Editing Psychoanalytic literary criticism (section)

==Methods==
===Early applications===
Freud wrote several important essays on literature, which he used to explore the psyche of authors and characters, to explain narrative mysteries, and to develop new concepts in psychoanalysis (for instance, ''[[Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva]]'' and his influential readings of the [[Oedipus]] myth and [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Hamlet]]'' in ''[[The Interpretation of Dreams]]''). The criticism has been made, however, that in his and his early followers' studies 'what calls for elucidation are not the artistic and literary works themselves, but rather the psychopathology and biography of the artist, writer, or fictional characters'.<ref>Waugh, p. 200</ref> Thus 'many psychoanalysts among Freud's earliest adherents did not resist the temptation to psychoanalyze poets and painters (sometimes to Freud's chagrin').<ref>Peter Gay, ''Freud: A Life for Our Time'' (London 1989) p. 764</ref> Later analysts would conclude that 'clearly one cannot psychoanalyse a writer from his text; one can only appropriate him'.<ref>Adam Phillips, ''On Flirtation'' (London 1994) p. 45</ref>

Early psychoanalytic literary criticism would often treat the text as if it were a kind of dream. This means that the text represses its real (or latent) content behind obvious (manifest) content. The process of changing from latent to manifest content is known as the dream work and involves operations of concentration and [[Displacement (psychology)|displacement]].  The critic analyzes the language and symbolism of a text to reverse the process of the dream work and arrive at the underlying latent thoughts. The danger is that 'such criticism tends to be reductive, explaining away the ambiguities of works of literature by reference to established psychoanalytic doctrine; and very little of this work retains much influence today'.<ref>J. Childers/G. Hentzi eds., ''The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism'' (New York 1995) p. 247</ref>

===Jungians===
Later readers, such as [[Carl Jung]] and another of Freud's disciples, [[Karen Horney]], broke with Freud, and their work, especially Jung's, led to other rich branches of psychoanalytic criticism: Horney's to feminist approaches including [[womb envy]], and Jung's to the study of [[archetypes]] and the [[collective unconscious]]. Jung's work in particular was influential as, combined with the work of anthropologists such as [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] and [[Joseph Campbell]], it led to the entire fields of mythocriticism and archetype analysis.

[[Northrop Frye]] considered that 'the literary critic finds Freud most suggestive for the theory of comedy, and Jung for the theory of romance'.<ref>Northrop Frye, ''Anatomy of Criticism'' (Princeton 1973) p. 214</ref>

===Form===
Waugh writes, 'The development of psychoanalytic approaches to literature proceeds from the shift of emphasis from "content" to the fabric of artistic and literary works'.<ref>Waugh, p. 203</ref> Thus for example [[Hayden White]] has explored how 'Freud's descriptions tally with nineteenth-century theories of [[Trope (literature)|tropes]], which his work somehow reinvents'.<ref>Waugh, p. 208</ref>

Especially influential here has been the work of [[Jacques Lacan]], an avid reader of literature who used literary examples as illustrations of important concepts in his work (for instance, Lacan argued with [[Jacques Derrida]] over the interpretation of [[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s "[[The Purloined Letter]]").

'Lacan's theories have encouraged a criticism which focuses not on the author but on the linguistic processes of the text'.<ref>Ian Ousby ed., ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' (Cambridge 1995) p. 767</ref> Within this Lacanian emphasis, 'Freud's theories become a place from which to raise questions of interpretation, rhetoric, style, and figuration'.<ref>Waugh, p. 208</ref>

However, Lacanian scholars have noted that Lacan himself was not interested in literary criticism ''per se'', but in how literature might illustrate a psychoanalytic method or concept.<ref>Evans, Dylan (2005). "From Lacan to Darwin" in ''The Literary Animal; Evolution and the Nature of Narrative'', eds. Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005, pp.38–55.</ref>

===Reader response===
According to Ousby, 'Among modern critical uses of psychoanalysis is the development of "[[ego psychology]]" in the work of [[Norman Holland]], who concentrates on the relations between reader and text'<ref>Ousby ed., p. 767</ref> – as with [[reader response criticism]].  Rollin writes that 'Holland's experiments in reader response theory suggest that we all read literature selectively, unconsciously projecting our own fantasies into it'.<ref>L. Rollin/M. I. West, ''Psychoanalytic Responses to Children's Literature'' (2008) p. 12</ref>

Thus in [[crime fiction]], for example, '[[Charles Rycroft|Rycroft]] sees the criminal as personifying the reader's unavowed hostility to the parent'.<ref>Michael Shepherd, ''Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Dr Freud'' (London 1985) p. 26</ref>

===Charles Mauron: psychocriticism===
In 1963, [[Charles Mauron]]<ref>Des métaphores obsédantes au mythe ersonnel</ref> conceived a structured method to interpret literary works via psychoanalysis. The study implied four different phases:
# The creative process is akin to dreaming awake: as such, it is a [[mimesis|mimetic]], and [[cathartic]], representation of an innate desire that is best expressed and revealed by '''metaphors''' and symbolically.
# Then, the juxtaposition of a writer's works leads the critic to define symbolical themes.
# These metaphorical networks are significant of a latent inner reality.
# They point at an obsession just as dreams can do. The last phase consists in linking the writer's literary creation to his own personal life.

On Mauron's concept, the author cannot be reduced to a ratiocinating self: his own more or less [[Psychological trauma|traumatic]] biographical past, the cultural archetypes that have suffused his [[soul]] contrast with the conscious self, The chiasmic relation between the two tales may be seen as a sane and safe [[acting out]]. A basically unconscious sexual impulse is symbolically fulfilled in a positive and socially gratifying way, a process known as [[Sublimation (psychology)|Sublimation]].

===Anxiety of influence===
'The American critic [[Harold Bloom]] has adopted the Freudian notion of the [[Oedipus Complex]] to his study of relationships of influence between poets...and his work has also inspired a [[feminist]] variant in the work of [[Sandra Gilbert]] and [[Susan Gubar]]'.<ref>Childers/Hentzi eds., p. 248</ref>

In similar vein, [[Shoshana Felman]] has asked with respect to what she calls "''the guilt of poetry''" the question: 'Could literary history be in any way considered as a repetitive unconscious ''[[transference]]'' of the guilt of poetry?'.<ref>Shoshana Felman, ''Jacques Lacan and the Adventures of Insight'' (Harvard 1987) p. 50</ref>