Introduction to Modern Literary Theory (III)

Introduction to Psychoanalysis

PSYCHOANALYTICAL CRITICISM aims to show that a literary or cultural work is always structured by complex and often contradictory human desires. 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. By analyzing the formation of the individual, however, psychoanalysis also helps us to understand the formation of ideology at large—and can therefore be extended to the analysis of various cultural and societal phenomena. Indeed, for this reason, psychoanalysis has been especially influential over the last two decades in culture studies and film analysis.

Psychoanalysis is complicated by the fact that it has undergone numerous transformations at the hands of highly influential individual psychoanalysts. It is therefore necessary, as with many of the theories currently influencing scholarship and teaching, to differentiate between individual thinkers. For the purposes of studying literature and culture, the most influential theorists today are Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), and Julia Kristeva (1941-?). The links on the left will lead you to modules explaining in more detail specific concepts by these individual thinkers; however, you might like to begin with a quick overview:

DEFINITION OF PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

Psychoanalytic criticism originated in the work of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who pioneered the technique of psychoanalysis. Freud developed a language that described, a model that explained, and a theory that encompassed human psychology. His theories are directly and indirectly concerned with the nature of the unconscious mind.
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. Probably because of Freud’s characterization of the artist’s mind as “one urged on by instincts that are too clamorous,” 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. Norman Holland’s theories, concerned more with the reader than with the text, helped to establish reader-response criticism. Critics influenced by D.W. Winnicott, an object-relations theorist, have questioned the tendency to see the reader/text as an either/or construct; instead, they have seen reader and text (or audience and play) in terms of a relationship taking place in what Winnicott calls a “transitional” or “potential space”—space in which binary oppositions like real/illusory and objective/subjective have little or no meaning.
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. Lacan also revised Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex—the childhood wish to displace the parent of one’s own sex and take his or her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex—by relating it to the issue of language. He argues that the pre-oedipal stage is also a preverbal or “mirror stage,” a stage he associates with the imaginary order. He associates the subsequent oedipal stage—which roughly coincides with the child’s entry into language—with what he calls the symbolic order, in which words are not the things they stand for but substitutes for those things. The imaginary order and the symbolic order are two of Lacan’s three orders of subjectivity, the third being the real, which involves intractable and substantial things or states that cannot be imagined, symbolized, or known directly (such as death).


Psychoanalytic Criticism

The application of specific psychological principles (particularly those of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan [zhawk lawk-KAWN]) to the study of literature. 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 (Wellek and Warren, p. 81). In addition to Freud and Lacan, major figures include Shoshona Felman, Jane Gallop, Norman Holland, George Klein, Elizabeth Wright, Frederick Hoffman, and, Simon Lesser.

Key Terms:

Unconscious - the irrational part of the psyche unavailable to a person's consciousness except through dissociated acts or dreams.

Freud's model of the psyche:

* Id - completely unconscious part of the psyche that serves as a storehouse of our desires, wishes, and fears. The id houses the libido, the source of psychosexual energy.
* Ego - mostly to partially (<--a point of debate) conscious part of the psyche that processes experiences and operates as a referee or mediator between the id and superego.
* Superego - often thought of as one's "conscience"; the superego operates "like an internal censor [encouraging] moral judgments in light of social pressures" (123, Bressler - see General Resources below).

Lacan's model of the psyche:

* Imaginary - a preverbal/verbal stage in which a child (around 6-18 months of age) begins to develop a sense of separateness from her mother as well as other people and objects; however, the child's sense of sense is still incomplete.
* Symbolic - the stage marking a child's entrance into language (the ability to understand and generate symbols); in contrast to the imaginary stage, largely focused on the mother, the symbolic stage shifts attention to the father who, in Lacanian theory, represents cultural norms, laws, language, and power (the symbol of power is the phallus--an arguably "gender-neutral" term).
* Real - an unattainable stage representing all that a person is not and does not have. Both Lacan and his critics argue whether the real order represents the period before the imaginary order when a child is completely fulfilled--without need or lack, or if the real order follows the symbolic order and represents our "perennial lack" (because we cannot return to the state of wholeness that existed before language).

Modules on Psychoanalysis

THE MODULES in this section center around the psychoanalysts that have defined this critical school. If you know nothing about psychoanalysis, I would suggest that you begin with Sigmund Freud, since he is the founder of this particular theoretical approach, and then follow with Lacan, then Kristeva. Each critic tends to rethink and revise the ideas of the critic that came before him or her, so it is helpful to know what each is reacting against or building on.

The Modules are designed to work aggregatively, so that each subsequent module tends to build on the concepts discussed in the previous modules; however, each is also designed to stand alone, and will sometimes be hyperlinked in other sections of the Guide to Theory. In this way, the modules seek to rethink the way most text-based introductions work. Like a text-based introduction, the modules can work progressively, as if one were thus turning the pages in a book. However, the structure is actually more akin to Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the rhizome: endlessly aggregative (at least in theory) and connected to each other and to the rest of the site by multiple additional links. One can therefore progress through the modules in alternate ways; in the psychoanalysis modules, for example, one can concentrate on a single concept, psychosexual development, exploring how Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva each differ in significant ways when it comes to this issue. One can also explore connections between the modules on psychonalysis and those found in other locations in this site. The Freud module on transference and trauma, for example, is logically and actively linked to the Narratology module on Peter Brooks, allowing the user to think about the connections between psychoanalysis and narrative theory.

Further references:

* Elliott, Anthony. Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.
* Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. See chapter 5.
* Ellmann, Maud, ed. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. London: Longman, 1994.
* Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams.
* Gay, Peter, ed.The Freud Reader. London: Vintage, 1995.
* Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction. See Chapter 5.
* Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection.
* Sarup, Madan. Jacques Lacan. London: Harvester, Wheatsheaf, 1992.
* Weber, Samuel. The Legend of Freud.
* See also the works of Harold Bloom, Shoshona Felman, Juliet Mitchell, Geoffrey Hartman, and Stuart Schniederman.