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. In this work he outlined his ideas about the construction of the mind and human personality. This book was followed by the now basics of the Freudian canon: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life in 1904 and A Case of Hysteria and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, both in 1905. By the second decade of the 20th century, Freud had become an internationally renowned thinker, and psychoanalysis had emerged as a significant intellectual achievement on par with the work of Albert Einstein in physics and in many ways comparable to the modernist movement in the visual arts.

2.                  Freud’s Theory of Psychoanalytic

Freud believed that human personality was constructed of three parts:

Ø    The id

The id, according to this schema, is comprised largely of instinctual drives—for food and sex, for instance. These drives are essentially unconscious and result in satisfaction when they are fulfilled and frustration and anxiety when they are thwarted

Ø    The ego

The ego is linked to the id, but is the component that has undergone socialization and    which recognizes that instant gratification of the id urges is not always possible

Ø    The superego

The superego acts in many ways like the ego, as a moderator of behaviour; but whereas the ego moderates urges based on social constraints, the superego operates as an arbiter of right and wrong.

Many of Freud’s ideas concern aspects of sexuality; sexuality begins not at puberty with physical maturing but in infancy, especially through the infant’s with the mother. Connected with this is Oedipus Complex where the male infant has desire to eliminate the father and become the sexual partner of the mother.

3.                  Freudian Interpretation work

Freudian interpretation is popularly thought to be a matter of attributing sexual connotations to objects, so that towers and ladder are seen as phallic symbols. It is often highly ingenious,  rather than highly simplistic. Freud believes that dream is an escape-hatch or safety-valve through which repressed desires, fears, or memories seek an outlet into the consious mind. The underlying assumption is that when some wish, fear, memory, or desire is difficult to face we may try to cope with it by repressing it, that is eliminating it from the consious mind. However, it does not make it go away because it remains alive in the unconsious, and it constantly seek a way back into consious mind. For example: slips of tongue and pen, forgetting of names and similar ‘accidents’ show the repressed material in the act of seeking a way back.

Freudian psychoanalytic critics do are:

1.                  They give central Importance, in literary interpretation, to the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious mind. They associate the literary work’s ‘overt ‘content with the former, and the ‘convert’ content with the latter, privileging the latter as being what the works is ‘really’ about,  and aiming to disentangle the two

2.                  Hence. They pay close attention to unconscious motives and feelings. Wheatear these be (a) those the author, or (b) those of the characters depicted in the work.

3.                  They demonstrate the presence in the literary work of classic psychoanalitytic symptoms, condition, of phases.

4.                  They make large scale applications of psychoanalytic concepts to literary history in general; for example, Harold Bloom’s book the Anxiety of influence (1973) sees the struggle for identity by each generation of poets, under the ‘threat’ of the greatness of its predecessors, as an enactment of the Oedipus complex

5.                  They identify a ‘psychic’ context for the literary work, at the expense of social or historical context, privileging the individual ‘psycho-drama’ above the ‘social –drama’ of class conflict. The conflict between generations or siblings, or between competing desires within the same individual looms much larger than conflict between social classes, for instance

An example of Freudian Psychoanalytic Criticism             

            An example of Psychoanalytic criticism application is in Hamlet. In this literary work Freud saw Hamlet as a person who had an Oedipus complex. Hence he took so many times delayed in avenge his father told him to do. He felt guilty of wanting to commit the crime his uncle done himself because his uncle showed him the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized.  It reminds him that he himself was literally no better than the sinner he was going to punish.         

4.      Jacques Marie Émile Lacan’s Theory

Lacan was a French-psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Lacan's conception of desire is central to his theories and follows Freud's concept of Wunsch. The aim of psychoanalysis is to lead the analyst and to uncover the truth about his or her desire, but this is possible only if that desire is articulated. Psychoanalysis teaches the patient "to bring desire into existence." The truth about desire is somehow present in discourse, although discourse is never able to articulate the entire truth about desire—whenever discourse attempts to articulate desire, there is always a leftover or surplus.

The unconscious in Lacan’s famous slogan is structured like a language. In modern language studies, he began with Saussure, who shows that meaning of language is matter of contrasts between words and other words, not between word and things. There is a perpetual barrier between signifier (the word) and a signified (the referent).

He demonstrates this built-in separation with a diagram showing two identical lavatory doors, one headed ‘ladies to other gentlemen’. This purports to show that the same signifier may have different signified, so that only the correlation between signifier and signified supply the standard for all research into meaning (Lodge, p.86).

5.                  Lacanian Interpretation work

What Lacanian critics do are:

1.    Like Freudian critics they pay close attention to unconscious motives and feelings, but instead of excavating for those of the author of characters, they search out those of the text itself, uncovering contradictory undercurrents of meaning, which lie like a subconscious beneath the ‘conscious’ of the text. This is another way of defining the process of ‘deconstruction’

2.    They demonstrate the presence in the literary work of lacanian psychoanalytic symptom or phases, such as the mirror-stage or the sovereignty of the unconscious.

3.    They treat the literary text in terms of a series of broader lacanian orientations, towards such concepts as lack or desire, for instance.

4.    They see the literary text as an enactment or demonstration of lacanian views about language and the unconscious, particularly the endemic elusiveness of the signified, and the centrality of the unconscious. In practice, this results in favouring the anti-realist text which challenges the conventions of literary representation.

6.                  Differences between Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Freudian Psychoanalysis

Lacanian psychoanalysis is an attempt to integrate Freudian psychoanalysis with post-structuralism. Lacanian psychoanalysis is often described as revolutionary, and it has had a major impact on modern psychoanalysis. Jacques Lacan preferred to think of his approach as a ‘return to Freud’, and he insisted throughout his career that his work remained loyal to the original ideas of his predecessor. One of the key ideas of Lacan is that that the most important role of psychoanalysis is to help the client understand his or her desires. In order for this to happen, clients need to be able to articulate this desire. By getting these desires out in the open through psychoanalysis, the person can become less driven by these desires – in fact, through the process of this therapy they can learn how and what to desire. However, some noticeable differences between the two approaches.

The differences between Lacanian psychoanalysis and Freudian psychoanalysis mainly occur due to the attempt of Jacques Lacan to expand upon the former. He believed that these additions to Freudian psychoanalysis would help to strengthen it, and thus restore some of the ideas of Freud that had fallen out of fashion. These additions included:

1. Mirror Stage

The mirror stage is the first significant stage in the development of an infant. It occurs around the ages of six to eighteen months, and it happens when the young child learns to recognise their own reflection in a mirror. Infants develop a sense of alienation due to the difference between how they perceive themselves in the mirror, and the way they feel about themselves (the ideal ‘I’). This leads to an internal conflict that can only be resolved by the child identifying with the mirror image, but for the rest of their life the person will strive to become the ideal ‘I’.

The differences between Lacan's mirror stage and Freud's narcissism are paradigmatic of the differences between their theories of the unconscious, of sexuality, of the ego, id, and superego, of the Oedipus and castration complexes, the nature of therapy, and their understanding of man's relation to language and culture. By redefining the key Freudian concepts, Lacan serves Freudian theory from its roots in Enlightenment rational individualism and deploys them to serve a version of pre-Enlightenment authoritarianism.

2. The Three Orders

Lacan expanded upon the tripartite model of Freud (the conscious, pre-conscious, and sub-conscious), and he talks about the symbolic order, imaginary order, and the Real. The symbolic order is a linguistic dimension, the imaginary order is a field of imagery and deception, and the Real is the unconscious that is mysterious because it remains hidden.

However, Lacan has been criticized in theorizing of sexuality and unconscious, as well as the limitations of his use of linguistics. The structuring of the unconscious and tying it to language is criticized as simplification and subversion. Many critics have pointed out that the unconscious is highly symbolic and resistant to syntax. Reformulating Freud's unconscious/conscious dualism as a linguistic relationship is a bridge too far.