Literary Theory
Key Terms
Oedipus complex - the complex of emotions aroused in a young child, typically around the age of four, by an unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and wish to exclude the parent of the same sex
Id - the impulsive (and unconscious) part of our psyche which responds directly and immediately to basic urges, needs, and desires
Ego- develops to mediate between the unrealistic id and the external real world. It is the decision-making component of personality. Ideally, the ego works by reason, whereas the id is chaotic and unreasonable
Superego- tries to control the id's impulses, especially those which society forbids, such as sex and aggression. It also has the function of persuading the ego to turn to moralistic goals rather than simply realistic ones and to strive for perfection
Key People
Sigmund Freud
Carl Jung
Jacques Lacan
Key Works
Writings on Art and Literature by
Despite Freud's enormous influence on twentieth-century interpretations of the humanities, there has never before been in English a complete collection of his writings on art and literature. These fourteen essays cover the entire range of his work on these subjects, in chronological order beginning with his first published analysis of a work of literature, the 1907 "Delusion and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva" and concluding with the 1940 posthumous publication of "Medusa's Head." Many of the essays included in this collection have been crucial in contemporary literary and art criticism and theory. Among the subjects Freud engages are Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, and Macbeth, Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit, Michelangelo's Moses, E. T. A. Hoffman's "The Sand Man," Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, fairy tales, the effect of and the meaning of beauty, mythology, and the games of aestheticization. All texts are drawn from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey. The volume includes the notes prepared for that edition by the editor. In addition to the writings on Jensen's Gradiva and Medusa, the essays are: "Psychopathic Characters on the Stage," "The Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words," "The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales," "The Theme of the Three Caskets," "The Moses of Michelangelo," "Some Character Types Met with in Psycho-analytic Work," "On Transience," "A Mythological Parallel to a Visual Obsession," "A Childhood Recollection from Dichtung und Wahrheit," "The Uncanny," "Dostoevsky and Parricide," and "The Goethe Prize."
ISBN: 9780804729734Publication Date: 1997-09-01
Man and His Symbols by
Man and His Symbols owes its existence to one of Jung's own dreams. The great psychologist dreamed that his work was understood by a wide public, rather than just by psychiatrists, and therefore he agreed to write and edit this fascinating book. Here, Jung examines the full world of the unconscious, whose language he believed to be the symbols constantly revealed in dreams. Convinced that dreams offer practical advice, sent from the unconscious to the conscious self, Jung felt that self-understanding would lead to a full and productive life. Thus, the reader will gain new insights into himself from this thoughtful volume, which also illustrates symbols throughout history. Completed just before his death by Jung and his associates, it is clearly addressed to the general reader.
ISBN: 0440351839Publication Date: 1968-08-15
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by
In "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" Freud examines the psychological basis for the forgetting of names and words, the misuse of words in speech and in writing, and other similiar errors. Freud's examination of the subject is extensively discussed through the use of anecdotes and examples. "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" makes for one of Freud's more readable works. Presented here is the original english translation of A. A. Brill.
ISBN: 1420924915Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Looking Awry by
Slavoj Zizek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements that are sweeping Eastern Europe, provides a virtuoso reading of Jacques Lacan. Zizek inverts current pedagogical strategies to explain the difficult philosophical underpinnings of the French theoretician and practician who revolutionized our view of psychoanalysis. He approaches Lacan through the motifs and works of contemporary popular culture, from Hitchcock's Vertigo to Stephen King's Pet Sematary, from McCullough's An Indecent Obsession to Romero's Return of the Living Dead-a strategy of "looking awry" that recalls the exhilarating and vital experience of Lacan.Zizek discovers fundamental Lacanian categories the triad Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, the object small a, the opposition of drive and desire, the split subject-at work in horror fiction, in detective thrillers, in romances, in the mass media's perception of ecological crisis, and, above all, in Alfred Hitchcock's films. The playfulness of Zizek's text, however, is entirely different from that associated with the deconstructive approach made famous by Derrida. By clarifying what Lacan is saying as well as what he is not saying, Zizek is uniquely able to distinguish Lacan from the poststructuralists who so often claim him.
ISBN: 026274015XPublication Date: 1992-09-08
Psychoanalytical
Overview
Psychoanalytical theory has emerged from the work of Freud, Jung, and Lacan. It is focused on exploring how texts can be read or seen as reflections of the psyche, either in the characters presented, or the author themselves, in much the same way that dreams may be interpreted. It premises particular workings of the mind championed by Freud and uses methods of psychoanalysis to try and understand concepts of the unconscious, such as the id, ego or superego; repression; or the Oedipus complex. Lacanian criticisms build on Freud’s theory, but consider the relationships between signs and symbols in texts and the reader themselves. That is, Lacanian theory may turn the analyses of the psyche from the author to the reader.
What Psychoanalytical Critiques do
They give central importance to the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious mind They associate the literary work’s ‘overt’ content with the former, “and the ‘covert’ content with the latter, privileging the latter as being what the work is ‘really’ about, and aiming to disentangle the two.
Hence, they pay close attention to unconscious motives and feelings, whether these be (a) those of the author, or (b) those of the characters depicted in the work
They demonstrate the presence in the literary work of classic psychoanalytic symptoms, condition of phases, in particular those related to emotional and sexual development.
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.
In literary analysis, a Jungian critic would look for archetypes in creative works.
What Questions to Psychoanalytical Critiques ask
How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work? Are there any Oedipal dynamics - or any other family dynamics - at work here? Is there a suggestion of Lacanian psychoanalytic symptoms or phases, for example, the mirror-stage?
How can characters' behaviour, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example, fear or fascination with death, sexuality - which includes love and romance as well as sexual behaviour - as a primary indicator of psychological identity or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
How does the work reflect the unconscious dimensions of the writer’s mind?
What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader?
How does the reader’s own psychology affect his response to the work?
Are there prominent words in the piece that could have different or hidden meanings? Could there be a subconscious reason for the author using these "problem words"?
General Web Links
- Everything2 The Everything site provides an overview of the idea of the Oedipus complex, its origin in Sophocles' play and examples of its use in literature such as Shakespeare's Hamlet and Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.