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What is Psychoanalytic Crit - Coggle Diagram
What is Psychoanalytic Crit
why is psychoanalytic criticism important
changed the way the western world thinks about itself, influencing the teachers who taught our teachers, by the type of scholars and criticisms read and therefore the critical and creative writers
we
read (86)
"Freud developed a langage that described, a model that explained, and a theory that encompassed human psychology" (86)
"If, by understanding human psych according to Freud, we can appreciate literature on a new level, then we should acquaint ourselves with his insights" (86)
Freud wasn't the first to give significance to dreams but he developed a theory of how of how dreams work, which made him unusual, important, and influential beyond the wall of medical school/ psych office" (87-88)
Freudian Psychoanalysis
"...directly or indirectly concerned with the unconscious human mind... suggesting that the powers motivating men and women are
mainly
and
normally
unconscious" (86)
he developed an old idea: that the human mind is essentially dual in nature.
what our conscious tells us not to do/think repressed into the unconscious mind (86)
superego = projection of ego, making moral judgements, telling us the make sacrifices for the greater good even though self-sacrifice might not be quite logical or irrational. "super ego is 'outside' since much of what it tells us to do or think we have learned from our parents, our schools, or religious institutions" (86)
ego (I) = rational, logical, orderly, conscious
id
(it) = passional, irrational, unknown, unconscious
Repression
Much of what lies in the unconscious was put there by the conscious...driving underground thoughts or instincts it seems unacceptable" (87)
Freud postulated these desired involved "infantile sexual desires" (87)
Oedipal complex named from the "Greek tragic hero Oepidus, who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother" (87)
displace the parent of our own sex and take his or her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex (87)
"involves number of different but related wish and fears" (86)
his father might castrate him
wish that his mother would return to nursing him (87)
Freud mainly concerned himself with male therefore his theorized are based on the male development
in the words of Roy. P Baker in
sex, symbolism, and psychology in literature
"these thoughts are repressed as they are socially and religiously taboo and thus regarded as unnatural, even though Freud found that these wishes are more or less characteristics or normal human development."....in the unconscious, the urges take on the from of symbolic garb, regarded as nonsense by their waking mind that does not recognize their significance" ( 14)
scholars such as Otto Rankand Ernest Jones used this therory to explain why one, why the popular stories of so many heros in liturature are so similar, and two, suggesting that Hamlet is a victim of strong feelings towards his mother
theorized, these repressed thoughts emerged in dreams, in language ( Freudian slips), creative activity, and neurotic behavior (87) At its root, a neurotic behavior is an automatic, unconscious effort to manage deep anxiety. ( webmd)
New Era Freudian psychoanalysis
before the 1950's psyco-crit, tended to focus on individual author who's works were seen an an indulgence to repressed wish, and/or to protect themselves from deep rooted anxities (90)
new gen: analyzed the characters but then related them to the author as a projection of self repressed aspects of the psych (90)
Dream analysis
"a work of literature is so analogous to a day dream that Freudian analysis can help explain the nature of the mind that produced it" (90)
"authors purpose in writing is to gratify secretly some forbidden wish, in particular an infantile desire or wish that has been repressed into the unconscious mind" (90)
wishes are discovered through "many terms and procedures developed by Freud"
surface of work is refered to as "manfed content"... psycho-A. tried to expose the latent, underlying content of a work.(90)
condensation: several thoughts or persons may be condensed into a single manifestation or image in a dream story (90)
metaphors as dream condensations(90)
displacement: an anxiety, a wish, or a person may be displaced onto the image of another, with which or whom, it is loosely connected though s string of associations (90)
metonym - figures of speech based on extreamly loose arbitarary associations(90)
figurative lit language in general is trested as something that evolves as the writer's concious mind resist what the unconcious tells it to picture or describe (91)
Symbols
writers who employ the use of symbols, use them to "cloak or mystify ideas in figures that make sense only when interrupted" (88)
Jungian Theory
" a great work of liturature is not a disguised expression of its authors's personal, repessed wishes; rather it is a manifesation of desires once held by the whole human race but now repressed because of the advent of civilzation"
Note: "Jung disagreed with Freud's emphasize on sex"
(89)
what psycho-analysis attempts to address, described by Rene Wellek and Austin Warren in
theory of literature
(1942) (89)
provide a psychological study of an individual writer (89)
explore the nature of the creative process (89)
theorize about the psychological effect of literature upon its readers (89) ( all above quotes found in theory of lit p. 81)
generalize about " the types and laws present within works of lit"
Note: Research what is meant by types and laws (89)
Norman Holland
way to analze author without really saying you are (91)
look for general levels of fantasy associated with the language AKA. familiar stages of child development; oral, anal, urethral, phallic
catorogriz the work as in a fantasy category
Ex. Hollands anyisis on "mending wall": breaking down the wall which marks the seperated or individuated self so as to return to a state of closeness to some Other" ( perhaps the mother) (91)
focus more on the ways in which authors create works that appeal to our repressed wishes and fantasies
leading to reader-response criticism
Lacanian
he points out that; the pre oedipal stage ( child is continous with mothers self) is also a preverbal stage, where communication is done with out the use of meaniful word/ lang. (93)
while in the pre oedipal stage the child enters the mirror stage, here the child comes to recgonize themsevles and their mother as independant people
first able to fear agression of another, to desire what is recognizably beyond the self ( aka mother), to compete with another for the same, desired object, able to feel sympathy for another who is hurt by a third and cry when another cries
all of these involve projecting beyond the self, and by extension constructing one's own identity
Lacan belevies that "self constructions" are merly just constructs, products, artifacts, that infact hide the "absence" or "lack" of being
mirror stage/imaginary stage; when child come to view self, father and mother as sperate selves & the difference of gender between parents & themselves from parents
for boys gender awareness invloves the recogination of the father's phallus as the mark of his differance from the mother @ the same time recoginizing that his old and more powerful father is his rival ----- ( male rivalry)