psychoanalytic criticism

psychoanalytic criticism The application of psychoanalysis to the understanding of cultural texts, particularly literary and filmic texts. The originator of psychoanalysis, Freud, Sigmund, was fascinated by cultural texts and made extensive references to them throughout his writings. Indeed, one might argue that the foundational concept of the Oedipus complex is a product of Freud’s interest in literature, inasmuch that he speculates that Sophocles’ play still has a hold on us some 2,500 years after it is written because it dramatizes a universal experience. But Freud’s most important thoughts on the subject are to be found in two short essays, one on daydreams, the other on the notion of the uncanny. In the first essay, ‘Der Dichter und das Phantasieren’ (1908), translated as ‘Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming’ (1959), Freud argued that creative writing is a form of play in which the writer creates a fantasy world that he or she takes seriously. The artistry of writing lies in disguising, or better yet sublimation the libidinal dimensions of the fantasy world so that readers will not be put off or embarrassed by it. In the second essay, ‘Das Unheimliche’ (1919), translated as ‘The Uncanny’ (1955), Freud argued that literature’s ability to unsettle us stems from the way it reminds readers of their own traumatic, but unconscious events of childhood. In this way, Freud laid out the two main pathways that psychoanalytic criticism has followed since: on the one hand, it has tried to use the author’s life to understand their work, to see their creations as the product of unconscious desires; while on the other hand, it has tried to understand the effect creative works have by discerning in them repetitions of common symptoms and neuroses that all readers can identify with. In both cases, then, the creative work is apprehended as the representation of an unconscious wish, either the author’s or the reader’s. The body of research in this field is immense and includes many of the leading names in critical theory. Currently, the most prominent theorist in the field is Slavoj Žižek, but one must also mention the challenge to psychoanalysis posed by Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix---they do not reject psychoanalysis as many people think, but they do dispute the core idea of psychoanalytic criticism that all texts are so many rehearsals of unconscious fantasies. They argue that texts are better seen as machines that carry out essential psychic work. Further Reading: E. Wright Psychoanalytic Criticism (1984).