Critique of Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism - Research Paper Example

Critique of Psychoanalytic Literacy Criticism Introduction The concept of Psychoanalytic literary criticism could have its roots in the works of the Austrian psychologist Freud. This form of literary analysis could have significant similarities with the psychological, literary analysis were a commonplace in the study of literature in the nineteenth century (Das, 105). However, the two forms of literary analysis vary in implementation. For instance, in psychological criticism, the object of study is the mental development of the author and the motivations of the same in coming up with the kind of work that they develop. In psychoanalytic criticism, the intention of the analyst is the overall background of the author and how it might have speculatively influenced the work of the same author. It also identifies the fact that the difference between these subjects of psychological and psychoanalytic criticisms is broadly similar and could be addressed by three main facts about this form of analysis. The facts are to do with the unconscious mental process of an individual. This includes the fact that human behavior is being motivated by own sexuality and the norm that are associated with sexuality in different cultures shaping or repressing the desire of these individuals. In Freud’s original argument, the process of dreaming is controlled by the sub-conscious mind and cannot be manifested in the wake status of an individual. However, according to Lacan, one of the proponents and developers of the psychoanalytic criticism, the sub-conscious mind can be manifested in the wake status. This can be derived from the comments that individuals joke with or the slips of the tongue or other unintended actions like puns. The works by Lacan further developed the concept of psychoanalytic criticisms that has evolved over time to be employed in different forms of art. Discussion The concept of psychoanalytic literary criticism is the psychoanalysis of the author or a particular interesting character is a given work. Just like other forms of literary criticism, psychoanalytic criticism can results to important clues to the something baffling symbols actions and setting s of literary work. Early psychoanalytic literary criticism most of the time treat the text as if it were a kind of a dream. That is; the text inhibits its original content beyond obvious content. It is worth noting that this process of changing the text is regarded as dream work and is characterized by concentration and displacement. Critics consider language and symbolism of a text to reverse the process of the dream and instead achieve the hidden or absolute latent thoughts. Psychoanalytic criticism illustrates how literary texts are actually developed. According to Freud, literary texts are like dreams. That is, they are characterized by unconscious material in the form of complex displacement and condensations. This is an argument that claims that literature does not exist as a direct translation of the unconscious into symbols that represents unconscious meanings. On the contrary, literature displaces unconscious drives, desires and motives into imaginary that might not resemble the original format. However, critics of Freudian psychoanalytic believe that literary work is characterized by both conscious and an unconscious meaning. This means that, psychoanalytic analysis can examine the unconscious motives of both author and characters, and identify psychoanalytic features in the text. According to the Freud, the dreams that an individual has are a result of some subconscious wish of the same individual. The subconscious wishes of a person are a result of some desires that are repressed within a person and cannot be achieved within the real life. In dreams, a person fulfills the desires and achieves the pleasures associated with the same. The manifest content of a dream is the actual objects and symbols. These objects can be read to mean different objects and signs of the same. The dreams provide for latent content and manifest content. In the manifest content, the actual items and symbols of a dream are portrayed. This could be actual objects and signs that depict real meaning in life. The interpretation of the objects and the depiction of the symbolism give a dream the latent content. According to Freud, the powers of motivating adults are mainly unconscious. That is, the dreams resulted to hidden ways that helped in accessing repressed wishes in unconscious. However, it is worth noting that Freud believed that our unconscious was influenced by childhood events. In this regards, he organized these events into important developmental stages that comprise relationship with parents and drives of desires and pleasures. The stages reflect the foundations of desire, but they include fear of loss and repression. However, Tyson tends to analyze Feud’s work and ascertains that repression doesn’t eliminate our painful experiences and emotions. He argued that an individual’s conflicted feelings about the painful experiences and emotions results to repress. That not-withstanding, Feud highlights that an individual develop defenses such, selective memory, selective perception, projection, denial, fear of death, fear of intimacy, regression and many more. In fact, Feud ascertains that id, ego and superego are as a result of an individual’s desires and unconscious conflicts. According Freud, the Oedipus complex constituted one of the most effective determinative elements when it comes to child growth. In basic terms, the Oedipus complex involves the desire of a child to their parents and the conflict that arises as the child grows to become an adult. It is worth noting that Oedipus complex develops different among boys and girls. According to Freud, boys and girls possess their mothers but as they grow older they realize that their claim of possessing their mother is limited by the mother’s attention to the father. As a reactionary measure, they connect this conflict of attention to the intimate relation between the parents. In a nutshell, the impact of the unconscious, id, ego, superego, the defenses, and the Oedipus complexes are inescapable and form the basis for an individual’s behavior, according to Freud. The Freudian interpretation of dreams provoked a lot of discussion and criticism. According to the author, the dreams that an individual had been as a result of some subconscious mind and were to do with the sexuality of a person. Several critics have emerged that look into the relevance and interpretation of the work. Journals and articles have also looked into the claims that were made in this field with the aim of understanding or putting to context the works of Freud. Michael Schredl, in his critique of the Freudian interpretation of dreams, came up with the continuity theory of dreams which put emphasis on the fact that dreams are a function of the activities to which one engaged in during non-sleep moments. According to his theory when one had a lot of contact with sexual activities during the day, then chances were high that he would dream about them when he retires to sleep (Shrendl, 44). He emphasized that dreams are a reflection of daily life concerns, thoughts or experiences into which one is involved. Schredl developed a mathematical model which relates the day-to-day activities and the possible dream. His model was used to study the probability of the daily waking experiences translating into dreams. The model targeted to study the time interval, emotional intensity and personality dimensions between the experiences of waking up and the dreams that would follow (Shrendl, 45). One of the greatest critics of Freudian psychoanalytic literary analysis was Lacan. According to Lacanian, language and the unconscious are identical. For instance, metaphor and metonymy was similar to Freud’s theories of condensation and displacement. For instance, Lacan claims that one thing represents another by means of the part standing for the whole; while Freud argued that a single element might represent another element by displacement such as when Italy is represented by a bowl of pasta. According to Lacan, there exists a linguistic aspect of Freud’s work. Whenever a discussion of unconscious is taking place, the amount of linguistic analysis increases such many kinds of word play manifest the content of the unconscious. In Freud’s dream of Immas injection, for instance, his interpretation advanced the theory of continued hypothesis (Shrendl, 45). His analysis reflected the significant issues which bedeviled his life during that period. His interpretation reflected on his profession as to whether he had developed a new medication mode. It led him to worry about his nonorganic treatment. Dreams perpetuate the aspirations and life patterns of an individual. Events that are significant, the experiences to which we attach great value and our general feelings have a direct bearing on the kind of dreams that occur to a person. According to this theory, it is what interests us and what concerns us greatly that appears in our dreams (Shrendl, 46). Calvin S. Hall brought a new perspective to the Freudian school of thought. He inclined to the psychoanalytic theory based on the interpretation of dream symbols. Hall analyzes dream books which are a particular type of dictionary that is used to give meaning to symbols of dreams. The meanings attached to the symbols are referred to as referents, which are either right or bad fortune. This is based on the principal that dreams are prophetic, and it is people’s common habit to be enthusiastic of what the future holds for them. The books are also based on the premise that dreams are symbolic, and these symbols are presumed to be universal. They can, therefore, be used to decode dreams universally. Freud borrowed two aspects of the dream books about the symbols and their universality but failed to recognize the prophetic theme (Hall, 170). Freud claimed that the symbols appear in dreams because the items they represent are not in the taste of the sensor. The symbols would be associated with their referents by either resemblance or association. The aspects of resemblance would be adopted based on the following: shape, function, action, color, value, number, sound, quality and status. On the other hand, referents would be associated with their respective symbols based on contiguity, part or whole as well as on the basis of contrast (Hall, 171). Hall disagrees with Freud based on the fact that from experience, outspoken dreams occurred alongside symbolized dreams. Hall proclaims that one is likely to dream about some activity in real terms in one dream while during another dream; it could be the same dream but disguised. Hall also singled out the fact that there are people who are capable of interpreting dreams very accurately without making inferences to the symbols and referents as prescribed by Freud (Hall, 180). In his critique of the word used as symbols were synonymous or occasionally the same words that were in use in slang, so he failed to see the value in the use of dream dictionary. Both slang and dream symbols emanate from mans disposition to express his ideas in a concrete modality; slang utilizes figures of speech while dreams make use of imagery. Hall also faulted the use of multiple symbols to represent the same referent. A typical example was in the use of so many symbols to represent the genitals, masturbation and sexual intercourse (Hall, 183). Hall depicts that Freud was very explicit in making people believe that the mind works in a very complex manner during sleep. According to him, the brain should be at rest and not engage in substantial activity of transforming referents to symbols instead of resting as is believed during sleep moments. Hall concludes that dream symbols can be conceptualized from the dream on its own or other dreams (Hall, 186). The third critic is from the work of Avinash De Sousa. This gives the psychoanalysis a very modern approach by emphasizing the dualism that exists between the body and mind. According to him, psychoanalysis viewed the mind as being subconscious and looking at it as conscious is a vague principle (Sousa np). Ego psychology is crucial in today’s psychological studies, and it is intertwined with several other studies to give us a clear comprehension of consciousness. Unconsciousness may be a product if things that were in a conscious state but suffered repression. Freud did not view the subconscious and conscious minds as independent and antagonistic agencies of the mind. The two exist harmoniously and without recognition of the other. Freud stipulates that the unconsciousness may exist only as long as there are believed to be gaps existing in a conscious state. However, consciousness is believed to exhibit a unique type of unity that does not tolerate the existence of the differences. The differences are psychological in nature and may require psychological explanation if they exist. The rating of unconsciousness is above mere nominal differences like reasons why people fail to recall what they knew previously (Sousa np). Cognitive psychology is used here to counter Freudian theory because of the close relationship between cognitive psychology and cognitive theory in all spheres of modern psychology. Freud did recognize the fact that all conscious minds are accessible to awareness (epistemological theory) but refuted the fact that all mental states are conscious (ontological theory). The reduction in the study of consciousness to epistemological role is one of the notable failures of Freud and most of the other theorists (Sousa np). Theoretical power has been gained through the shift of psychology as the study of consciousness to the study of the mind. However, something of enormous value was lost. Psychologists avoided examining why mental realm was a puzzle, the consciousness problem and in turn prevented the unexplained concepts around the heart of nature and mind (Sousa np). Both Freud and the contemporary cognitive psychology had difficulty in the correct use and interpretation of the concept of consciousness. According to how they use it is like consciousness refer to the opinion that is given directly and may be subjected to introspection, though this is not always the case. The term conscious may be defined as that which is subjectively and immediately provided in the experience (Sousa np). This implies that we can be conscious even of things that are abstract, hallucinations, as well as obsessing preoccupations. The experiences may be conscious in different ways like alert state, dream state, and even psychotic state. It was better if the reference given to the different states is a psychological state rather than states of consciousness. Cognitive psychology has also been indulged in this confusion and ambiguous use of the terms conscious and consciousness (Sousa np). Conclusion The use of the Freudian interpretation of dreams in determining the meaning of a text could lead to the level of inaccuracy by the interpreter. The reason being that the textuality of the text is not usually based on the authors interpretation and motive but it could be based on several other factors like the time and the setting of the text. In this case, the Freudian interpretation of dreams is disputed by several other authors and could be limited in the interpretation of others texts, however when used by several other interpretations, the interpretations could offer an insightful interpretation into the pieces of literary works. The literal meaning of a text is equally as important as the Freudian meaning of a text and both could offer a great insight into the interpretation of literary texts. Works cited Das, Bijay K. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 2005. Print. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction ; with a New Preface. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Print. Hall, C. S. A cognitive theory of dream symbols. The Journal of General Psychology , 48, 1953. Michael Schredl Freud’s Interpretation of His Own Dreams in “The Interpretation of Dreams”: A Continuity Hypothe­sis Perspective 2008 Sousa,A.D, Freudian Theory and Consciousness: A Conceptual Analysis 2011 Read More