Psychological criticism is another technical yet interesting lens of literary cri

Welcome to Psychological criticism! Psychological criticism is another technical yet interesting lens of literary criticism. Here, we will be psychologists and literary critics at the same time. Since literature mirrors the life of humans being portrayed, we are actually evaluating these lives as psychologists, so to speak. As we are analyzing how these people live their lives, we are also looking at the inner selves of humans.

“Novelist who go to psychiatrists are paying for what they should be paid for.” ~ Anonymous

Intended learning outcomes

At the end of this topic, you should be able to

Explain psychological criticism;
Discuss the gist of the drama “Oedipus Rex;”
Write a psychological criticism of a chosen literary piece.

Historical background

Early practitioners

Aristotle

In his book entitled “Poetics,” Aristotle said that human beings are endlessly interesting.
The effects of tragedy on an audience evoking a myriad of emotions, creates a catharsis of those emotions.
The first of the earliest writers and critics to question why we are drawn to writing stories and poems and why we like reading them.
“Does literature make us better individuals?”

Matthew Arnold

Literature makes us better individuals.
“Poetry could inspire and rejoice the reader.”

William Wordsworth

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of strong and powerful feelings recollected in tranquility.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Believes that there are two types of creativity:
1. Primary imagination – the living power and prime agent of all human perception
2. Creativity – has the capability to re-create the world of sense through its power to fuse and shape experience.
“Creativity dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Believes that there are two personalities:
1. Apollonian –they were guided by the use of critical reasoning
2. Dionysian –they were ruled by creative-intuitive power

What is Psychological criticism?

Psychological criticism refers to literary criticism which, in method, concept, theory, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud. Freud was assisted by his pupils: Alfred Adler, Otto Rank, Carl Jung and Karen Horney. Psychoanalytic reading has been practiced since the early development of psychoanalysis itself, and has developed into a rich and heterogeneous interpretive tradition. But who is Sigmund Freud?

Sigmund Freud

A neurologist practicing in Vienna, Austria.
Troubled that he could not account for the complaints of his patients whom he diagnosed as hysterics.
He inferred that their distress was caused by factors of which perhaps even they were unaware.
Fantasies and desires too bizarre are unacceptable to admit which were suppressed led to neuroses and illness.
Sigmund Freud’s major works include:
1. STUDIES IN HYSTERIA
  1. Published in 1895 in collaboration with Joseph Breuer
  2. Asserts that symptoms of hysteria are the result of unresolved but forgotten traumas from childhood
2. THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
  1. Published in 1900, he addressed fundamental concepts in psychoanalysis.
  2. Psychoanalysis is a treatment of psychological disorder in which a patient talks to a analyst about dreams, childhood, and relationships with parents and authority figures
3. DELUSIONS AND DREAMS IN JENSEN’S GRADIVA
  1. This is his first essay on psychoanalysis
  2. He psychoanalyzed the central character, noting the Oedipal effects behind the plot.
4. INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
  1. He wrote monographs on Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, and Leonardo Da Vinci
  2. “The artist has also an introverted disposition and has not far to go to become a neurotic.”

The Conscious vs unconscious

The Conscious mind

“The tip of the iceberg.”
Not aware of the submerged counterpart, it may mistake the real causes of behavior

The Unconscious mind

“The entire submerged iceberg.”
The root causes of one’s problems may be found in here.

The Tripartite Psyche

The Id
1. Entirely unconscious.
2. The repository of libido, the source of psychic energy and our psychosexual desires, but it gives us our vitality.
3. Operates without any thought of ethical consciousness.
4. Its aim is the gratification of all primal needs and wants.
The Ego
1. Half conscious and unconscious
2. Regulates the id’s energies and divert, delay and postpone them to more socially acceptable actions.
3. Mediates between our inner selves and our outer world, but not directly knowable.
4. We come closest to knowing it when it is relaxed in hypnosis, sleep, slips of the tongue and dreams.
The Supergo
1. Provides additional balance to the id
2. Similar to what is commonly known as “conscience,” it operates according to morality principle.
3. Parents, institutions, cultural norms and religious beliefs are the sources of superego.
4. Balance between the id and superego creates a healthy personality.
5. Overwhelming guilt = guilt complex, too strong superego = unhappiness

The Psycho-sexual development

AGE STAGE CHARACTERISTICS

0-1 Oral Stage Pleasure is derived from eating (sucking) and vocalizing
1-3 Anal Stage Pleasure is derived from retention or repulsion of feces
3-5 Phallic Pleasure from the genitals: Male (Oedipus) Female (Electra) complex
6-11 Latency Identification with same sex parental image
12-18 Genital Attraction to heterosexual opposites

Freud maintained that man is a pain and pleasure controlled organism. He normally avoids pain and strives to achieve pleasure. This, he is a organism with drive (libido) and passion to do certain acts which will multiply his pleasure and minimize his pain. As an individual grows up, he undergoes several stages. Along with these stages, there are pleasure and pain experiences. If he was not able to satisfy these things during his childhood, these unresolved issues will haunt him in his later stages of his life. These things will find their way out from the deepest recesses of his unconscious inner self.

The importance of dreams

Dreams are the language of the unconscious, unfulfilled desires are buried in there. Their content is rarely clear. Even when we sleep, the ego censors the unacceptable wishes.
Through the use of symbols that make repressed material more acceptable, if not readily understandable to us. The ego veils the meaning of our dreams from direct apprehension that would produce painful recognition.
Condensation is the process which makes use of symbols that make repressed material more acceptable, if not readily understandable to us, since the ego veils the meaning of our dreams from direct apprehension that would produce painful recognition.
Displacement is the moving of one’s feeling for a particular person to an object related to him/her to replace another which is closely related in whole or in part.

Freudian Symbolism

“If dreams are symbolic expressions of repressed desires, most of them sexual in nature; then the images through which they operate are they themselves sexual ones, usually in shapes.”

Yonic symbols are concave in shape, such as lakes, tunnels, cups, are assumed to be females.
Phallic symbols are convex in shape, such as trees, towers, spires, are assumed to be males.

Creativity

“There is a connection between the creative expression and dream stuff.”

The artist consciously expresses fantasy, illusion, and wishes through symbols, just as dreams from the unconscious do.
To write a story or a poem, then, is to reveal the unconscious; to give neurosis socially acceptable expression.

“The artist has also an introverted disposition and has not far to go to become a neurotic. He is one who is urged by instinctual needs which are too clamorous. He longs to attain honor, power, fame, and the love of women; but he lacks the means of achieving these gratifications. So, like any other with an unsatisfied longing, he turns away from reality and transfers his interest, and all his libido too, to the creation of his wishes in the life of fantasy, from which the way might readily lead to neurosis.” ~ Sigmund Freud, “Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis”

How to Read as a Psychological critic?

Limit yourself to a consideration of the work itself, looking at:
1. Conflicts
2. Characters
3. Dream sequences, and
4. Symbols
  1. Use Freudian languages (terms) to name your ideas
  2. Aware that outward behavior may not be consonant with inner drives
  3. Observe the perception of the hidden element of human nature, and the opposition between the hidden and the visible.

How to Write a Psychological Criticism?

Prewriting

Pay close attention to meaningful symbols.
Examine dream sequences.
Look closely at the character/s and write a character sketch about him/her using the following guides:
1. What do you see as the character’s main traits?
2. By what acts, dialogue, and attitudes are those traits revealed?
3. What does the narrator reveal about the character?
4. Does the character change? If so, how and why?
5. Where do you find evidence of the id, ego and superego at work?
6. Does the character come to understand something not understood at the outset?
7. How does the character view him-or herself?
8. How is he or she viewed by other characters? -Do the two views agree?
9. What images are associated with the character?
10. What principal symbols enrich your understanding of the characters?
11. What symbols are connected with forces that affect the characters?
12. Does the character have any interior monologues or dreams? If so, what do you learn from them about the character that is not revealed by outward behavior or conversation?
13. Are there conflicts between what is observable and what is going on inside the character? Are there any revealing symbols in them?
14. Are there suggestions that the character’s childhood experiences have led to problems in maturity, such as uncompleted sexual stages or unresolved
  dilemmas?
15. Where do the characters act in ways that are inconsistent with the ways they are described by the narrator or perceived by other characters?
16. Who is telling the story, and why does the narrator feel constrained to tell it?
17. How can you explain a character’s irrational behavior? What causes do you find? What motivation?

Drafting and revising

The Introduction
1. Announce at the outset what your primary focus will be (single character, the relationships among characters, meaningful symbolism, narrative patterns, author’s life, among others).
2. Comment on similarities and differences between the work you are studying and other works of the same author.
3. Discover parallels between the text you are reading and others that you have read written by some other authors.
The Body
1. Prove your case by using tenets of psychological or critical theory to explain your point, for example:
  1. A certain character cannot keep his job because he is resistant to authority because he has unresolved issues with his father.
2. If you have chosen a character as a principal topic, refer to your answers to the questions you had in the prewriting stage.
  1. Understand some struggles of the character, the epiphany he or she experiences, or the motivation behind some particular behavior.
3. You will devote that understanding in the body of your discussion using the following strategies:
  1. Reveal what is happening in the character’s unconscious as suggested by images, symbols, or interior monologue.
  2. Identify the nature of the character’s conflicts; look for indications whether he or she has the attitudes of a healthy adult male or female. If not, then neurosis needs to be identified and its source examined.
  3. Because any changes in the outlook or behavior of a character signal that some struggle has been resolved, for good or ill, assess their meaning.
  4. Examine whether a character operates according to the pleasure principle, the morality principle or the reality principle.
  5. Explain a character’s typical behavior by the determining whether the personality is “balanced” by the ego, or “dominated” by the id or the superego.
  6. Look carefully at any dreams that are recounted or alluded to. What repressed material are these dreams putting into symbolic form? What are they really about?
  7. Probe the meanings of symbols by thinking about them in terms of their male-ness and femaleness.
  8. Find some particular behavior that a character is fixated on, then trace it to some need or issue from childhood that went unsatisfied or unresolved.
  9. Note any conflicts or events in the author’s life that are reflected in the text.
The conclusion
1. Prepare a summary conclusion by observing the following tips:
  1. Reiterate some major psychological terminology that you have used.
  2. In the end, use a general or global view looking at the analysis as a whole.
  3. If you focused on only one topic, such as character or imagery, then a simple reiteration of the themes that grew out of what you found should suffice.

References

Dobbie, Ann B. (2009). Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Fry, Paul H. (2013). Theory of Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Habib, M. R. (2011). A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to Present. UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/722/
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (n.d.) Retrieved August 3, 2014 from Online Literature Network website, http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/158/

Psychological criticism