Psychological Literary Perspective

1. Psychological Literary Perspective ENG 4U0

2. Psychological Perspective • “Approaches a piece of literature as the revelation of it's authors mind and personality” (DiYanni 2169) • The content of the literature is “linked to an author’s mental and emotional characteristics” (2169)

3. “A literary work reflects its writer’s consciousness and mental work” (2169) • “…writers’ lives to explain features of their work” (2169) • Examinethe “literary work for clues of the writers imagination…motivations and behaviour” (2169)

4. Some “critics employ methods of Freudian Psychoanalysisto understand not only the writers…but the literary characters they create” (2169)

5. Sigmund Freud • Born May 6, 1856, Freiberg, Moravia • When he was five his family moved to Vienna, where he lived most of his life • He attended medical school, one of the few viable options for a bright Jewish boy in Vienna those days • Freud concentrated on neurophysiology (a branch of medicine dealing with mental disorders attributed to diseases of the nervous system) • Freud set up a practice in neuropsychiatry in Vienna • Freud's books and lectures brought him both fame and ostracism from the mainstream of the medical community (Boeree, “Personality Theories”)

6. Psychological Mechanisms (Dream Content): The UnconsciousFreud claims “the unconscious harbors forbidden wishes and desires…often sexual…conflict with an individual’s or society’s social norms” (DiYanni 2169) Displacement“…unconscious fantasies and desires…become displaced or distorted in dreams and other forms of fantasy” (2169) Fixation“ ‘obsessive compulsion,’ attaching to feelings, behaviors, and fantasies that individuals presumably outgrow yet retain in the form of unconscious attractions” (2169) Manifest and Latent“The disguised versions that appear in a persons conscious life are considered to be the ‘manifest’ content of the unconscious wishes that are their ‘latent’ content” (2169)

7. “Psychoanalytical critics use symbolism to identify and explain the meaning of repressed desires” (2169) • They “interpret ordinary objects such as clocks and towers and natural elements such as fireand water in ways that reveal aspects of a literary character’s sexuality” (2169)

8. Psychoanalytical critics also use Freud's three mental functions: • Id– “the storehouse of desires” (2170) • Superego– “the representative of societal and parental standards of ethics and mortality” (2170) • Ego– “the negotiator between…the id and…the Superego…influenced by an individual 's relationship with other people” (2170)

9. A Checklist of Psychological Critical Questions 1. What connections can you make between your knowledge of an author's life and the behavior and motivations of characters in his or her work?2. How does your understanding of the characters, their relationships, their actions, and their motivations in a literary work help you better under the mental world and imaginative life, or the actions and motivations, of the author?3. How does a particular literary work - it's images, metaphors, and other linguistic elements- reveal the psychological motivations of it's characters or the psychological mindset of it's author?4. To what extent can you employ the concepts if Freudian psychoanalysis to understand the motivations of literary characters?5. What kinds if literary works and and what types of literary characters seem best suited to a critical approach that employs a psychological or psychoanalytical perspective? Why6. How can a a psychological or psychoanalytical approach to a particular work be combined with an approach from another critical perspective - for example, that of feminist or formalist criticism? (2170 - 2171)

10. Works Cited DiYanni, Robert. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2007. Print. Boeree, George C. Dr. “Personality Theories.” George Boeree’s Homepage. N.p, n.d. Web. 9 Sept. 2011. http://webspace.ship.edu/ cgboer/freud.html.