Teaching Literature through

Psychoanalysis Approach

Ronel D. Cornella
Psychoanalysis

A set of techniques,
based on the
theories of Sigmund
Freud, used to
explore underlying
motives and a
method of treating
various mental
disorders
Psychoanalysis (cont’d)

Psychoanalysis is the process by

which the unconscious is made
conscious and the "truth" about
ourselves is uncovered and
accepted so that psychological
healing and psychic growth can
occur.
Conscious Vs. Unconscious
Freud helped the world understand
that the "rational" adult who
functions more or less successfully
in the "real world" is only a part of
the total person
Under the rational self is the
unconscious self and Freud was
able to demonstrate the powerful
influence that unconscious feelings
and thoughts had on the health of
his patients.
Sigismund “Sigmund” Schlomo Freud
(1856-1939)
Freud believes in the notion of the
unconscious (part of the mind beyond
consciousness which nevertheless has a
strong influence upon our actions)
Linked with this is the idea of repression –
forgetting or ignoring unresolved conflicts,
unadmitted desires, or traumatic past
events, so they are forced into the
unconscious
Similar process: sublimation, where the
repressed material is ‘promoted’ into
something grander or disguised as
something noble (ie sexual urges may be
expressed in the form of intense religious
experiences or longings)
Freud suggested a three part model of the
psyche, dividing it into the ego, the super-
ego, and the id (three ‘levels’ of personality
corresponding to the consciousness, the
conscience, and the unconscious)
Freud’s Theories: The Origins of the
Unconscious
The goal of psychoanalysis is to help
us resolve our psychological problems
(called disorders or dysfunctions)
Psychoanalysts focus on correcting
patterns of behavior that are
destructive
One of Freud’s most radical insights
was the notion that human beings are
motivated by unconscious desires,
fears, needs, and conflicts
The Freudian Mind
The conscious mind is the part of the
mind that interacts with the outside
world. It is the decisions we make and
the actual thinking we do.
The unconscious mind is made up of
the impulses and instincts that dictate
our behavior without us knowing
about it
What is the Unconscious Mind?
The unconscious is the storehouse of those
painful experiences and emotions, wounds,
fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts
we do not want to know about
We develop our unconscious mind at a very
young age through the act of repression
Repression is the expunging of the
conscious mind of all our unhappy
psychological events
Our unhappy memories do not disappear in
the unconscious mind; rather, they exist as a
dynamic entity that influences our behavior
The Id, the Ego, the Superego
The Id
Made up of everything the Superego
disapproves of, including rage,
depression, “evil”, unchecked sexual
desire, addiction, utter hedonism without
restraint, etc.
The oldest mental province in the human
organism, present at birth, instinctual –
the drive to survive and to procreate.
Viewed ultimately as something that
needs to be held in check.
The Superego
The mental province that responds to the
demands of parental and immediate social
influences (laws, religious morays, etc.) on
behavior and propriety.
The parental/patriarchal and authoritarian
gaze that permeates and follows what you
do from childhood into adulthood. Doing
“what’s right” to the extreme.
The Ego

The intermediary between the Id’s desires

and the external world containing all of its
guidelines for behavior. The ego seeks to
balance the demands of the Id with the
restrictions of the Superego (cultural
norms, rules, moral restrictions). Also
referred to as the “Ideal Self” which
attempts to repress unchecked Id’s desires
while also allowing for acceptable levels of
satisfying needs rooted in the Id.
Freudian Criticism

The psyche
Id: desire, the pleasure
principle
Ego: self, the reality
principle
Superego: conscience,
morals, the perfection
principle (ego ideal)

“Freud’s Concept of the Personality.” Making the Modern

World. The Science Museum. 2004. Web. 18 Nov.
Family Conflicts
The Oedipus Complex: young boys between the
ages of 3-6 develop a sexual attachment to their
mothers. The young boy competes with his father
for his mother’s attention until he passes through
the castration complex, which is when he
abandons his desire for his mother out of fear of
castration by his father.
The Electra Complex: young girls compete with
their mothers for the affection of their fathers.
Freud believed all children must successfully pass
through these stages in order to develop normally.
Freud also believed that a child’s moral sensibility
and conscious appear for the first time during this
stage.
The Oedipus Complex
Essentially, it involves
children's need for their
parents and the conflict that
arises as children mature
and realize they are not the
absolute focus of their
opposite-gendered parent’s
attention.

The literal version of the

Oedipal/Electra complex is
that the child wants to
“marry” their opposite-
gendered parent, but might
figuratively refer to a desire
to go back to an earlier
stage of connectedness to
that parent (“back to the
womb,” if you will).
The Meaning of Death
Death is a difficult subject to analyze, often
because we have a tendency to treat death as an
abstraction.
By treating death as an abstraction, we can
theorize about it without feeling its force too
intimately because its force is much too
frightening.
Freud theorized that death is a biological drive
which he referred to as the “death drive”
The “death drive” theory accounted for the
alarming degree of self-destructive behavior Freud
observed in individuals
Our fear of death is closely tied to our fear of being
alone, our fear of abandonment, and our fear of
intimacy
The Meaning of Sexuality
Sexual behavior is a product of our culture
because our culture sets down the rules of
proper sexual conduct and the definitions
of normal/abnormal sexual behavior
Society’s rules and definitions concerning
sexuality form a large part of our superego.
The word superego implies feeling guilty
(even though some of the time we
shouldn’t) because we are socially
programmed to feel guilty when we break a
social value (pre-marital sex, for example).
The Meaning of Sexuality
The superego is in direct opposition to the
id, the psychological reservoir of our
instincts and libido. The id is devoted to
gratifying all our prohibited desires (sex,
power, amusement, food, etc.)
Because the id contains desires regulated
or forbidden by social convention, the
superego determines which desires the id
will contain
The ego plays referee between the id and
the superego; it is the product of the
conflict we feel between what we desire
and what society tells us we cannot have.
How to Read a Text using
Psychoanalysis
The job of the psychoanalytical critic is to
see which concepts are operating in the
text that will yield a meaningful
psychoanalytic interpretation. For
example:
You might focus on the work’s
representation of oedipal dynamic of family
dynamics in general
You might focus on what work tells us
about human beings’ psychological
relationship to death or sexuality
You might focus on how the narrator’s
unconscious problems keep appearing
over the course of the story.
Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism
Adopts the methods of "reading" employed by
Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It
argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the
secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the
author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the
author's own neuroses. It approaches an author’s
work as a kind of textual “talk therapy”.
One may psychoanalyze a particular character
within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that
all such characters are projections of the author's
psyche.
Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical endeavor
seeks evidence of unresolved emotions,
psychological conflicts, guilt, ambivalences, and so
forth within the author’s literary work. The author's
own childhood traumas, family life, sexual
conflicts, fixations, and such will be traceable
within the behavior of the characters in the literary
work.
Some Questions Psychoanalytic
Critics Ask about Literary Texts
What unconscious motives are operating in
the main characters? What is being
repressed? Remember that the
unconscious mind consists of repressed
wounds, fears, unresolved conflicts, and
guilty desires
Is it possible to relate a character’s
patterns of adult behavior to early
experiences in the family (as represented
in the story)? What do these behavior
patterns and family dynamics reveal?
Questions Psychoanalytic Literary
Theorists Ask about Literature
Psychoanalytic Questions
How does the work reveal the
particular conflicts produced by
family life or social conditions
during a particular historical
period?
Functions or dysfunctions of
society?
Psychoanalytic Questions
 Does the work suggest anything
about the psychological workings
of the author’s mind?
 Is there evidence of repression,
dreams and desire?
 What unresolved issues are
evident from unconscious behavior
and language?
Psychoanalytic Questions
What do the characters’
emotions and behaviour
reveal about their
psychological states? What
types of personalities are
they?
Id, ego or superego
Psychoanalytic Questions
Do the characters seem to participate
in Oedipal patterns of desire, guilt, or
punishment?
What unresolved issues are evident
from unconscious behaviour and
language? What neuroses (obsessive
or phobic behaviour), wounds, fears,
or desires do the characters`
express?
Psychoanalytic Questions

What unresolved issues are

evident from unconscious
behaviour and language? What
neuroses (obsessive or phobic
behaviour), wounds, fears, or
desires do the characters`
express?
Psychoanalytic Questions

What relationship do
characters have to the
human body or to its
desires and functions?
I know you’re sick of this book…
What’s with the recurrent images
of an apple?

What does the apple symbolize?

Why is a girl holding the apple?

What does this say about the

author’s repressed desires?

What about the apple is sexual?

Does the image of an apple have

any religious meaning?
ARABY
Activity

1 2

3 4
Focus of the Author

For psychobiography (focus on author)

To what extent does the text reveal the
author’s repressed desires?
What conflicts exist among the author’s id,
ego, and superego?
Does the text indicate any problems in the
author’s psychosexual maturation process
(e.g. Oedipus Complex, oral fixation, etc.)?
Focus on the Character
For psychoanalysis of character(s)
In what way does the text reflect the
psychosexual development of the
character?
Does the character demonstrate any
neuroses or psychoses?
Is the character’s behavior indicative of
or influenced by repressed desires or
conflicts among the id, ego, and
superego?
Focus on the Reader

For psychoanalysis of audience

What is the source of the text’s appeal to
the audience?
Does it reflect universal issues of
psychosexual development?
Does it allow the reader to vicariously
experience repressed desires?
Focus on the Text

Are there prominent words in the

piece that could have different or
hidden meanings? Could there be a
subconscious reason for the author
using these "problem words"?
What are the symbols relevant to
death and sexuality?
Limits
The danger is that the serious student may
become theory-ridden, forgetting that
Freud's is not the only approach to literary
criticism. To see a great work of fiction or a
great poem primarily as a psychological
case study is often to miss its wider
significance and perhaps even the
essential aesthetic experience it should
provide
Guerin, et al. it in A Handbook of Critical
Approaches to Literature
Philippians 4:8 (KJV)

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are

true, whatsoever things are honest,
whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report;
if there be any virtue, and if there be
any praise, think on these things.
Be careful!