The psychoanalytic theory examines the author’s, characters, society’s, etc. unconscious desires displayed obliquely in a story. Human behavior is the main driving force of psychoanalytic theory, along with symbolism and imagery. It seems like symbolism and imagery just feeds into the psychology of humans which is why I consider it the main aspect.
Questions Psychoanlytic Thoery May Ask:
- Analyze the main characters/speakers- what unconscious motivations are possible
- how might their actions point to repressed wounds, fears, desires or conflicts?
- This is important because through character we can see how the author associates certain figures such as moms for example. If in all the authors literary stories a mom is always a villian for example, we can assume that the author has a bad relationship with his mom. So it is important to see how family dynamics and stuff work because characters can be a reflection of the authors real life perceptions.
pros of theory
- good way of finding out why something is the author’s intent.
Cons
- What limits psychoanalytic theory is the fact that it can not analyze the intent of a writer even though it was not made for that purpos
Contributers
Freud and Lacan are the two contributors to the theory. Freud built the theory-based around the human psyche but was criticized for lack of depth. He did pave the way for rhetorical attention on mental health. Lacan came later and helped strengthen the theory by introducing aspects like language amongst other things. This led to the analysis of the repressed attitudes of individual authors.