PHYSCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
(wikipedia/Psicoan)
The key to understanding the history of psychoanalytic literary criticism is to recognize that literary criticism is about books and psychoanalysis is about minds. Therefore, the psychoanalytic critic can only talk about the minds associated with the book.
(class.ufl.edu/mindbook)
The sublime mind behaves not as a rider, according to the classic metaphor of consciousness and unconsciousness, neither abolishing the rider, but as the centaur, as a dimension in which impulse and law are the same. This poetic legislation is the one which maintains the poetic activity, but not the mental disorder. Poetry comes from solitude, but it refutes solitude.
(el-nacional/opinion)
Apart from the greatest psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, there are some important ones like Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, Erich Fromm, Julia Kristeva…etc.
(wikipedia/Psicoan)
The psychoanalytic approach to literature not only rests on the theories of Freud; it may even be said to have begun with Freud, who wrote literary criticism as well as psychoanalytic theory. Psychoanalytic criticism written before 1950 tended to psychoanalyze the individual author. Literary works were read—sometimes unconvincingly—as fantasies that allowed authors to indulge repressed wishes, to protect themselves from deep-seated anxieties, or both. After 1950, psychoanalytic critics began to emphasize the ways in which authors create works that appeal to readers’ repressed wishes and fantasies. Consequently, they shifted their focus away from the author’s psyche toward the psychology of the reader and the text.
(bedfordsmartins/crit_psycho)
Freud's psychoanalytic theory, coming as it did at the turn of the century, provided a radically new approach to the analysis and treatment of "abnormal" adult behavior. Earlier views tended to ignore behavior and look for a physiological explanation of "abnormality". The novelty of Freud's approach was in recognizing that neurotic behavior is not random or meaningless but goal-directed. Thus, by looking for the purpose behind so-called "abnormal" behavioral patterns, the analyst was given a method for understanding behavior as meaningful and informative, without denying its physiological aspects.
(Homepage.newschool/psychoanalysis)
Sometimes, we act according to another thing that is not what we control, since if will exerts the power, we would not have these situations.
There is something in ourselves that speaks (or also through gesture) and we ignore what it is. Who can control it? Nobody can.
If we rule out the physical problems, because the person can not control certain situations, where is the center of power? Is it here or in another place? Discovery of the unconsciousness: the sublime dimension (Kant) announced that in the sense there was an obscure part, in where the person feels inferiority. Why is there unconsciousness? Why has it a great power? Why does it determine us as it does? All Freud’s work is an attempt to answer this. The unconsciousness can be studied through its manifestations or symptoms: hysteria, paranoia, lapses…etc
Art and literature are a symptom of the unconsciousness. Why is there unconsciousness? How do we get to be as we are?
Does a newborn baby have unconsciousness? He/she does not have it in his/her first stages of life. The person has unconsciousness because he/she suffers a group of traumatic losses that we are not conscious of losing them.
Through history, the person does not bear certain things. That is the reason why there is unconsciousness. There is unconsciousness because in the vital experience of the person there are some things that he/she does not bear. If this experience happens, you deny and repress it, but it has had an effect on you and it keeps on there.
When a trauma is so strong that the person does not bear it, he/she puts it in brackets because he/she can not symbolize it and wants to forget it. It becomes an unconscious impression.
There is a satisfaction of repressed desires. The dirtiness of the person is which emerges in the work. It is not the spectator who makes catharsis, but also the author, by means of writing one liberates these passions.
In short, the occult meaning of the unconscious is recorded in the significance that a text has, so we have to look for what is hidden in the text.
The project of psychoanalytic theory is to describe how the gendered and sexual subject is formed. The project of Freud's psychoanalytic practice (and those who followed him) was to cure those who had gone astray in this process, those who had not correctly developed this firm sense of gender, sexuality, and repression of libidinal drives. It is worth noting, however, that Freud was not particularly interested in curing what he called "perversions," i.e. sexual behaviours that do not fit into the non-incestuous reproductive heterosexual model. He addresses the question of where "perversions" come from in the first essay in Three Essays. Freud is more interested in the problem of neurosis, which he defines as the negative version of perversion. Perversions might be thought of as libidinal drives that may be socially inappropriate (or even illegal), but which get expressed and acted on; neuroses, by contrast, are libidinal drives that get repressed into the unconscious, but which are so powerful that the unconscious has to spend a lot of energy to keep these drives from coming back into consciousness. The effort required to keep such ideas or drives repressed can cause hysteria, paranoia, obsession-compulsion, and other neurotic disorders. (Colorado.edu/1997Freud)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psicoan%C3%A1lisis
Divan used by Freud in the psychoanalytic sessions. This page was modified in May 21, 2006. Visited on May 21, 2006)
(http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/nnh/mindbook.htm. “The Mind and the Book: A Long Look at Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism”. © Copyright 1998, Norman N. Holland, all rights reserved. Visited on May 23, 2006)
(http://www.el-nacional.com/Entrevistas/opinion/xyurman03.asp
“Reflexiones sobre poesía y enfermedad mental”. Fernando Yerman. Visited on May 23, 2006)
(http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psicoan%C3%A1lisis This page was modified in May 21, 2006. Visited on May 21, 2006)
(http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_psycho.html
“Critical Approaches”.
Adapted from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms by Ross Murfin and Supriya M. Ray. Copyright 1998 by Bedford Books. Visited on May 23, 2006)
(http://homepage.newschool.edu/%7Equigleyt/vcs/psychoanalysis.html.“Freudian, Lacanian and Object Relations Theory”. T. R. Quigley, 1998. Visited on May 23, 2006)
(http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/1997freud.html. “Psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud”. All materials on this site are written by, and remain the property of, Dr. Mary Klages, Associate Professor of English, University of Colorado at Boulder. Last revision: October 2, 2001. Visited on May 23, 2006)
