Psychoanalytical Criticism

1. Understand the Theory Lois Tysons Explanation

a. Key Assumptions
(1) Literary characters represent the psychological experience of human beings in general
(2) Psychoanalytical dimensions of the literary characters are primarily responsible for driving
the narrative (repression; unconscious motives; core issues; oedipal or other family
dynamics)
b. Key Terms
(1)

(2)
(a)
(b)
(c)

Some Freudian Terms

(a) Latent Content dreams underlying meaning, message of the unconscious
(b) Manifest Content the unconscious message disguised through primary revision
(c) Condensation dreams using a single image or event to represent more than
one unconscious wound or conflict
(d) Phallic Symbols male imagery, towers, rockets, guns, arrows, swords, and the
like (important sinceaccording to Freudour sexuality is at the center of our
understanding of ourselves)
(e) Female Imagery caves, rooms, walled-in gardens . . . stand-in[s] for the womb
(f) Thanatos death drive, driven by the id, used to explain destructive behavior
(g) Pleasure Principle unconscious wish for pleasure or power
(h) Repression expunging unhappy events of childhood from the conscious mind
(i) Oedipal Conflict competition of child with parent of the same gender for
attention and affection of the parent of the opposite gender
(j) Denial believing that a problem doesnt exist or that the unpleasant incident
never happened
(k) Avoidance staying away from people or situations that are liable to make us
anxious by stirring up some unconscious (repressed) experience or emotion
(l) Displacement taking it out on someone or something less threatening than the
person who caused our fear, hurt, frustration, or anger
(m)Projection ascribing our fear, problem, or guilty desire to someone else and then
condemning him or her for it, in order to deny that we have it ourselves
(n) Insecure or Unstable Sense of Self inability to sustain a feeling of personal
identity, to sustain a sense of knowing ourselves, makes us vulnerable to influence
of others, & we may continually change the way we look or behave based on
those around us
(o) Trauma breakdown of psychological defenses, anxiety cannot be abated if truth
hidden by repression comes out before conscious self can handle it or disguise it
(p) Superego the social values and taboos that we internalize (consciously or
unconsciously) and experience as our sense of right and wrong
(q) Id psychological reservoir of our instincts and our libido; devoted to the
gratification of prohibited desires of all kinds
(r) Ego conscious self that experiences the external world through the senses &
plays referee between the id and the superego
Some Lacanian Terms
Mirror Stage the time (usually between 6 & 8 months) when an infant realizes he/she is separate from
his/her mother
Imaginary Order preverbal experience, world of perception
Desire of the Mother two-way desire between mother and childchilds needs are met, mother wants
to meet childs needs; during Imaginary Order

(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)

Symbolic Order acquisition of language (experience of separation, particularly from the mother, which
initiates an experience of loss and the primary drive of desire to reclaim that which was lost)
objet petit a the lost object, the experience of completeness, plenitude, and union with our mother/our
world; also anything that puts me in touch with my repressed desire for my lost object
Other authority figure or accepted social practiceintimately tied to language since language
preexists our entrance into it andaccording to Lacandictates so much of our self-understanding
Real that which is beyond all meaning-making systems . . . the uninterpretable dimension of
existence
Trauma of the Real the idea that the reality hidden beneath the ideologies society has created is a
reality beyond our capacity to know and explain and therefore certainly beyond our capacity to control
c. Key Questions / Goals
(1) Can characters behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of
psychoanalytical concepts?
(2) See page 38 in Tyson for more specific questions that show how this general question can be
fitted to different types of psychoanalytical readings

2. Using the Theory

a. As a Class with a Poem (bring [some of] the theorys key assumptions, key terms, key questions /
goals to bear on our understanding / reading of a poem)
(1) Using Tysons question #4 from page 49: How might we use an understanding of
repression, the superego, and dream symbolism (especially water as a symbol of the
emotions or of sexuality) to help us interpret Emily Dickinsons I Started EarlyTook My
Dog (1862)?
(2) Heres the poem with a psychoanalytical reading addressing just this question:
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/dog.html
b. As Practiced by a Critic in Reading of Turn of the Screw (Zacharias reading, pages 320-332 of
James)
(1) Identify the key assumptions, key terms, key questions as put into practice by the critic; also
consider the rhetorical devices the critic uses, the evidence drawn onboth from the literary
text and from any theoretical works
(a) Lacanian reading of the text evident by his direct mention of Lacan , but also by
the terms he uses: Other, objet petit a, and desire, all crucial concepts to Lacanian
psychoanalytical criticismand particularly crucial to clarifying Lacans major
theory as it relates to this story: that language use and self-identity and
understanding are ultimately tied up with one another, the unconscious itself being
shaped by language use, a system that preexists the subjects entering into it
therefore, the subject is at the mercy of the external order or big Other that governs
its life
(b) Thesis seems to be: Her reporting of the fantasy comprises a particular form of
confession to the big Other, the figure of authority by which she organizes her life.
It is through that narrative confession that we readers learn the governesss truth. At
the same time the big Other plays a role, so too does the little other, Lacans objet
petit a[utre], the cause of the desire, both in the fantasy and in the representation of
her confessional identity (321).
(c) Notice how Zacharias interweaves evidence from the story with explanation / his
understanding of the terms and concepts from Lacangreat places to notice his
ability to do this are as follows: bottom of 321, middle of 322, top middle of 323,
top of 324, bottom of 327, bottom of 330

(d) Notice that in Zacharias works cited, he builds on both theory (Lacan, Zizek, Homer
Foucault is also theorist, but Zacharias doesnt integrate his ideas as fully into his
argument as Lacans and Zizeks) and primary text (James); he additionally draws on
criticism (Wilson and Felman) to support or clarify his reading
(2) Ask the following questions: How does this reading ask us to understand the story? How
does it clarify certain aspects of the story that perhaps were unclear before? What aspects of
the story does it fail to address? What conclusions does the criticism draw that seem
untenable?
(a)

These questions you will have to address yourself but they do give you a starting point for things
youll need to consider when creating your own poetics for your final paper

3. Evaluating the Theory Ill leave these questions with you today since I have to leave early;
contemplate what some of the strengths and weaknesses of psychoanalytical criticism are, what are the
implications of its worldview. . . On Wednesday, I suggested one: that though Freuds theory of the id,
ego, and superego seem to jive with the Christian truth of original sin, Freuds understanding and
explanation of this aspect of all human beings attempts to divorce morality and ethics from the libidinal
(his term) forces that drive individualsconsider what might be others
a. Strengths
b. Weaknesses
c. Implications of Its Worldview
d. Judged against a Christian Worldview
4. Reading a Theorist the challenging part! Lacans The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious
a. consider implications
b. gain a fuller picture
c. more precise explanation of terminology or concepts to employ in reading of literary texts
(1)

Though he doesnt explicitly state it, this essay teases out Lacans understanding of the Symbolic order,
that its present at a persons birth (and he/she even enters into it at birthby virtue of being assigned a
name) and therefore the Symbolic Orders function goes well beyond Saussures explanation of
linguistics: language is not merely an articulation/descriptive system (as Saussure noted it is); according
to Lacan, its a law-giving system, its a directive, the agent that dictates our understanding of the
world around ussee the example of boy and girl on the train, page 1173 & the footnote at the bottom

(2)

In a sense, individuals themselves (not just or necessarily even the reality around them) are written on
by the language system, defined, organized

(3)

Therefore, individuals participate in this language system and use it to protect themselves (much like
Freuds idea of unconscious defenses), but in doing so, they also reveal key issues (consider the
psychoanalytical reading of James governessshe is using language to both reveal and conceal the
underlying desires that drive her behavior): those processes are metaphor and metonymy (literary terms
and concepts that Lacan draws on to reveal the intersection and inseparability of language and the
unconscioussee pages 1177-1178)

(4)

Tyson says that metonymy as Lacan describes it (substituting the part for the wholethirty sails to
represent a fleet of ships, for example) parallels Freuds theory of dream displacementbut I think its
really condensationshe says that metaphor as Lacan describes it (substituting one idea for another)
parallels Freuds theory of dream condensationbut again, I think its really displacement

(5)

Basically, Lacan is extending Freuds understanding of the force of the unconscious beyond dreams,
jokes, and Freudian slips into our very make-up (the efficacy of the unconscious does not cease in the
waking state [1178])