Freudian Criticism

Sigmund Freud: psychoanalysis

Think of a stereotypical psychological therapist's room. Have you imagined a room with a simple therapist's chair next to a long couch on which a patient can recline? Sigmund Freud and his work in psychoanalysis is the reason why we often associate psychological therapy with this image.

Sigmund Freud looking deeply into your unconscious mind, Pixabay

History of psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud began developing psychoanalytic theory in the 1890s when he worked with patients suffering from hysteria and neurosis as a neurologist (a doctor specialising in the brain and nervous system) in Vienna. During this time, he realised that many of his patients' symptoms had no conscious or physical causes, and so he directed his attention to their unconscious, psychological origins.

Freud went on to co-write a book called Studies on Hysteria (1895). The book detailed the new psychoanalytical approach to target patients' unconscious minds, such as repressed memories of past traumas, in order to treat their present symptoms.

Sigmund Freud: books

As well as Studies on Hysteria, Sigmund Freud published a huge number of books over the course of his life and career. Here is a very brief overview of a few you may come across in your studies.

Freudian psychoanalytic theory in literature

Sigmund Freud created and developed many theories that continue to be used in psychoanalytic literary criticism, including the three levels of consciousness, the theory of personality, the Oedipus Complex, and the uncanny.

Three levels of consciousness

Freud believed that human personality and behaviour are strongly influenced by three levels of consciousness: unconsciousness, preconsciousness, and consciousness.

• Unconsciousness consists of repressed or forgotten feelings, thoughts, desires, and memories that cannot be accessed by the conscious mind.

• Preconsiousness consists of feelings, desires, thoughts, and memories that can be recalled and brought into consciousness.

• Consciousness consists of feelings, desires, thoughts, and memories that we can easily access and be aware of.

Oedipus complex

Based on the Ancient Greek tragedy writer Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex (429 BCE), Freud theorised the Oedipus Complex. According to Freud, all infants develop an unconscious sexual attraction towards their opposite-sex parents and, as a result, aggressive rivalry towards their same-sex parents. This is a vital part of child development that usually resolves itself, but problems arise if it doesn't.

Personality

Freud argued that our behaviour and personality are affected by the three parts of our psyche: the id, the superego, and the ego.

• The id is an unconscious part of our personality that we are born with. It is governed by the instinctive pleasure principle, which drives us to seek pleasure above all else and needs to be kept in check as a result.

• The superego is a conscious and unconscious part of our personality. It develops after the id and the ego and conflicts with the id because it is driven by our morals.

• The ego is a conscious and unconscious part of our personality that exists between the id and superego to keep a balance between them.

The uncanny

In Freud's paper 'The Uncanny', he explores the aesthetics of horror and how some things have 'uncanny' properties that stimulate a sense of dread in humans.

Expanding on existing research, Freud argues that something is uncanny if it resembles the familiar and the unknown at the same time, where the unknown is often related to a repressed feeling, desire, thought, or memory from infancy.

For Freud, certain themes are more likely to be uncanny, including:

• Doubles, like twins or mirror reflections.

• Uncertain identities, like waxworks or dolls that seem both alive and dead at the same time.

• Madness, representing the uncontrolled manifestation of the repressed self.

• The loss of eyes representing a young boy's fear of castration as punishment from his father (relating to the Oedipus Complex).

Baby dolls are uncanny because they seem both animate and inanimate at the same time, Pixabay.

Freud's concept of the uncanny has often been linked to the gothic novel.

Freudian literary criticism

Sigmund Freud's theories, including the three levels of consciousness, the theory of personality, the Oedipus Complex, and the uncanny, are often used in literary analysis. Freud, himself, used his own psychoanalytic theory to analyse literature and even published books about it, including his 1907 essay 'Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva.'

Freudian criticism examples

Let's take a look at some examples of how you can apply each of Freud's most prominent theories in your own literary analysis.

Sigmund Freud quotes

Here are some quotes from Sigmund Freud that reflect his thoughts on how his theories could be applied to literary criticism.

In 'The Uncanny', Freud identifies literature as being a space in which authors can play with the concept of the uncanny. He argues that the more a work of fiction attempts to emulate real life, the higher its potential is for being uncanny.

In Freud's analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet in The Interpretation of Dreams, he argues that we can deduce aspects of the author's psyche from meanings in their texts and vice versa.