 Born May 6, 1856  Died September 23, 1939  Austrian psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology.  He analyzed the unconscious mind, dreams, the defense mechanism of repression, free association, transference, and sexual desire.

 When boys see their mothers as a sexual object and their father as an obstacle.  When girls see their fathers as a sexual object.  The Id is the impulsive, child-like portion of the psyche that operates on the pleasure principal and only takes into account what it wants, not consequence.

 The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche which takes ignores special circumstances that change the right thing to do in a given situation.  The rational ego attempts to find a balance between the impractical Id and the impractical moralism of the super-ego.  When the psyche is overwhelmed, it may use defense mechanisms such as denial, displacement, and repression.

 Psychoanalytic literary criticism refers to literary criticism which is influenced by the psychoanalysis theories of Sigmund Freud.  It is a literary approach where critics see the text as if it were a kind of dream. The text represses its real (latent) content behind obvious (manifest) content. The author takes the latent content, and through concentration and displacement, turns it into manifest content. This process is called dream work.  The critic analyzes the language and symbolism of a text to reverse the process of the dream work and arrive at the underlying latent thoughts.

 Questions asked:  The questions from these types of thinkers were always about reading beneath the surface, as some would do with dreams.  What sexual tensions can you sense between the characters?  Is there an underlying relationship between the members of this family?  Why is the author including these symbols? What hidden desires do these symbols represent?  What is the character trying to repress by taking this action?  Why does the character think this is a more acceptable concept/image/thought? (in relation to condensation and displacement)  What do you think is going on subconsciously that is driving the character to take such action?

 People either love Freud or they hate him.  Oedipal Complex and the associated ideas of castration anxiety and penis envy.  Emphasis on sexuality.  Often criticized is also is the unconscious.

 Family dynamics  It has become a common understanding that a childhood full of neglect, abuse, and tragedy tends to lead to an unhappy adult.  The idea of ego defenses.  The basic form of therapy has been largely set by Freud.

 Shakespeare's Hamlet is an excellent example of the Oedipus Complex. Hamlet shows envy for the men her mother is with, and even goes to mention, although inadvertently, incest and desire for his mother.  The best example of literature containing a Freudian theory is Oedipus.

The Architects But, as you'd expect, they are very Impatient, the buildings, having much in them Of the heavy surf of the North Sea, flurrying The grit, lifting the pebbles, flinging them With a hoarse roar against the aggregate They are composed of — the cliffs higher of course, More burdensome, underwritten as It were with past days overcast And glinting, obdurate, part of the Silicate of tough lives, distant and intricate As the whirring bureaucrats let in And settled with coffee in the concrete pallets, Awaiting the post and the department meeting Except that these do not know it, at least do not Seems to, being busy, generally. So perhaps it is only on those cloudless, almost Vacuumed afternoons with tier upon tier Of concrete like rib-bones packed above them, And they light-headed with the blue airiness Spinning around, and muzzy, a neuralgia Calling at random like frail relations, a phone Ringing in a distant office they cannot get to, That they become attentive, or we do — these Divisions persisting, indeed what we talk about, We, constructing these webs of buildings which, Caulked like great whales about us, are always Aware that some trick of the light or weather Will dress them as friends, pleading and flailing And fill with placid but unbearable melodies Us in deep hinterlands of incurved glass.

Boeree, George. "SIGMUND FREUD." Personality Theories Mar "Free Oedipal Complex Essays: Hamlet’s Oedipus Complex." 123HelpMe.com. 12 Mar Holcombe, John. "Freudian Literary Criticism." Textetc Mar McManus, Barbara. "Psychoanalytic Approaches." Oct Mar "Psychoanalytic literary criticism." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 30 Jan 2009, 21:37 UTC. 12 Mar 2009.