Psychoanalytic criticism uses the methods of “reading” employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It assumes that literary texts express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author and that a literary work is a manifestation born from it. One may psychoanalyze a character within a literary work, but it can be assumed the characters are projections of the author’s psyche. This criticism seeks evidence of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences, and so on within a literary work. The psychological material will be expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded through principles such as symbolism, condensation, or displacement.

Questions often asked by psychoanalytic critics: How do operations of repression structure the world of the text? – What repressed desires/wounds lie underneath? Where are there oedipal (family/sexual) dynamics? Patterns in behaviours- something a character acts out over and over again? Can character’s behavior/motivation be explained psychologically? What dreamlike symbols can be identified? What do these repressed symbols/desires/ fears suggest about the author?

Sigmund Freud- theory of the psyche (referred to as the classical psychoanalysis) Contributed by giving the world names for aspects of the human psyche and a model to use to understand. Most of his work was speculative thinking and changed over time.

Jacques Lacan- non-traditional psychoanalytic. Abstract, often ambiguous, and difficult to understand. Believes unconscious itself is ambiguous. Contributions: Mirror stage, imaginary order, symbolic order, objet petit “lost object of desire”