PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

Apparently, this approach has nothing to see with literature, but it is false. Many authors use literature to show their real feelings although they are sometimes unconscious of this event. And through psychoanalysis people who read this literature can discover some hidden problems, sometimes traumatic problems related to their childhood or some event that they would prefer to forget.

“That human beings are rational animals mean that they have the possibility to dominate the scene of their own history” (Literature Theory).

Psychoanalytic criticism may focus on the writer's psyche, the study of the creative process, the study of psychological types and principles present within works of literature, or the effects of literature upon its readers (Modern Literary Theory).

Psychoanalysis is a type of psychodynamic therapy or insight-oriented therapy, a therapeutic technique for the treatment of neuroses and some psychoses (wikipedia).

At the end of the 18^th century the mind had an active and formative role (Literature Theory).

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 (Critical Approaches).

Whereas New Historicism and Marx-inspired Cultural Materialism analyze public power structures from, respectively, the top and bottom in terms of the culture as a whole, psychoanalysis analyzes microstructures of power within the individual and within small-scale domestic environments. That is, it analyzes the interiority of the self and of the self's kinship systems (Introduction).

During the 20th century, psychological criticism has come to be associated with a particular school of thought: the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud (1856- 1939) and his followers (Psychological Approach).

The main discovery is the existence of a psychical area called “unconscious”. It arises from the existence of some psychical events that haven’t the origin in the will or in the conscience of whom suffer them (Literature Theory).

Freud establishes three premises:

- Most of the individual’s mental processes are unconscious (Psychological Approach).

- All human behaviour is motivated ultimately by sexuality (Psychological Approach).

- Because of the powerful social taboos attached to certain sexual impulses, many of our desires and memories are repressed (Psychological Approach).

He says that the main characteristics of the unconscious are the absence of contradiction, the independence of the time, the substitution of the external reality by the psychical one and its contents are formed by a repressed desire (Literature Theory).

He divides the mind in three psychic zones:

- The id which Freud considers to be the pleasure principle. It knows no values, no good and evil, no morality. It is the source of all our aggressions and desires (Psychological Approach).

- The ego regulates the instinctual drives of the id. It comprises what we ordinarily think of as the conscious mind. It is governed by the reality principle (Psychological Approach).

- The superego is the moral censoring agency. It is the representative of all moral restrictions, the advocate of the impulse toward perfection. Acting either through the ego, the superego serves to repress or inhibit the drives of the id, to block off and thrust back into the unconscious those impulses toward pleasure that society regards as unacceptable, such as overt aggression, sexual passions, and the Oedipal instinct. It is dominated by the morality principle (Psychological Approach).

One example of this it is found in the Herman Melville’s masterpiece Moby-Dick. The White Whale can be interpreted as a symbolic embodiment of the strict conscience of New England Puritanism (a projection of Melville’s own superego). Captain Ahab is interpreted as the symbol of a rapacious and uncontrollable id. Starbuck, the sane Christian and first mate who struggles to mediate between the forces embodied in Moby-Dick and Ahab, symbolizes a balanced and sensible rationalism (that is, the ego) (Psychological Approach).

Jacques Lacan, another post-Freudian psychoanalytic theorist, focused on language and language-related issues. Lacan treats the unconscious as a language; consequently, he views the dream not as Freud did (that is, as a form and symptom of repression) but rather as a form of discourse. Thus we may study dreams psychoanalytically in order to learn about literature, even as we may study literature in order to learn more about the unconscious (Critical Approaches).

The “compleat gentleman” of the English Renaissance, Sir Philip Sidney, with his statements about the moral effects of poetry, was psychologizing literature, as were such romantic poets as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley with their theories of the imagination. In this sense, then, virtually every literary critic has been concerned at some time with the psychology of writing or responding to literature (Psychological Approach).

I think that this critical approach is very useful because when authors write are influenced by their personality, by their feelings.

It can be the only way for them to say what they would not say in other circumstances. They are conscious of this but sometimes authors write unconscious things that reveal hidden passions, desires, but they are not conscious about this.

If a professional psychologist reads their poems, they can know the authors’ fears and tastes. Not only a professional but also readers can know about the mental situation of the poet.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

- Psychoanalysis- wikipedia the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis, visited May 22 2006.

- VirtuaLit: Critical Approaches, http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_psycho.html, visited May 22 2006.

- General Introduction to psychoanalysis, http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/psychoanalysis/psychintroframes.html, visited May 23 2006.

- Asensi Pérez, Manuel, Historia de la teoría de la literatura (el siglo XX hasta los años setenta), Tirant Lo Blanch, Valencia, 2003 (pág. 523-560).

- The psychological Approach: Freud (notes of Narrative’s subject).