This document provides background information on Sigmund Freud and psychoanalytic theory. It discusses key concepts in Freudian psychology including the id, ego, and superego; the conscious and unconscious mind; drives and defenses. It also covers Freudian slips, dreams, jokes and their interpretation. The document then discusses other influential psychoanalytic theorists like Jung, Lacan and Kristeva. It defines psychoanalytic criticism and how it can be applied to literary analysis by examining themes of repression and psychological dynamics in both authors and their works.

1. EWRT 1C
Class 11

2. AGENDA
 Lecture/Discussion:
Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychoanalytic Criticism
 Bishop’s “The Fish” and
Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”:
A Psychoanalytic Reading.
 Identify and discuss qualities of
psychoanalytic criticism as it is
applied in this essay. Provide
specific examples from the essay,
the poem, or the
definition/description of
Psychoanalytic Criticism.

3.  6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939
 Sigmund Freud (Sigismund Schlomo
Freud), was an Austrian neurologist usually
credited with creating psychoanalytic theory
and, by extension, psychiatric therapy.
 According to biographer Ernest Jones,
"Freud's Jewishness contributed greatly to
his work and his firm convictions about his
findings. Freud often referred to his ability
to stand alone, if need be, without wavering
or surrendering his intellectual and
scientific discoveries, and he attributed this
ability to his irreligious but strong Jewish
identity in an anti-Semitic society, whereby
he was accustomed to a marginal status
and being set aside as different.“
Sigmund Freud

4. Freud:
Background
continued…
 In 1930, Freud was awarded the
Goethe Prize in recognition of his
contributions to psychology and to
German literary culture.
 In January 1933, the Nazis took
control of Germany, and Freud's
books were prominent among
those they burned and destroyed.
Freud quipped: “What progress
we are making. In the Middle
Ages they would have burned
me. Now, they are content with
burning my books.”
 In June 1938, Freud and his family
left Vienna, Austria, eventually
settling in London.

5. Today, some people argue that Freud’s work is
outdated, unscientific, and sexist;
nevertheless, all major subsequent theories
have been based on his revolutionary,
pioneering work.
Freud developed a language that described, a
model that explained, and a theory that
encompassed human psychology. His theories
are directly and indirectly concerned with the
nature of the unconscious mind.
Freud believed that unconscious sexual drives
were the basis for all human behavior, and that
dreams were an important indicator for
understanding human behavior.

6. The Drives
Freud hypothesized two forms of drive energy:
Libido - sexual/erotic
Thanatos - aggressive/destructive
 Freud assumes these are always fused but
not necessarily in the same amounts
 Cruelty may have an erotic component
 Acts of love may have an aggressive
component

7. Freudian
Components of
Personality
The Conscious Mind includes that which we are
aware of. This is the aspect of our mental
processing that we can think and talk about
rationally.
The Preconscious Mind is the part of the mind
that represents ordinary memory. While we are
not consciously aware of this information at any
given time, we can pull it into consciousness
when needed.
The Unconscious Mind is a reservoir of
feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that
outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the
contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or
unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or
conflict. According to Freud, the unconscious
continues to influence our behavior and
experience, even though we are unaware of
these underlying influences.

8. The ego Mediates between the id and reality; it maintains our “self
– how we see our “self” and wish others to see it.
 The SUPER-EGO is a lot like a conscience – it punishes
misbehavior with feelings of guilt. Since the super-ego is
concerned with societal norms, it stands in opposition to the id.
The development of an individual’s super-ego replaces a parent’s
discipline.
The Three Tiers of Self
 The ID seeks pleasure and avoids
pain; we normally associate inborn
instincts (such as the behaviors of an
infant or an animal) with the id.
 The EGO seeks to placate the id, but
in a way that will ensure long-term
benefits (such as trying to get what
the id wants without breaking laws or
social standards).

9.  Conflicts between the Id, Superego and Ego
arise in unconscious mind
 They come out in various ways
– Slips of tongue (“Freudian slip”)
– Dreams
– Jokes
– Anxiety
– Defense Mechanisms
Conflicts of Personality Components

10. Freudian Slip
 A slip of the tongue
in which a word that
the speaker was
subconsciously
thinking about is
substituted for the
one that he or she
meant to say.
 "For seven and a half years I've
worked alongside President
Reagan. We've had triumphs.
Made some mistakes. We've had
some sex... uh... setbacks." -A
Freudian slip by President
George H.W. Bush

11. Dreams
 According to Freud, dreams
always have a manifest and
latent content. The
manifest content is what the
dream seems to be saying.
It is often bizarre and
nonsensical. The latent
content is what the dream
is really trying to say.
Dreams give us a look into
our unconscious.
 Example of the manifest
content: A young
woman dreams that
“She is going through
the hall of her house
and strikes her head
against the low-hanging
chandelier, so that her
head bleeds.”

12.  She has no reminiscence to contribute, nothing that really happened.
The information she gives leads in quite another direction. “You
know how badly my hair is falling out. Mother said to me yesterday,
‘My child, if it goes on like this, you will have a head like the cheek of
a buttock.’” Thus the head here stands for the other part of the body.
We can understand the chandelier symbolically without other help;
all objects that can be lengthened are symbols of the male organ.
Thus the dream deals with a bleeding at the lower end of the body,
which results from its collision with the male organ. This might still be
ambiguous; her further associations show that it has to do with her
belief that menstrual bleeding results from sexual intercourse with a
man, a bit of sexual theory believed by many immature girls.
From: Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. 1920.
Part Two: The Dream XII. Analysis of Sample Dreams
The Latent Content, according to Freud

13.  Jokes, like dreams and slips of
the tongue, bear the traces of
repressed desires. Sexual and
aggressive thoughts, which are
forbidden in polite society, can
be shared as if they are not
serious. Humour then becomes
a way of rebelling against the
demands of social order. As
Freud wrote in a later essay,
‘humour is not resigned it is
rebellious’ (1927/1990, p.429).
 Ridicule: If we break
social codes, then we fear
that others might laugh at
our infringements,
mocking our
inappropriate behaviour.
Thus, fear of mockery
may be the key means for
maintaining social
order. Humour, far from
being principally
rebellious, also fulfills a
deeply conservative
function

14.  Hiding Hate: The anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger
publically offered “a good technique for baptising Jews:
aspiring converts to Christianity should be held under water for
10 minutes.” Jokes like this express extreme hostility, but
those who enjoy such jokes can excuse them as ‘just jokes,’ not
thinking of themselves as harbouring murderous intentions.
 Asserting Power: [When the Nazi’s took over,] a majority of
the Christian population celebrated. Jews were forced to scrub
the streets with toothbrushes. The crowds gathered to laugh at
respectable citizens so demeaned. [. . .] This was not humour
as rebellion but the humour of power.
Meyers, C.S. “Freud and the Language of Humour”

15.  Fear of intimacy—the chronic and overpowering feeling that
emotional closeness will seriously hurt or destroy us and that
we can remain emotionally safe only by remaining at an
emotional distance from others at all times. [. . .] Fear of
intimacy can also function as a defense. If this particular
defense occurs frequently or continually, then fear of intimacy
is probably a core issue.
 Fear of abandonment—the unshakable belief that our friends
and loved ones are going to desert us (physical abandonment)
or don’t really care about us (emotional abandonment).
 Fear of betrayal—the nagging feeling that our friends and
loved ones can’t be trusted, for example, can’t be trusted not to
lie to us, not to laugh at us behind our backs, or in the case of
romantic partners, not to cheat on us by dating others.
Core Anxieties

16.  Low self-esteem—the belief that we are less worthy than other
people and, therefore, don’t deserve attention, love, or any other
of life’s rewards. Indeed, we often believe that we deserve to be
punished by life in some way. Insecure or unstable sense of self—
the inability to sustain a feeling of personal identity, to sustain a
sense of knowing ourselves.
 Insecure or unstable sense of self—the inability to sustain a
feeling of personal identity, to sustain a sense of knowing
ourselves. This core issue makes us very vulnerable to the
influence of other people, and we may find ourselves continually
changing the way we look or behave as we become involved with
different individuals or groups.
 Oedipal fixation (or oedipal complex)—a dysfunctional bond
with a parent of the opposite sex that we don’t outgrow in
adulthood and that doesn’t allow us to develop mature
relationships with our peers. (Tyson 26–27)
Core Issues

17. Defense MechanismsDefense Mechanisms

18. McLeod, S. A. (2009). Defense Mechanisms. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/defense-mechanisms.html

19. Other Influential Psychoanalytic Theorists
 Carl Jung: Jungian criticism attempts to explore the connection between literature
and what Carl Jung (a student of Freud) called the “collective unconscious” of the
human race: "...racial memory, through which the spirit of the whole human
species manifests itself" (Richter 504). Jungian criticism, closely related to
Freudian theory because of its connection to psychoanalysis, assumes that all
stories and symbols are based on mythic models from mankind’s past.
 Jacques Lacan: a post-Freudian psychoanalytic theorist, focused on language
and language-related issues. Lacan treats the unconscious as a language;
consequently, he views the dream not as Freud did (that is, as a form and
symptom of repression) but rather as a form of discourse.
 Julie Kristeva: Her interest in psychoanalysis was also inspired by Jacques
Lacan's re-interpretation of Freud, although Kristeva has also carefully
distinguished her own ideas from those of Lacan. Kristeva was particularly critical
of what she saw as an inherent misogyny in Lacan's and Freud's theories; her own
system of thinking therefore attempts to rethink sexual development in such a way
as to value the importance of the feminine. For this reason, she has been
especially influential on theories of gender and sex.

20. PSYCHOANALYTICAL
CRITICISM aims to
show that a literary or
cultural work is always
structured by complex
and often contradictory
human desires.

21. What does Tyson Tell us about
Psychoanalytical Theory?
 Psychoanalytic concepts have become part of our
everyday lives, and therefore psychoanalytic thinking
should have the advantage of familiarity.
 Most of us have acquired a very simplistic idea of what
these concepts mean, and in their clichéd form they
seem rather superficial if not altogether meaningless.
 We fear that psychoanalysis wants to invade our most
private being and reveal us to ourselves and to the
world as somehow inadequate, even sick, and the
result is very often a deep-seated mistrust of
“psychobabble.”

22. If we take the time to understand some key
concepts about human experience offered by
psychoanalysis, we can begin to see the
ways in which these concepts operate in
our daily lives in profound rather than
superficial ways, and we’ll begin to
understand human behaviors that until now
may have seemed utterly baffling. And, of
course, if psychoanalysis can help us better
understand human behavior, then it must
certainly be able to help us understand literary
texts, which are about human behavior.
Tyson on Psychoanalytic Criticism

23.  Adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later
theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like
dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and
anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation
of the author's own neuroses. It approaches an author’s work as
a kind of textual “talk therapy.”
 One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a
literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters
are projections of the author's psyche.
 Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical endeavor seeks evidence
of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilt,
ambivalences, and so forth within the author’s literary work.
The author's own childhood traumas, family life, sexual
conflicts, fixations, and such will be traceable within the
behavior of the characters in the literary work.
Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

24.  the author: the theory is used to analyze the author and
his/her life, and the literary work is seen to supply
evidence for this analysis. This is often called
"psychobiography."
 the characters: the theory is used to analyze one or
more of the characters; the psychological theory
becomes a tool that to explain the characters’ behavior
and motivations. The more closely the theory seems to
apply to the characters, the more realistic the work
appears.
 the audience: the theory is used to explain the appeal
of the work for those who read it; the work is seen to
embody universal human psychological processes and
motivations, to which the readers respond more or less
unconsciously.
 the text: the theory is used to analyze the role of
language and symbolism in the work.
Psychoanalytic literary criticism is often
extended to one or more of the following:

25. Some questions psychoanalytic critics ask about
literary texts: The abbreviated version
1. How do the operations of repression
structure or inform the work? [. . .
]and how do these core issues
structure or inform the piece?
2. Are there any oedipal dynamics—or
any other family dynamics—at work
here?
3. How can characters’ behavior,
narrative events, and/or images be
explained in terms of psychoanalytic
concepts: regression, crisis,
projection, fear of or fascination with
death, sexuality

26. 4. In what ways can we view a literary work as
analogous to a dream?
5. What does the work suggest about the
psychological being of its author?
6. What might a given interpretation of a
literary work suggest about the psychological
motives of the reader or a group of readers?
7. In what ways does the text seem to reveal
characters’ emotional investments in the
Symbolic Order, the Imaginary Order, the
Mirror Stage, or what Lacan calls objet petit a?

27. Discussion
Questions
 Post #9: What is the
purpose of psychoanalytical
criticism?

28. QHQ’s
1. Q: What are the possible benefits of analysis through the
psychoanalytical lens?
2. Q: How much of Psychoanalytic Criticism is pure
conjecture?
3. Q: Although the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques
Lacan seem very different, they share many
commonalities. How are they similar, and what is the
significance of their similarities?
4. Q: Can one use a psychoanalytical method to
deconstruct their own life to help find a truer identity?

29. Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”
 I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HybrH2d1icM

30. Bishop’s “The Fish” and Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”:
A Psychoanalytic Reading.
 Identify and discuss qualities of
psychoanalytic criticism as it is
applied in this essay about “The
Fish.”
 Provide specific examples from the
essay, the poem, or the
definition/description of
Psychoanalytic Criticism that
further support a psychoanalytic
reading of the poem.

31. Homework
 Post #10: Identify and discuss qualities of
psychoanalytic criticism as it is applied in this essay.
Provide specific examples from the essay, the poem, or
the definition/description of Psychoanalytic Criticism.