Psychoanalytic criticism in literature

1. PSYChOANALYTIC CRITICISM IN LITERATURe NAVEEN BABU

2. Psychoanalytic criticism is a form of literary criticism which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretetion of literaturepsychoanalysis is a form of metal therapy which was developed by sigmund freud

4. Background • Sigmund freud (1856-1939) was an austian neurologist. • Provide the foundation for Psychoanalytic criticism • Freud believed that unconscious sexual desire were the basis for all human behaviour . • And dreams were an important indicator for understanding human behaviour. • Actions are not random, but they are guided by hidden motivations(repression)

5. Freud classified the human mind into three regarding the storage of information

6. Freud separated personality into 3 major components. The Id, the Ego, and the Superego. • According to Sigmund Freud, human personality is complex and has more than a single component. In his famous psychoanalytic theory, Freud states that personality is composed of three elements known as the id, the ego, and the superego. These elements work together to create complex human behaviors. • Each component adds its own unique contribution to personality and the three interact in ways that have a powerful influence on an individual. Each element of personality emerges at different points in life. • According to Freud's theory, certain aspects of your personality are more primal and might pressure you to act upon your most basic urges. Other parts of your personality work to counteract these urges and strive to make you conform to the demands of reality. 

7. The Id • According to Freud, the id is the source of all psychic energy, making it the primary component of personality.1 • The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. • This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes instinctive and primitive behaviors. • The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs.1 If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension. For example, an increase in hunger or thirst should produce an immediate attempt to eat or drink. • The id is very important early in life because it ensures that an infant's needs are met. If the infant is hungry or uncomfortable, they will cry until the demands of the id are satisfied. Young infants are ruled entirely by the id, there is no reasoning with them when these needs demand satisfaction. • Imagine trying to convince a baby to wait until lunchtime to eat their meal. The id requires immediate satisfaction, and because the other components of personality are not yet present, the infant will cry until these needs are fulfilled. • However, immediately fulfilling these needs is not always realistic or even possible. If we were ruled entirely by the pleasure principle, we might find ourselves grabbing the things that we want out of other people's hands to satisfy our own cravings. • This behavior would be both disruptive and socially unacceptable. According to Freud, the id tries to resolve the tension created by the pleasure principle through the use of primary process thinking, which involves forming a mental image of the desired object as a way of satisfying the need.1 • Although people eventually learn to control the id, this part of personality remains the same infantile, primal force throughout life. It is the development of the ego and the superego that allows people to control the id's basic instincts and act in ways that are both realistic and socially acceptable.

8. The Ego • According to Freud, The ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world.2 • The ego functions in the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind. • The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality • The ego operates based on the reality principle, which strives to satisfy the id's desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways. The reality principle weighs the costs and benefits of an action before deciding to act upon or abandon impulses. • In many cases, the id's impulses can be satisfied through a process of delayed gratification—the ego will eventually allow the behavior, but only in the appropriate time and place. • Freud compared the id to a horse and the ego to the horse's rider. The horse provides the power and motion, while the rider provides direction and guidance. Without its rider, the horse may simply wander wherever it wished and do whatever it pleased. The rider gives the horse directions and commands to get it to go where the rider wants it to go. • The ego also discharges tension created by unmet impulses through secondary process thinking, in which the ego tries to find an object in the real world that matches the mental image created by the id's primary process. • Imagine that you are stuck in a long meeting at work. You find yourself growing increasingly hungry as the meeting drags on. While the id might compel you to jump up from your seat and rush to the break room for a snack, the ego guides you to sit quietly and wait for the meeting to end. • Instead of acting upon the primal urges of the id, you spend the rest of the meeting imagining yourself eating a cheeseburger. Once the meeting is finally over, you can seek out the object you were imagining and satisfy the demands of the id in a realistic and appropriate manner

9. The Superego • The last component of personality to develop is the superego. • According to Freud, the superego begins to emerge at around age five. • The superego holds the internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from our parents and society (our sense of right and wrong). • The superego provides guidelines for making judgments. The superego has two parts: • The conscience includes information about things that are viewed as bad by parents and society. These behaviors are often forbidden and lead to bad consequences, punishments, or feelings of guilt and remorse. • The ego ideal includes the rules and standards for behaviors that the ego aspires to. • The superego tries to perfect and civilize our behavior. It works to suppress all unacceptable urges of the id and struggles to make the ego act upon idealistic standards rather that upon realistic principles. The superego is present in the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious.

12. Freud’s Psychosexual stages of development • Freud proposed that personality development in childhood takes place during five psychosexual stages • which are the oral, anal, phallic, letency, genital stages. • During each stage sexual energy (libido) is expressed in different ways and through different parts of the body . • These are called psychosexual stages.

14. Oral stage (birth to 1 year) • In the first stage of psychosexual development, the libido is centered in a baby’s mouth. During the oral stages, the baby gets much satisfaction from putting all sorts of things in its mouth to satisfy the libido, and thus its id demands. Which at this stage in life are oral, or mouth orientated, such as sucking, biting, and breastfeeding. Freud said oral stimulation could lead to an oral fixation in later life. We see oral personalities all around us such as smokers, nail-biters, finger-chewers, and thumb suckers. Oral personalities engage in such oral behaviors, particularly when under stress.

15. Anal stage (1 to 3 years • During the anal stage of psychosexual development the libido becomes focused on the anus, and the child derives great pleasure from defecating. The child is now fully aware that they are a person in their own right and that their wishes can bring them into conflict with the demands of the outside world (i.e., their ego has developed). Freud believed that this type of conflict tends to come to a head in potty training, in which adults impose restrictions on when and where the child can defecate. The nature of this first conflict with authority can determine the child’s future relationship with all forms of authority. Early or harsh potty training can lead to the child becoming an anal-retentive personality who hates mess, is obsessively tidy, punctual and respectful of authority. They can be stubborn and tight-fisted with their cash and possessions. This is all related to pleasure got from holding on to their faeces when toddlers, and their mum’s then insisting that they get rid of it by placing them on the potty until they perform! Not as daft as it sounds. The anal expulsive, on the other hand, underwent a liberal toilet-training regime during the anal stage. In adulthood, the anal expulsive is the person who wants to share things with you. They like giving things away. In essence, they are ‘sharing their s**t’!’ An anal-expulsive personality is also messy, disorganized and rebellious.

16. Phallic stage (3 to 6 years) • Phallic Stage (3 to 6 years) • The phallic stage is the third stage of psychosexual development, spanning the ages of three to six years, wherein the infant's libido (desire) centers upon their genitalia as the erogenous zone. • The child becomes aware of anatomical sex differences, which sets in motion the conflict between erotic attraction, resentment, rivalry, jealousy and fear which Freud called the Oedipus complex (in boys) and the Electra complex (in girls).  • This is resolved through the process of identification, which involves the child adopting the characteristics of the same sex parent.

17. Latency Stage (6 years to puberty) • The latency stage is the forth stage of psychosexual development, spanning the period of six years to puberty. During this stage the libido is dormant and no further psychosexual development takes place (latent means hidden). Freud thought that most sexual impulses are repressed during the latent stage, and sexual energy can be sublimated towards school work, hobbies, and friendships. Much of the child’s energy is channeled into developing new skills and acquiring new knowledge, and play becomes largely confined to other children of the same gender.

18. Genital Stage (puberty to adult) • The genital stage is the last stage of Freud’s psychosexual theory of personality development, and begins in puberty. It is a time of adolescent sexual experimentation, the successful resolution of which is settling down in a loving one-to-one relationship with another person in our 20’s. Sexual instinct is directed to heterosexual pleasure, rather than self-pleasure like during the phallic stage. For Freud, the proper outlet of the sexual instinct in adults was through heterosexual intercourse. Fixation and conflict may prevent this with the consequence that sexual perversions may develop. For example, fixation at the oral stage may result in a person gaining sexual pleasure primarily from kissing and oral sex, rather than sexual intercourse

21. Oedipus complex • IT IS CONNECTED WITH INFANTILE SEXUALITY • The most important aspect of the phallic stage is the Oedipus complex. • The name of the Oedipus complex derives from the Greek myth where Oedipus, a young man, kills his father and marries his mother. Upon discovering this, he pokes his eyes out and becomes blind.  • In the young boy, the Oedipus complex or more correctly, conflict, arises because the boy develops sexual (pleasurable) desires for his mother.  He wants to possess his mother exclusively and get rid of his father to enable him to do so. child begin to see his father as a rival the mother’s love . The child therefore , begins to develop fantasies of killing his father so that he will have no rival for his mother’s love . This fantasy is what Freud famously called the Oedipus complex . • Soon the child understands the father as possessing the great power. Irrationally, the boy thinks that if his father were to find out about all this, his father would take away what he loves the most.  During the phallic stage what the boy loves most is his penis.  Hence the boy develops castration anxiety.The little boy then sets out to resolve this problem by imitating, copying and joining in masculine dad-type behaviours.  This is called identification, and is how the three-to-five year old boy resolves his Oedipus complex. The desire for mother is shut away in the unconscious when the child accepts the law that he should not make love to his mother. Identification means internally adopting the values, attitudes, and behaviours of another person.  The consequence of this is that the boy takes on the male gender role, and adopts an ego ideal and values that become the superego.

22. Electra Complex • The Electra complex is a term used to describe the female version of the Oedipus complex. • It involves a girl, aged between 3 and 6, becoming subconsciously sexually attached to her father and increasingly hostile toward her mother. Carl Jung developed the theory in 1913. • Origins of the theory • Sigmund Freud, who developed the Oedipus complex theory, first developed the idea that a young girl child competes with her mother for the sexual attention of her father. • However, it was Carl Jung — Freud’s contemporary — who first called this situation the “Electra complex” in 1913. • Just as the Oedipus complex was named after a Greek myth, so is the Electra complex. • According to Greek mythology, Electra was the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. When Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, killed Agamemnon, Electra persuaded her brother Orestes to help her kill both her mother and her mother’s lover. • The theory explained • According to Freud, all people go through numerous stages of psychosexual development as children. The most important stage is the “phallic stage” between the ages of 3 and 6. • According to Freud, this is when both boys and girls become fixated on the penis. Freud argued that girls fixate on their lack of a penis and, in its absence, their clitoris. • In a girl’s psychosexual development, Freud proposed, she’s first attached to her mother until she realizes she doesn’t have a penis. This causes her to resent her mother for “castrating” her — a situation Freud referred to as “penis envy.” Because of this, she develops an attachment to her father. • Later, the girl identifies more strongly with her mother and emulates her behavior out of fear of losing her mother’s love. Freud called this a “feminine Oedipus attitude.” • Freud believed this was a crucial stage in a young girl’s development, as it leads her to accept gender roles and understand her own sexuality. • Freud proposed that the feminine Oedipus attitude was more emotionally intense than the Oedipus complex, so it was repressed more harshly by the young girl. This, he believed, led to women being less self-confident and more subservient. • Carl Jung expanded on this theory by labeling it the “Electra complex.” However, this label was rejected by Freud, who said it was an attempt to analogize the Oedipus complex between the sexes. • Since Freud believed there were crucial differences between the Oedipus complex and the feminine Oedipus attitude, he didn’t believe they should be conflated.

23. how the Electra complex works • Initially, the girl is attached to her mother. • Then, she realizes she doesn’t have a penis. She experiences “penis envy” and blames her mother for her “castration.” • Because she wants to sexually possess a parent and she can’t possess her mother without a penis, she tries to possess her father instead. At this stage, she develops subconscious sexual feelings toward her father. • She becomes hostile toward her mother and fixated on her father. She might push her mother away or focus all her attention on her father. • Eventually, she realizes she doesn’t want to lose her mother’s love, so she becomes attached to her mother again, emulating her mother’s actions. By emulating her mother, she learns to follow traditional gender roles. • In puberty, she’ll then start becoming attracted to men who aren’t related to her, according to Freud. • Some adults, Jung noted, could regress to the phallic stage or never grow out of the phallic stage, leaving them sexually attached to their parent.

24. methods of dealing with internal conflict. • Denial : refusing to accept one’s unacceptable desires of fear , or refusing to accept a traumatic event. • Repression : hiding one’s desires and fears i the unconscious. • Displacement : replacing an unacceptble object of one’s emotion • Isolation : disconnecting one’s emotions from a traumatic event. • Sublimation : redirecting an acceptable desire into a creative act • Projection : placing one’s unacceptable or unworthy desires or fears onto another. • Intellectualization : avoiing one’s desires and fears by analyzing and rationalizing them instead of feeling them. • Reaction formation : beliving the opposite is true to avoid facing the truth about a traumatic event. • Identification : internally adopting the values, attitudes, and behaviours of another person. 

25. The theory explained • The psychoanalytic theories of sigmund freud inspired a new form of literary interpretation . Psychological criticism examines the characters within the text in order to unearth deeper meaning . Psychoanalytic criticism is usually applied i one of three ways . • Psychoanalytic approach : a work of literature can be vied as a “ dream “ the expressive manifestation of the subconscious , by interpreting the symbolic nature of the work, we gai into the psyche of the author. • Trauma : psychological citicism cn focus o the characters , analysing motives, desires and conflicts . Although these characters are fictional , it is a valid form of criticism . Characters as well as underlying traits are often dream from real people and threfore can display similar psychological patterns . Psychoanalytic theory also influenced authors as they utilised these new ideas to create more complex characters. • Cognitive approach : this criticism may also be used to interprete the relationship between the text and the reader . I this approach critics acknowledge that a work of literature fuctions as the secret expression of what the reader wants to hear . It is this aspect that creates our enjoyment of the book.

26. PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

27. PSYCOANALYTIC CRITICISM