History

toc The Foundations of Psychological Criticism

=Sigmund Freud=
 * Psychologist, practiced in Vienna in the 1900s
 * Most important contribution was dream studies
 * Through our dreams the unconscious mind is set free and can wonder
 * The unconscious plays a large part in how we think, act, and feel

=Freud’s models and theories:=

Dynamic Model

 * Our minds are a dichotomy consisting of the conscious (the rational) and the unconscious (the irrational)
 * All of our actions are conscious, but the decision to do the action is guided by the unconscious
 * Unconscious is comprised of two instincts that either work with or against each other
 * Eros/Sexual Instinct/Libido: sexual drive
 * Destructive/Aggressive Instinct: attacks libido
 * Freudian Slips
 * Unconscious truths and desires that become conscious
 * Accidental slips of the tongue, failures of memory, misplacing of objects, misreading of texts

Economic Model

 * Pleasure principle
 * Craves pleasure and instant satisfaction of instincts
 * Disregards societies boundaries
 * Cathexes
 * Energy inside the unconscious that aims to maximize pleasure
 * Reality principle
 * Recognizes needs for societal standards and regulates pleasure
 * Anti-cathexes
 * Holds the cathexes in check

Tripartite Model
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 * Superego
 * Storehouse of memories
 * Helps make moral judgments by creating guilt and fear
 * Protects from the id
 * Ego
 * Normal state of functioning, rational, and logical
 * Id
 * Holds repressed hungers, images, thoughts, and desires of human nature
 * Only wishes to fulfill pleasure principle by housing libido

Pre-Oedipal Development Phase

 * Several stages of human development
 * Oral phase
 * Engage in as infants
 * When we such our mothers breast to be fed, our sexuality is activated
 * Anal stage
 * Gain independence from mothers by being able to defecate
 * Phallic stage
 * Sexual desire or libido directed toward genitals

Complexes

 * Oedipus complex
 * All boys between the ages of three and six develop sexual feelings toward their mother and hostile feelings toward their father
 * Castration complex
 * Stops a male child from having incestuous desires for his mother, fear of castration by his father
 * Electra complex
 * All girls between the ages of three and six develop sexual feelings toward their father and hostile feelings toward their mother
 * Penis envy
 * The desire all woman have for a penis

=Jungmedia type="youtube" key="v_xKfQccZpc" height="315" width="420" align="right"=
 * Disagreed with Freud’s basic premise that all human behavior is sexually driven
 * Human psyche consists of
 * Personal conscious
 * Waking state, image or thought of what we are aware of
 * Personal unconscious
 * All conscious thoughts begin here
 * Unique
 * Collective unconscious
 * Houses the cumulative knowledge, experiences, and images of the entire human species
 * Memories in form of archetypes
 * Patterns or images of repeated human experiences
 * Birth, death, motherhood
 * Archetypal criticism when applied to literature

=Frye=
 * Mythic criticism
 * Examines archetypal patterns to explain structure and significance of texts
 * Monomyth
 * All literature comprises one complete and whole story
 * Romance phase
 * Summer story, all wishes fulfilled, total happiness
 * Antiromance phase
 * Winter, bondage, imprisonment, frustration, and fear
 * Spring phase
 * Comedy, our rise from antiromance and frustration to freedom
 * Fall phase
 * Tragedy, fall from the romance phase to disaster
 * Phallocentric
 * Male dominated position

=Lacanmedia type="youtube" key="9taihEzQBRA" height="315" width="560" align="right"=
 * Textual analysis
 * Literary texts have the possibility of returning to imaginary order and be united with mothers
 * Everyone longs to be loved, pleasured, and for material things but most of all, everyone longs to be in the imaginary order
 * When looking at a text, look for real order
 * Physical world, all that a person is not, we can only know the physical universe through language
 * Jouissance
 * Short-lived moment of joy, terror, or desire that unconsciously reminds us of wholeness we experienced in the imaginary order
 * Believes unconscious greatly affects our conscious behavior, but unconscious is structured
 * Three part model of the human psyche
 * Language shapes and structures our conscious and unconscious minds
 * Imaginary order
 * From birth to six months
 * Contains wishes, fantasies, and images
 * Images help us to perceive and interpret the world
 * Mirror stage
 * Able to see ourselves independently from our mothers
 * Objet petit a
 * Using the rest room, mothers voice, breast feeding, baby speech
 * Symbolic order
 * Language is learned
 * Learn genders, society rules, and laws
 * Father’s represent culture, must look at the role of the male
 * Real order
 * Physical world and material universe
 * “Everything a person is not”
 * Objects represent a primordial lack

=References=