Psychoanalytical Literary Criticism. AP Literature and Composi2on II

Transcription

1 Psychoanalytical Literary Criticism AP Literature and Composi2on II

2 The Ra2onale of the Psychoanaly2cal Literary Cri2cism If psychoanalysis can help us better understand human behavior, then it must certainly be able to help us understand literary texts, which are about human behavior. Psychoanalytical Criticism shows how human behavior is relevant to our experience of literature.

3 Psychoanaly2cal Literary Cri2cism In order to appreciate a text, one must understand human psychology. The goal of psychoanalysis is to decode the psychological or sexual symbolism of literature to uncover the author's unconscious obsessions. Psychoanalysts also look at the psychological motivations of the characters with the story.

4 Two- Pronged Approach Psychological Analysis can look closely at the characters and the psychological motivations present in their story and/or back story. Psychological Analysis can also look closely at the life of the author to determine what in his/her life caused him/her to write characters in a specific way and give the characters specific attributes.

5 Psychoanalytical Criticism This kind of literary criticism sees a text like a dream-everything represents something deeper, below the surface. Can be about the author s hidden life This analysis of the text could be an expression of the secret, repressed life of its author, explaining the textual features as symbolic of psychological struggles in the writer s life. Can be about the secret life of the characters applying psychoanalytical theory to explain their hidden motives or psychological makeup ( armchair psychology ) This can overlap Reader Response Criticism in that you can look at ways in which specific readers reveal their own obsessions, neuroses, etc. as they read a particular text. Why do you like the books you do? What does that say about YOUR repressed issues?

6 Three Parts of the Psychoanalytic Approach 1) Most of the individual s mental processes are unconscious. 2) All human behavior is mo;vated ul;mately by sexuality. The prime psychic force libido, or sexual energy. 3) Because of the powerful social taboos adached to certain sexual impulses, many of our desires and memories are repressed.

7 Two Subcategories Freudian Based on the theories of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud Terms to Know: Unconscious, repression, Oedipus Complex, libidinal imagery Jungian Based on the theories of psychoanalyst Carl Jung Terms to Know: Collec;ve unconscious, archetypes (innocent, trickster, wise fool, teacher/prophet), hero s journey (innocent, ini;a;on, chaos, resolu;on)

8 Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud is known as the founder of psychology which is the study of human behavior. In his famous work The Interpreta;on of Dreams, Freud argues that humans have a sub- consciousness that controls our desires. Our sub- conscious is divided into the Id or uncontrolled desires, the Ego the realis;c desires or the part of our personality we share with the world, and the Super Ego or our cri;cal and moralis;c selves. The common metaphor used to represent this is a person going through a conflict with an angel and devil sixng on each shoulder

9 The Human Psyche

10 The Human Psyche: Id, Ego, and Super- Ego

11 ID Wants whatever feels good at the time, with no consideration for the reality of the situation.

12 Look at me! Look at me! Look at me now! It is fun to have fun! ID

13 Ego It is the ego s job to meet the needs of the id, while taking into consideration the reality of the situation.

14 Then our mother came in And she said to us two, Did you have any fun? Tell me. What did you do? Should we tell her about it? Now, what SHOULD we do? Well What would you do if your mother asked you? Ego

15 Super- Ego The superego is the moral part of us and develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on us by our caregivers.

16 They should not be here When our mother is not! Put them out! Put them out! Said the fish in the pot. Super- Ego

17 ID, Ego, and Super- Ego ID Ego Super- Ego Wants what it wants when it wants it Has to make the decision of which voice to follow Wants to follow the rules, and the moral standards in the culture The id is the primi;ve mind; it contains the basic needs and feelings Understands that you can t always get what you want Stores and enforces the rules, it will deny pleasure to follow the rules An overac;ve id can also cause a person to be uncaring of others and their feelings If the ego is too strong it can result in an adult that is ra;onal and efficient, but also cold and boring If the superego is too strong it can result in a person who feels guilty all the ;me and is too obsessed with obtaining perfec;on

18 Sigmund Freud and the Unconscious

19 The Human Psyche

20 Origins of the Unconscious the unconscious -- contains the hidden, repressed desires of life Freud believed that human beings are motivated by unconscious desires, fears, needs, and conflicts Freudian Ideas: Everyone has repressed, or hidden emotions An author may manifest their issues through the types of characters or plot Meaning in a piece of literature can come from finding those hidden meanings Adolescent and adult behaviors are the direct results of early childhood experience. Thus the focus is on patterns of behavior that are destructive in some way.

21 What is the Unconscious Mind? The unconscious is the storehouse of those painful experiences and emotions, wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts we do not want to know about We develop our unconscious mind at a very young age through the act of repression Repression is the expunging of the conscious mind of all our unhappy psychological events Our unhappy memories do not disappear in the unconscious mind; rather, they exist as a dynamic entity that influences our behavior

22 The Unconscious Mind

23 Difference between the conscious and unconscious mind

24 Difference between the conscious and unconscious mind Conscious mind: what we know and are aware of. Key insight of Freud: Human beings are motivated and driven by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware the unconscious. The unconscious stores all painful experiences, etc. so in order to not be overwhelmed by them the mind creates the unconscious at a very young age through the process of repression: Expunging from the consciousness these unhappy psychological events Doesn t eliminate painful experiences, but gives them more power by making them the organizers of our current experience: we unconsciously behave in ways that allow us to play out (without realizing it) our conflicted feelings about the painful feelings we repress. Freud suggests that the unconscious, not the conscious, governs a large part of our actions.

25 The Unconscious mind The unconscious is also the storehouse of disguised truths and desires that want to be revealed in and through the conscious. These disguised truths and desires inevitably make themselves known through our so-called mistakes of speech or actions known as Freudian Slips. Through seemingly innocent actions, such as Freudian slips, failures of memory, misplacing of objects, or misreading of text, Freud believes we consciously bring to our conscious minds our unconscious wishes and intentions. Every adult has stored many painful memories of repressed sexual desires, anger, rage, and guilt in his or her unconscious. The unconscious redirects and reshapes these concealed wishes into acceptable social activities, presenting them in the form of images or symbols in our dreams or in our writings.

26 Repression Until we acknowledge the true cause of our repressed wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts, we hang on to them in disguised, distorted, and self-defeating ways. Example: If I don t realize that I still long for the love I never received from my long-dead, alcoholic father, I am very liable to select and alcoholic, aloof mate so that I can re-enact my relationship with my father and, this time, make him love me. This is an UNCONSCIOUS process. And as the acting out occurs, I won t recognize the connection, but instead probably focus instead on superficial differences as to NOT connect my mate to my father. If this mate were an attentive lover, I may end up rejecting him for not fulfilling my need to re-experience the abandonment I suffered at the hands of my father. The point is that I want something I don t know I want and can t have. In looking at a character in literature and seeing how his/her repressed painful feelings emerge in their patterns of behavior, we more deeply understand the character and therefore the literary text.

27 Freudian Analysis Jungian Analysis Freudian analysis assumes that images and ideas in a text mean something else than they apparently mean. He usually assumes their meanings are inherently about repressed sexual issues. In contrast, Jung assumes that images essentially imply (or symbolize) something based on the collective unconscious of the population, or, based on what the most people would generally recognize to be true.

28 The Split Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were both interested in the role of the unconscious mind. They quickly formed a strong bond as friends and colleagues. Jung even looked up to Freud as a father figure until there came a fork in the road. Freud held strong to his belief that sexual urges were the driving force behind human behavior. Jung strongly disagreed and felt there were other forces, such as religious beliefs, the drive for power and the need for approval.

29 Carl Jung and the Collective Unconscious

30 Carl Jung s Collec2ve Unconscious The Collective Unconscious is universal. one shares knowledge, experiences, images with entire human race, resulting in archetypes that affect how people respond to life when certain images are in literature, they call up our archetypal feelings. If this concept is correct, if there are archetypal ideas that are wired into us, it becomes easier to explain why there are so many similarities between stories over time.

31 Carl Jung s Human Psyche Model

32 Archetypes something that serves as the model or pattern for other things of the same type The innocent - a character that despite being simple or child-like, has a intuitive wisdom. The trickster - a character who succeeds through playfulness, often irreverent and disrespectful. The warrior - a character who does not subvert the system, but faces it head on. The teacher/prophet - a character who has learned from experiences and uses their wisdom to guide others.

33 The Hero s Journey Innocence: Starts with a character who is pretty happy, no real conflicts, lack of worldly experiences Initiation: Some fall from innocence. Could be death, tragedy, awareness of evil, emotional or sexual relationship Chaos: After that cruddy fall from innocence, a time of trial. Will the character come through it, or regress back to a false innocence or denial? Resolution: If the character has made it through chaos, they re smarter, stronger, and more stable. They have learned from their issues and are now looking towards a bright future.

34 Psychoanaly2cal Literary Cri2cism The Meaning of Sexuality

35 The Meaning of Sexuality Sex drive or eros is the opposite of the death drive. The biological pressure that is discharged in the act of sexual intercourse; part of our identity but also a product of our culture. Id: instincts and libido (sexual energy) Devoted to gratification of prohibited desires or all kinds w/o an eye for consequences Superego: the social values and taboos that we internalize and experience as our sense of right and wrong society s rules and definitions concerning sexuality form a large part of the superego. Ego: the conscious self that experiences the external world through the senses Plays referee between the id and superego The relationship among all three within each of us tells us as much about our culture as it does about ourselves.

36 Psychoanaly2cal Literary Cri2cism Family ConQlicts

37 Family as the Foundation We are each a product of the role we are given in the familycomplex. Freud believed that we all go through developmental stages as a part of natural and healthy maturation including: Oedipal conflict: competition with the parent of the same gender for the attention and affection of the parent of the opposite gender Sibling rivalry: competition with siblings for the attention and affection of parents Freud believed all children must successfully pass through these stages in order to develop normally. Freud also believed that a child s moral sensibility and conscious appear for the first time during this stage.

38 Pre- Oedipal Developmental Oral Phase When we suck our mother s breast to be fed, our sexuality is activated and will later cause us to enjoy sucking our thumbs and kissing. Anal Stage becomes an object of pleasure, realization of control, expression of anger and excitement Phallic Stage Directed towards genitals * Pleasure principle basically controls the child the child cares for nothing but his or her own pleasure

39 Oedipus Complex Freud s most significant contributions to psychoanalytic criticism and to literary criticism in general. According to Freud, the essence of Oedipus story becomes a universal human experience. This complex illustrates a formative stage in each individual s psychosexual development when the child transfers his love object from the breast (the oral phase) to the mother. During the infantile stage (between ages 3 and 6), all infant males possess an erotic attachment to their mother, but recognizes a rival for his mother s affection: the father.

40 Oedipus Complex: Castration Complex What prevents the male child from continuing to have incestuous desires for his mother is fear of castration by his father known as the castration complex. The child now represses his sexual desire, identifies with his father, and hopes someday to have a woman as his father now possesses his mother. Unconsciously, the boy has now successfully made the transition to manhood.

41 Oedipus Complex: Electra Complex Whereas a boy must successfully negotiate the Oedipus complex in order to become a normal man, a girl must successfully negotiate the Electra complex. Like a boy, the girl is also erotically attracted to her mother and she too recognizes a rival for her mother s affection the father. Unconsciously, the girl realizes that she is already castrated as is her mother. Because she knows her father possesses that which she desires, a penis, she turns her desires to her father and away from her mother known as the penis envy. After her seduction of her father fails, she turns back to her mother. Unconsciously, the girl has now successfully made the transition to womanhood she realizes that one day she, too, will possess a man.

42 The Oedipal Conflict played out A common way men replay unresolved oedipal attachments involves what is often called the good-girl/bad-girl attitude toward women: If a man remains in competition (unconsciously) with his father for his mother s love, he is very liable to deal with the guilt by categorizing women as either like Mom ( good girls ) or not like Mom ( bad girls ) and then by being able to enjoy sex only with women who are not like Mom. Because he unconsciously associates sexual desire with Mom, it makes the man feel guilty and dirty so he can only enjoy it with bad girls who are themselves guilty/dirty, who he doesn t associate with Mom. This often creates a seduce-and-abandon pattern of behavior since permanent attachment to someone is so unworthy of marriage cannot be allowed. Two things happen when a good girl is seduced: 1) she becomes a bad girl and, like other bad girls, unworthy of the man s permanent commitment, and 2) the seducer feels so guilty for soiling her (which is like soiling Mom) that he must abandon her to avoid guilt.

43 The Meaning of Death

44 The Meaning of Death Death is a difficult subject to analyze, often because we have a tendency to treat death as an abstraction. By treating death as an abstraction, we can theorize about it without feeling its force too intimately because its force is much too frightening. Freud theorized that death is a biological drive which he referred to as the death drive. The death drive theory accounted for the alarming degree of selfdestructive behavior Freud observed in individuals. Our fear of death is closely tied to our fear of being alone, our fear of abandonment, and our fear of intimacy.

45 The Meaning of Death Even so, our relationship to death, whether or not traumatized by it in childhood, is a principle organizer of our psychological experiences. Death Drive or Thanatos: Freud said that death is biological drive, mostly as a way of accounting for selfdestructive behavior, both in individuals, bent on destroying themselves psychologically or physically, and in whole nations, constant wars and internal conflicts can be viewed as mass suicide. Fear of death is ultimately connected to a number of other psychological realities: The thought of our own death keys into our fear of abandonment, our fear of being alone; many cultures reassure us with the concept God the father who will be there for us in heaven, never abandoning his children even when everyone else we know has done so. Death of others still plays into the fear of abandonment. When we lose someone we love often times we feel abandoned: i.e.: why did you leave me? Don t you love me, what did I do wrong, why would God do this? Death of a loved one pushes our guilt buttons: somehow I must have been inadequate, I must have done something wrong to be punished in this way.

46 Death and Fears Fear of death is basically the cause for most other fears. Fear of abandonment through death leads to fear of intimacy by not getting too attached to other people I will better be able to bear the loss when they die. Fear of life fear of losing our life can result in fear of being intimately attached to life fear of risk if my ultimate fear is death then I can t do anything (risk) that would result in death. Fear of loss in general results from early childhood experiences of abandonment which are a psychological death (the first time we ever felt abandoned by a parent) that developed our overall fear of death. The greater our fear, the greater our fascination why do you think people like violent movies, gawk at car wrecks, watch news reports and TV shows about rape, disease, war, child abuse, dysfunctional relationships? It is how we project our fears and problems on to people and events outside ourselves.

47 The Meaning of Dreams

48 The Meaning of Dreams Our dreams fascinate, perplex, and often disturb us. Filled with bizarre twists of fate, wild exploits, and highly sexual images, our dreams can bring us pleasure or terrorize us. Sometimes they cause us to question our feelings, contemplate our unspoken desires, and even doubt the nature of reality itself. Do dreams, we wonder, contain any degree of truth? Do they serve any useful function? - Literary criticism, 4 th ed., Bressler, p. 142

49 Dreams Dreams and dream symbols the unconscious expresses a message in our dreams but altered so that we don t readily recognize it. ** Lists of the meaning of Freudian and Jungian dream symbols can be easily found online. Trauma: a painful experience that scars us psychologically but also when nightmares occur while awake, if the breakdown of my defenses is more than temporary (anxiety) and my anxiety cannot be abated, if the truth hidden by repression become evident to my conscious self in a way I cannot handle crisis or trauma is the result. Experiencing death of a loved one during childhood is often a traumatizing experience.

50 Dreams and Defense Mechanisms Our defense mechanisms do not operate in the same way while we are asleep as they do when we are awake. This is why psychoanalysts are so interested in dream analysis. When we are asleep, the unconscious mind is free to express itself and it does so in the form of dreams. Dream Displacement: when we use a safe person, event or object as a stand in to represent a more threatening one. Dream Condensation: when we use a single dream image or event to represent more than one unconscious wound or conflict.

51 Defense Mechanisms Defense Mechanism: The process by which the contents of our unconscious are kept in the unconscious because we are afraid what we ll find if we look too closely. Selective Perception: hearing and seeing only what we feel we can handle Selective memory: modifying our memories so that we don t feel overwhelmed by them or forgetting painful events entirely Denial: believing that the problem doesn t exist or the unpleasant incident never happened Avoidance: staying away from people or situations that are liable to make us anxious by stirring up some unconscious i.e.: repressed experience or emotion Displacement: taking it out on someone or something less threatening than the person who caused our fear, hurt, frustration or anger Projection: ascribing our fear, problem, or guilty desire to someone else and condemning them for it, in order to deny that we have it ourselves

52 Defense Mechanisms con d Regression: the temporary return to a former psychological state, which is not just imagined but relived. It can involve a return either to a painful or a pleasant experience and is a defense because it carries one s thoughts away from some present difficulty. Active reversal: regression as a therapeutic tool: the acknowledgment and working through of repressed experiences and emotions, allowing us to alter the effects of a wound only when we re-live the wounding experience. Fear of intimacy: fear of emotional involvement with another human being keeps us more distant from our own emotions and therefore learning more about our own psychological wounds. By not letting ourselves get closer to others we protect ourselves from the painful past experiences that intimate relationships inevitably drag up. Anxiety: a temporary break down of our defenses which can reveal our core issues. In a way it involves the return of the repressed: I am anxious because something I repressed some painful experience is resurfacing and I want to keep it repressed.

53 Other approaches one can also use with the Psychoanaly2cal Literary Cri2cism: 1) Maslow s Hierarchy of Needs 2) Erikson s Stages of Development

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56 Psychoanalytical Literary Criticism

57 The Issue of Over- Analyzing One of the biggest criticisms of psychological approach is the tendency to see sex in everything. Any concave item (ponds, cups, vases, caves) viewed as female symbols Any elongated item (towers, mountains, peaks, snakes) viewed as phallic symbols Certain activities (dancing, riding, flying) viewed as symbols of sexual pleasure What makes sense for psychoanalysis does not necessarily make sense for literary analysis. Another area of concern about the psychological approach is the belief that sexuality is present from infancy on through life. The erogenous zones Oral fixations Oedipus complex comes to fruition around age 5 Analyzing children in literary works from a sexual perspective is very disconcerting.

58 The Issue of Over- Analyzing: The Connection to Formalism Formalism is a literary criticism approach that says a piece of work is not about author s intent, but about what actually ended up on the page and what meanings are present in the work regardless of intent. Despite the importance of the author s role here, psychoanalytic criticism does not concern itself with what the author intended, but instead what the author never intended (that is, what was repressed or in the author s subconscious).

59 An important thing to keep in mind: To some extent, all creative works are a product of the author s conscious and/or unconscious mind. Any human production that involves images, that seems to have narrative content, or relates for the psychology of those who produce or use it can be interpreted using psychoanalytic tools.

60 Use the characters in the text! A great way to practice psychoanalytical criticism is to analyze the behavior of the characters in the text. Often the characters behavior represents the psychological experience of the author or of human beings in general.

61 Psychoanalysis and Literature Questions: 1) What role should an author s literary output play in our psychoanalysis of his or her life? 2) To what extent is it legitimate to psychoanalyze literary characters as if they were real people? 3) What role do readers play in creating the text they are reading by projecting their own desires and conflicts onto the work? 4) Which concepts are operating in the text in such a way that will enrich our understanding of the work? Two Ground Rules: 1) When we psychoanalyze literary characters, we are not suggesting that they are real people but they represent the psychological experience of human beings in general. 2) It is just as legitimate to psychoanalyze the behavior represented by literary characters as it is to analyze their behavior from any other critical perspective.

62 How to read a TEXT using the Psychoanaly2cal Literary Cri2cism The job of the psychoanalytical critic is to see which concepts are operating in the text that will yield a meaningful psychoanalytical interpretation. For Example: You might focus on the work s representation of oedipal dynamic of family dynamics in general. You might focus on what work tells us about human beings psychological relationship to death or sexuality. You might focus on how the narrator s unconscious problems keep appearing over the course of the story.

63 Psychoanalysis and Literary Texts: Questions for Analysis 1) What unconscious motives are operating in the main characters? What is being repressed? Remember that the unconscious mind consists of repressed wounds, fears, unresolved conflicts, and guilty desires. 2) Are there any oedipal dynamics or any other family dynamics at work here? Is it possible to relate a character s pattern of adult behavior to early experiences in the family as repressed in the story? 3) How can characters behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of regression, projection, fear of or fascination with death or sexuality? 4) In what ways is the literary work like a dream? How might recurrent or striking symbols reveal the way the speaker is projecting his or her unconscious desires, fears, wounds, or unresolved conflicts onto other characters, the setting or the events portrayed? 5) Look for symbols relevant to death and sexuality (yonic and phallic symbols). 6) Evaluate the text as a dream.

64 Psychoanaly2cal Literary Cri2cism For Freud, the unresolved conflicts that give rise to any neurosis creates the stuff of literature. A work of literature, he believes, is the external expression of the author s unconscious mind. Accordingly, the literary work must then be treated like a dream, applying psychoanalytic techniques to the text to uncover the author s hidden motivations, repressed desires, and wishes. - Literary criticism, 4 th ed., Bressler, p. 149