Psychoanalytic Criticism The object of psychoanalytic literary criticism
Psychoanalytic Criticism The object of psychoanalytic literary criticism, at its very simplest, can be the psychoanalysis of the author or of a particularly interesting character in a given work
Background �Sigmund Freud 1856 -1939 �Provide the foundation for Psychoanalytic criticism
Model of human psyche �Dynamic model �Economic model �Typographical model
Dynamic model �Freud asserted that our minds have a duality consisting of the conscious ( rational ) and the unconscious (irrational). The conscious , Freud argued perceives and records external reality and is the reasoning part of the mind �The unconscious receives and stores our hidden desires ambitions , fears, and irrational thoughts, �parapraxes or Freudian slips
Economic model �Freud’s second model enlarges the ideas of his previous model and add two concepts �Pleasure principle : craves only pleasures and it desires instantaneous satisfaction or instinctual drives, ignoring moral and sexual boundaries. �Reality principle : that part of the psyche that recognizes the need for societal standards and regulation on pleasure.
Typographical model (tripartite) �The ID : containing our secret desires our darkest wishes and our most intense fear , it houses the libido the source of al psychosexual desires �The ego : the rational, logical , waking part of the mind. Whereas the ID operates with pleasure principle , the ego operates in harmony with reality principle. �The superego: acts like internal sensor causing us to make moral judgments in light of social pressures , protecting us of the ID , representing all society restrictions
Significance of dream �According to Freud , even though the passage into manhood or womanhood, may be successful , the child has stored many painful memories of repressed sexual desires, anger , rage , and guilt in his or her unconscious these feelings and emotions repressed come into the conscious in form of inferiority , irrational thoughts and feelings , dreams and nightmares
�The psyche may create a window to the ID in a variety of ways through the process of : �Displacement: for example , the unconscious may switch a person’s hatred for someone named Mr. Appleby onto a rotting apple in a dream �Condensation: the psyche may consolidate one’s anger toward a variety of people or objects into a simple sentence
Assumptions �One Freud’s assumptions is that all artist , including authors are neurotic unlike other neurotics artist escape from neurosis by creating his or her art �Motivation for writing any story is to gratify some secret desire , some forbidden wish that probably developed in the author’s infancy �Latent content : it is the wish of the dream �manifest content : when the unconscious allow the dreamer to remember a somewhat changed and oftentimes radically different dream
Methodology �psychobiography : this method of analysis begins amassing biographical information about the author through biographies , personal letters, and any other document related to the author �Canon : all the collected works �Yonic symbol(female): any concave images such as a flower , a cup �Phallic symbol(male): a tower , a sword , a pen
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