1. Literary Criticism and Theory

2.  Uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis to interpret literature  A part of everyday life  Internet and television has fueled our “knowledge” about psychoanalysis—no matter how simplistic  Psychoanalysis becomes cliché—psycho- babble  Psycho-babble fuels distrust in psychoanalysis

3.  Allowing the text to “speak freely”  Understanding key concepts of the human experience by psychoanalysis  Observing how these concepts work in our daily lives  Deciphering human behaviors  Analyzing literary text (which are about human behavior)

4. The following concepts presented are those psychoanalytic principals established by Sigmund Freud. There is a growing consensus that much of its therapeutic value is limited; his life-work is seriously flawed by methodological irregularities. Nevertheless, is remains a major contributor to the science of psychology, and thus his impact on how we think about ourselves remains immeasurable (Barry 96).  Psychological history begins in childhood  Freud’s major ideas center around the notion of the unconscious (the part of the mind beyond consciousness--)  The unconscious has a strong influence upon a humans actions  The unconscious is akin to the “id” component of the Freud’s three- part model of the psyche

5. “The notion that human beings are motivated, even driven, by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware—that is, unconscious—was one of Sigmund Freud’s most radical insights; and it still governs classical psychoanalysis today” (Tyson 14).  Freud’s major ideas center around the notion of the unconscious (the part of the mind beyond consciousness--)  The unconscious is the keeping room for all of those fears, wounds, unresolved conflicts, guilty pleasures, and desires we do not want to know about because they overwhelm us.  The unconscious has a strong influence upon a humans actions even though…  Repression expunges those unfortunate psychological events from our consciousness.  Birth of the unconscious lies in the way we perceive our place in the family structure.

6.  Forgetting or ignoring unresolved conflicts, unadmitted desires, or traumatic past events  Forced out of conscious awareness and into the realm of the unconsciousness—sometimes called sublimination  Emotion and experiences are NOT eliminated  Helps us organize our current experience  Repression leads us to behave in ways that allow us to “play out,” without admitting it to ourselves, our conflicted feelings about the painful experiences and emotions we repress.

7. The male infant conceive the desire to eliminate the father and become the sexual partner of the mother. The Oedipal conflict observes that there is competition with the parent of the same gender for the attention and affection of the parent of the opposite gender. _____________________ **Many of Freud’s ideas concern aspects of sexuality. You may have heard that men who enjoy cigars are actually “playing out,” latent homosexual tendencies whereby the cigar is phallic (representing the male sexual organ). As a result, some objects such as towers, ladders, and even walking canes in dreams and in our case stories, may be considered phallic symbols. In other words, “if it stands upright or goes off, it might be functioning as a phallic symbol” (Tyson 20). But even Freud himself quipped that “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Freud, of course, was a heavy cigar smoker. ** All things being equal, “female imagery can include caves, rooms, walled-in-gardens, cups, or enclosures and containers of any kind. If the image can be a stand-in for the womb, then it might be functioning as female imagery” (Tyson 20).

8.  Defenses are the process by which the contents of our unconscious are kept away from our conscious—a way to keep the hidden, hidden. This can be done by selective perception (seeing/hearing what you want to see/hear) or selective memory (modifying memories so that they don’t overwhelm). Words that may apply are denial, avoidance, displacement and projection.  Regression is a defense that involves the temporary return to a former psychological state, which is not just imagined but relived.  When our defenses momentarily break down, we experience anxiety. Anxiety reveals our core issues.

9. Fear of Intimacy Fear of Abandonment Fear of Betrayal Low self-esteem Insecure or Unstable Sense of Self Oedipal Fixation Our core issues stay with us throughout our lives and, unless effectively addressed, they determine our behavior in destructive ways of which we are usually unaware. In other words, anxiety can tell us a good deal about ourselves because we are anxious in situations in which our core issues are in play. [As noted], patterns in our behavior, if we can recognize them provide clues, especially in the area of interpersonal relations, and, within that domain, especially in our romantic or sexual relationships, because it is here that our initial unresolved conflicts within the family are reenacted.

10.  Latent content is the message our unconscious expresses in our dreams.  These messages are altered through dream displacement or dream condensation.  Displacement: whenever we use a “safe” person, event, or object as a stand-in to represent a more threatening person event or object.  Condensation occurs during a dream whenever we use a single dream or event to represent more than one unconscious wound or conflict.  We may change our dreams in the unconscious to protect ourselves even further.

11.  Our relationship to death is a principal organizer of our psychological experience.  Death drive—thanatos (Freud)  Humans, according to Freud, possess a staggering degree of self-destructive behavior (both psychologically and physically).  Death—or fear of death, according to Tyson, is intimately connected to a number of other psychological realities.  Death is the ultimate abandonment  Fear of death is often responsible for fear of intimacy.  Death is not just a physical loss, but also may be considered a loss of attention, love, health, job, looks, money, etc.

12.  Sexuality may a hold most “frightening power in our lives” (Tyson 24).  Freud labels this drive as eros, opposite to the death drive which is called (thanatos)  Sexuality is part of our identity and relates to our capacity to feel pleasure in ways that are not generally associated with sex.  Sexuality is one of the clearest and most consistent barometers of our psychological state.  The new interpretation of penis envy (25, 26)  The new interpretation of castration anxiety (25, 26).

13.  The fragmented formless infant  The Mirror Stage (6-8 months): The child experiences herself through reaction of others  The Imaginary Order: The child experiences through images  Desire of the Mother: I need mother and mother needs me. That is all.  Symbolic Order: A child’s acquisition of language—a separation of the intimate experience we have with our mothers and our most important experience of loss—one that will haunt us all of our lives. We spend the rest of our lives unconsciously pursuing this relationship.

14.  How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?  Are there any oedipal dynamics—or any other family dynamics– at work here?  How can characters behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind?  In what ways can we view a literary work as analogous to a dream?  What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?  What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader?