Psychoanalysis & Text

PsychoanalysisI: Freudian Foundations
•Freud, all selections in NATC (913-56)
•Review Foucault, excerpts from The History of Sexuality in NATC
•Lacan, “The Mirror Stage” and “The Agency of the Letter” (NATC, 1278-1302)


Psychoanalytic theory builds upon the ideas of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), and his followers, such as Carl Jung (1875-1961), Ernest Jones (1879-1958), Melanie Klein (1882-1960), Joan Riviere (1883-1962) and, most importantly, Jacques Lacan (1901-1981). It can be used to analyze the characters within a literary text by examining their personality and mechanisms used to develop the material. Utilizing this method can yield useful clues such as symbols, actions and settings. To put it simply, Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism studies how the mind works and it is seen in ‘literature. It studies three minds in relation to the text which are, author, characters, and reader. “Freud’s theory replaced the idea of coherent and autonomous human self (which is a humanist idea) with the idea of human ego existing on the fringe of the all powerful Unconscious- the huge area of human self existing outside of human awareness.”

The theory is not without its critics, most notably from those who argue that it is the impact of society on the individual that matters in determining behavior, rather than inner psychic conflicts. Freud's analysis of human sexuality also has the tendency to be considered sexist and homophobic, though feminists will still draw from some of his conclusions. “The concepts of psychoanalysis can be deployed with reference to the narrative or poetic structure itself, without requiring access to the authorial psyche” (an interpretation motivated by Lacan's remark that the unconscious is structured like a language). “Freudian theory, in Lacanian interpretation, is chiefly about decentering or marginality of human self in relation to itself.”Or the founding texts of psychoanalysis may themselves be treated as literature, and re-read for the light cast by their formal qualities on their theoretical content (Freud's texts frequently resemble detective stories, or the archaeological narratives of which he was so fond).