Psychoanalytic Criticism

Editor's Notes

1. Sarah: introduce what we did… ex: “our theory was psychoanalytic criticism”
2. Sarah: lets talk about some of the basic ideas of psychoanalytic criticism …
3. Sarah: Psychoanalytic Criticism can be viewed in may different ways, a few different perspectives can be in an authors dream.
4. Sarah: ……because dreams are an external expression of the unconscious mind.
5. Sarah: …For instance here, is the author sleeping and the author is dreaming of a bed and or a beach, this is all external expressions of an unconscious mind.
6. Jesse: another way Psychoanalytic criticism may be viewed as, is through emotions… emotions are linked to an author or person mentally and can be very strong/powerful.
7. Jesse: …for instance, unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, and guilt. Can all be examples of emotions that an author could have linked to in their piece of literature.
8. Jesse: for instance, this crash could be carried throughout the rest of this persons life, because of the intensity of it… depending on the intensity of the incident, determines whether or not the emotion can be considered psychoanalytical.
9. Jesse: in literature, this is usually expressed through symbolism.
10. Brady: …click to next slide quickly
11. Brady: Feminist criticism…
12. Brady: … is opposed to….
13. Brady: …Psychoanalytic Criticism…
14. Brady: …because of the sexuality within the literature…
15. Brady: …which is similar to formalism because it isn’t looking for what the author had intended.
16. Will: moving on to the timeline..
17. Will: it all started in the 1800’s…
18. Will: Psychoanalytical criticism and theory was originally a study of mental illness, meant to help sick people get over their hysteria by analyzing their dreams.
19. Jesse: today, psychoanalytical criticism/ theory’s process is more scientific and it psychoanalyzes through the authors mental health.
20. Sarah: Now onto the Theorists…
21. Sarah: Sigmund Freud was one of the most important psychoanalytical theorists, he said that “all human behavior is driven by sexual energy”
22. Sarah: He created a Tripartite model, that is now applied to literature. Id, is the first part of that model… it is the primitive impulses based on the character’s/person’s desires…
23. Sarah: for instance, the Id, is like the devil on someone’s shoulder that tells them to act without thinking.
24. Sarah: the second part, is the Superego, which is the conscience of moral and ethical restraints; distinguishes right from wrong…
25. Sarah: This is like the angel on someone’s shoulder that tells them to think about the effects of their actions.
26. Sarah: Finally, the third and final part of this tripartite is the Ego… which is the balance between Id and Superego….
27. Sarah: This is the PERSON who’s shoulders the devil and the angel are on.
28. Will: Another major Psychoanalytical Theorist is Jacques Lacan… Who stated that “Literary work shows psyche’s interaction with other people.”
29. Will: Jacques Lacan also, contributed several different Anthropological aspects to Psychoanalytical Criticism.
30. Brady: Melanie Klein was another Theorist, who said that “Superego was created through object interaction as an infant”…
31. Brady: She also contributed object relations to psychoanalytical theories/criticism.
32. Brady: Finally, the last theorist we are going to discuss is Ernest Jones… he is regarded as one of the most recognized Psychoanalytic theory experts! … he also is a Sigmund Freud Biographer.
33. Will: As an example, we are going to show you how one might Psychoanalyze the short story A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner.
34. Jesse: there are many different ways to do this, and Psychoanalysis is very personalized, and prone to debate… SO, with that said, several different similarities between the author and the story are… death…
35. Brady: death…
36. Sarah: murder…
37. Will: …and pain…
38. Click…
39. Jesse: death of emily’s father in the story
40. Brady: in William faulkner’s life, the death of two of his brothers
41. Sarah: William Faulkners great grandfather was a murderer
42. Will: and emotional pain within the story and william faulkner’s life…. These are all examples of how you might psychoanalyze A Rose For Emily , because emotional pain is an evident theme within the story and faulkner’s life, and the two are linked… also, death is linked between the two as well. Psychoanalysis is really just finding the links between the author and the story, and what the similarities are…
43. Sarah: Movies may also be psychoanalyzed, such as in this clip… Jesse: we are going to show you a clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho… Pay attention to the killer…and what happens…. **Once clip is over, ask…** Will: Now what happened to the lady? **ask people** Did she die? But how do you know that she did? You never actually saw the knife go into her, all you saw was the blood, the screaming, and the knife… Brady: we make these assumptions that she died because we psychoanalyze the clip and shots, then we make sense out of it… which draws us to the conclusion that she got stabbed and died.
44. Sarah: does anyone have any questions?
45. Brady : this concludes our sophisticated lecture, peace out home boyz!