On Psychoanalysis: Freud

Psychoanalytic criticism is based on the premises and procedures established by Sigmund Freud. In this form of criticism, a literary work is viewed as a disguised form of libidinal wish-fulfillment of the author or of a character. According to this mode of criticism, a literary work is like a dream and consists of the imagined or fantasized fulfillment of wishes that are either denied by reality or are prohibited by social standards of morality. In the unconsciousness of the author, these desires, mainly libidinal or sexual desires come in conflict with the ‘censor’ (or the standards of society internalized by the individual) and are repressed by it. However, it is through literature that these desires find their expression, however, in a distorted form to disguise their real motives from the conscious mind.

The conscious mind does this through the processes of concentration, displacement and symbolism. This is known as dream work. The critic analyzes the language and symbolism of such a text to reverse the process of the dream work and arrive at the underlying latent or hidden thoughts. Eg Hamlet and Oedipus. Although such criticism tends to be reductive, explaining away the ambiguities of works of literature by reference to established psychoanalytic doctrine, some other imp approaches developed from this. For example, the Jungian criticism with itsmythocriticism and archetype analysis. Then, Lacan’s theories which apply Freud and Saussure, and says that the unconscious is structured like a language.

Among modern critical uses of psychoanalysis is the development of "ego psychology" in the work of Norman Holland, who concentrates on the relations between reader and text - as with reader response criticism. 'Holland's experiments in reader response theory suggest that we all read literature selectively, unconsciously projecting our own fantasies into it'. Like all forms of literary criticism, psychoanalytic criticism can yield useful clues to the sometime baffling symbols, actions, and settings in a literary work.