Psychoanalytical Criticism (Psychological Criticism)

“Psyche” the Greek word means spirit, soul, or mind. Psychology is the science of the mind. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the celebrated Austrian psychologist coined the term psychoanalysis

in 1896. He used the term to describe the therapeutic technique of deeply probing into the unconscious. For Freud human mental activity is controlled by the “unconscious” mind and the primary source of psychic energy is sexual - “libido”.

          

         Psychoanalytic criticism is a form of literary criticism which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature. Broadly, psychological criticism deals with the

work of literature as the expression of the inner psyche or character and personality of the author. This was made possible with Sigmund Freud’s important work The Interpretation of Dreams

published  in  1900.    There  is  nothing  new  in  linking  the  author  and  his  work  very  closely.

Coleridge, with his theory of imagination, proceeded on the path of psychological criticism. John Livingston Lowes’ The Road to Xanadu on the sources of Coleridge’s “Rime of Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan” are a sort of non Freudian psychological criticism.

  Linked with Freud’s idea of the unconscious is the idea of “repression” which is the “forgetting” or ignoring of unresolved conflicts, unadmitted desires or traumatic past events which will remain in the unconscious. Through “sublimation” the repressed material is promoted into something grander or is disguised as something “noble.” For example, repressed sexual urges may

be given sublimated expression in the form of intense religious experiences or longings. Repressed experiences also reappear in the form of dream images through a process of displacement and condensation. Displacement is a process wherein one person or event is represented by another which is in some way linked to it. In condensation, a number of people, events or meanings are combined and represented by a single image in the dream. Dreams, thus, communicate indirectly. The purpose of devices like displacement and condensation is two-fold. Firstly these devices disguise the repressed fears and wishes so that they can get past the bodily censor which normally prevents their surfacing into the conscious mind. Secondly, they mould this material into something that can be converted into images, symbols and metaphors which then can be represented in the dream. In the same way, slips, spoonerisms jokes etc, are repressed experiences represented in different forms. By analyzing and coming to the root cause of such manifestations,

psychoanalytic interpretation is able to uncover deep rooted psychological problems. Freud, later suggested a three part model of psyche, dividing it into the “ego,” the “super ego,” and the “id”

which roughly correspond to the consciousness, the conscience and the unconscious.