1. Psychoanalytic Theory

2. Definition
Psychoanalytic criticism applies the psychological principle and theory of how and why people behave to literature to interpret and evaluate it.

3. Focus
Text
Author
Character
Audience

4. Tenet/ Main Points
Language
Unconscious
Dreams
Symbolism

5. Key Concepts Most of the individual’s mental processes are unconscious
All human behavior is motivated ultimately by sexuality (libido)
Due to social taboos most sexual impulses, desires, and memories are repressed in human behavior

6. Assumptions The unconscious mind dominates the conscious mind
The unconscious mind expresses itself through symbols such as in dreams
Sexuality is a motivating force in human behavior

7. Unconscious
The unconscious is the storehouse of those painful experiences and emotions, those wounds, fears, guilty desires and unresolved conflicts we do not want to know about because we feel we will be overwhelmed by them.

8. Symbolism Freud: Behavior is motivated by sex
Some symbols are so ingrained in Id
Some have similar meanings for all people

9. Psychoanalytic critics look for
Sexual implications of symbols and imagery
Sexual development
Oedipus complex

10. Psychoanalytic Theory Iceberg

11. Fulfillment of repressed wishes coded in symbols
Dreams
Fulfillment of repressed wishes coded in symbols
Latent Dreams
Manifest Dreams

12. Dreams
When we are asleep the unconscious is free to express itself and it does so in our dreams

13. Stages of Psychosexual Development
0-1
1-3
3-5
6-11
12-18
Oral
Anal
Phallic
Latency
Genital
Pleasure from eating and vocalizing
Pleasure from retention or repulsion of feces
Touching genitals (Oedipal and Electra)
Identification with same sex parent
Sexual attractions

14. Defense mechanism
Our unconscious desires not to recognize or change our destructive behaviors- because we have formed our identities around them and because we are afraid of what we will find if we examine them too closely- are served by our defenses.

15. Defense mechanisms
Defenses are the processes my which the contents of our unconscious are kept in the unconscious. In other words, they are the processes by which we keep the repressed repressed in order to avoid knowing what we feel we can’t handle knowing.

16. Defense mechanisms
Selective perception: Hearing and seeing only what we feel we can handle
Selective memory: modifying our memories so that they don’t feel overwhelmed or forgetting painful events entirely
Denial: believing that the problem doesn’t exist for the unpleasant incidents never happened

17. Defense mechanisms
Avoidance: staying away from people or situations that are liable and make us anxious, steering up some unconscious
Displacement: taking it out on someone or something than the person who caused our fear, hurt, frustration or anger
Projection: attributing our fear problem or a guilty desire to someone else and then condemning him or her for in order to deny that we have it ourselves

18. Defense mechanism
Regression: Temporary return to a former psychological state which is not just imagined but relieved. Regression can involve either return to a painful or a pleasant experience. It is a defense because he carries out thoughts away from some present difficulty. For example Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman flashbacks to his past life

19. Question to ask about literary texts
How does repression shape the work? Remember, the unconscious consists of repressed wounds, fear, unresolved conflicts and guilty desires.
Arthur any Oedipal dynamics or any other family dynamics ? That is, is it possible to relate the characters’ pattern of behavior to early experiences in the family as represented in the story?

20. Questions to ask about literary texts
How can character’s behavior, events and images be explained in terms of the cycle analytics concepts of any kind? For example, regression, projection, fascination with sexuality which includes love, romance as well as sexual behavior for the operations of Ego,Id, and Superego.

21. Questions to ask about literary texts
What doesn’t work suggest about the psychological being of its author?