English 60A: Contemporary Critical Theory

1993 HYPERTEXT DATABASE: PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

These materials were created by students back in 1993 as part of an early experiment with hypertext. They were designed to serve as a kind of online reference tool, an electronic database, that would provide information to students who weren't taking English 60A. The authors of these materials were Chris Abele, Liz Cronmiller, Allison DeZurik, Josh Hudson, Diana Marinos, Matt Ogborn, and Tamara Pellicier. If they ever visit this site, I hope they'll drop me a line.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud spent much of his life exploring the workings of the unconscious. Freud's work has influenced society in ways which we take for granted. When we speak of Freudian slips or look for hidden causes behind irrational behavior, we are using aspects of Freudian analysis. Many literary critics have also adopted Freud's various theories and methods. In order to define Freudian literary criticism, we will examine how various critics approach Freud's work. We will pay special attention to issues of creativity , author psychology , and psycho-biography .

Creativity and neurosis

Many of us may be familiar with the notion that creativity is intertwined with repression and pain. We may look at the paintings of Van Gogh as a recording of his descent into madness. Both the literary critic Lionel Trilling and Freud have written on the connection between the unconscious and artistic production. In The Liberal Imagination, Trilling writes of the "mechanisms by which art makes its effects" (53). Trilling suggests that these "mechanisms" make the thoughts of the unconscious more acceptable to the conscious, and he refers to "mechanisms" such as the "condensations of meanings and the displacement of accent" (53).

The processes of "condensation" and "displacement" are both described by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams: thoughts and images in dreams may have more than one meaning, Freud says, and one thought or image may be transferred onto another one, possibly because the mind finds the second thought or image more acceptable than the first one. Freud labels the former process "condensation" and the latter one "displacement." Freud devised these terms for his work on the unconscious and the dream process, but the terms also enter into discussions of the artist and her work, since many critics agree with Freud's opinion that the unconscious is the main site of the creative process, as well as the dream process.

Elaborating on this opinion, some critics have wondered to what extent the creative process springs only from those thoughts in the unconscious which result from neurosis. The critic Edmund Wilson has addressed this question in his book The Wound and the Bow. Wilson discusses creativity and neurosis in terms of the playwright Sophocles, and the writers Andr Gide and John Jay Chapman, and the attention paid by all three to the tale of the Greek warrior Philoctetes. The tale is about the nobility of those who suffer on the outskirts of society, and about a society which at the same time needs and rejects these outcasts. Wilson proposes "the idea that genius and disease, like strength and mutilation, may be inextricably bound up together" (289). Wilson notes that these three writers who have shown interest in the noble and suffering Philoctetes themselves all suffered from a type of neurosis (289, 293).

Author psychology

As Wilson's comments suggest, the question of creativity can lead us to focus on the psychology of the author. Such a focus might suggest that a text helps to explain the life and concerns of an author and vice versa. For example, Edmund Wilson argues that Sophocles wrote the play Philoctetes because he identified with the character. Both Sophocles and Philoctetes experienced madness, Wilson explains, and both were "persons of mysterious virtue, whom their fellows are forced to respect" (285-6). Just as Philoctetes suffered nobly from his physical ailment and went on to win the campaign for the Greeks, Sophocles rose above accusations of incompetence and earned the applause of his fellow men (285).

Overdetermination

Wilson says that Sophocles used the character of Philoctetes to symbolize both madness and nobility. Thus, Wilson might claim that this character was "overdetermined." This term was used by Freud in his work on dream analysis and refers to the process by which one image takes on more than one meaning. A Freudian literary critic might say that this process was also involved when Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness. The critic Frederick Karl notes that Conrad utilizes the jungle as a symbol not only of what we fear, but also of what we destroy (130-2). Through this symbol, Conrad voices his concerns on both political policy and the irrationality of human behavior.

Psychobiography

Some Freudian critics argue that a text also reflects the psychological make-up of the author. These critics often work in the area of psycho-biography. As Ross Murfin observes, an author may write in order to "gratify secretly some forbidden wish" (118). This unconscious wish makes its way into the text by the process of displacement. Murfin remarks that in order to uncover an author's wish, a critic will utilize some of the methods which Freud used to uncover the dream wish. By employing some of Freud's techniques, the critic may discover that a text, initially ambiguous in meaning, involves several different meanings.

Lionel Trilling explains that the purpose of this approach is not to expose the "shame" of the author, but to encourage the reader to regard a text as "no less alive and contradictory than the man who created it" (39). Thus, Trilling concludes, psycho-biography is not meant to confine the text to some hidden message, but rather it is meant to illuminate the text.

Freud and feminism

In some surprising ways, literary critics have shown that Freudian criticism does not exist in a vacuum. We might expect feminists to ignore Freud; but in fact several feminist critics have taken an interest in Freud's theories. Luce Irigaray, for example, examines Freud's belief that the female sexual identity results from a "castration complex" (406). According to Freud, when a girl realizes that she lacks a penis, the emotions which result from her lack of and desire for a penis will lead her to submit to the social patriarchy (406). Irigaray takes issue with Freud and his method of defining female sexuality in terms of lack--of having "nothing" (405). Irigaray suggests that having "nothing" means "having no thing, no being and no truth" (405). Irigaray's argument leads us to wonder if it is not the "castration complex" which determines a woman's role in the patriarchal system, but rather the definition of a woman as "nothing" which is reinforced by the roles and portrayals of women in society.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. New York: Basic Books, 1965.

Irigaray, Luce. "Another 'Cause'--Castration." Feminisms. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991. 404-12.

Frederick, Karl. "Introduction to the Danse Macabre: Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Heart of Darkness: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Ross C. Murfin. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. 123-138.

Murfin, Ross C. "Psychoanalytic Criticism and Heart of Darkness." Heart of Darkness: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Ross C. Murfin. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. 113- 123.

Trilling, Lionel. The Liberal Imagination. New York: Viking, 1950.

Wilson, Edmund. The Wound and the Bow. New York: Oxford UP, 1947.

Suggested reading

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Irigaray, Luce. "Another 'Cause'--Castration." Feminisms. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991. 404-12.

Karl, Frederick. "Introduction to the Danse Macabre: Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Heart of Darkness: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Ross C. Murfin. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. 123-138.

Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Tavistock Publications, 1977.

Trilling, Lionel. The Liberal Imagination. New York: Viking, 1950.

Wilson, Edmund. The Wound and the Bow. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947.

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revised October 3, 1997
mail to Tim Spurgin