Psychoanalytic Criticism

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Psychoanalytic Criticism

• Whats wrong with these people?

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Based on writings of Sigmund Freud

• Psychoanalysis
• Id unintentional instincts
• Pleasure principle avoid pain, seek pleasure
• Ego organized realistic part
• Reality principle consciously seek to fulfill id
• Super-ego critical moralizing function
• The conscience

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Literary Texts

• Like dreams, express unconscious desires or
  anxieties
• Is a manifestation of authors neuroses
• Text is window into authors psyches
• Can also analyze one character, but usually
  concentrates on author

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Criticism seeks evidence of

• Unresolved emotions
• Psychological conflicts
• Guilts
• Childhood trauma
• Sexual conflicts
• Fixations
• Family issues

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Encoded

• Uses symbolism, metaphors, similes
• Repressed, not intentional
• Perhaps not even acknowledged by author

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Examples

• Oedipus a boy thrown away, a hero, only to be
  tricked by fate?
• OR
• Oedipus a boy in love with his mother who will
  stop at nothing to have her?