A psychoanalytic approach to textual criticism focuses heavily on the author of the text, and their subconscious motives behind their writing, rather than studying the text itself. When applying a psychoanalytical approach to the criticism of texts, pieces produced by not only authors, but poets, writers, filmmakers and other artists can be studied in order to understanding the psyche behind their creator.
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Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, brought forward theories and discussed characteristics that composed the field of psychoanalysis, that when applied to literature, make it possible to study the authors subconscious motives through symbols in the composition of the text, which Freud described as unconsciously produced substitutes (Petocz 1999:14).
The purpose of this essay is to investigate and discuss psychoanalysis and its role in textual criticism in detail, while comparing and contrasting its core foundations, characteristics and ideas in relation to the notion of Romanticism; a key literary period that developed during the 18th and 19th century and began with the initial idea of inspiring imagination through text.
Indentifying and discussing the relative features of Freudian analysis and the concept of Romantic authorship throughout this essay, in alignment with gauging an understanding of intention of these concepts as an imperative will be essential in concluding whether the aims of psychoanalytic criticism can be reconciled by Romanticism. Psychoanalysis as a concept, dedicates a section of each individual’s mind to repressed memories, ideas, thoughts or desires and is referred to as the unconscious (Plotnik 2005:558).
The proposed reasoning behind the repression of these memories, desires, ideas or thoughts is that they could be potentially psychologically damaging or threatening to an individual’s self-concept (Plotnik 2005:655). Although Freud did not propose the idea of the unconscious, his extensive research into the field and its impact on the individual led him to conclude that these repressed memories, feelings and thoughts can have significant effects on aspects of an individual’s ersonality that may not be explained by understanding an individual’s consciousness (Plotnik 2005:656).
Separate from his research on the unconscious and repressed feelings and thoughts, Freud believed that an individual’s childhood has significant effects on shaping the individual into an adult, because during childhood, the unconscious is active in exercising sexual drives and feelings and demanding for them to be brought to consciousness, despite efforts of the unconscious to repress them (Plotnik 2005:656).
According to Freud, these repressed feelings and thoughts from childhood manifest and can later be exposed in adulthood (Plotnik 2005:656). When applying psychoanalytic criticism to literature, Freud’s notion of instinct psychology, later known as ID-psychology (Wright 1998) is imperative. ID-psychology is the concept of sexual instincts drive and influences each individual’s life (Wright 1998).
Freud’s topography of the mind explores how the conscious and preconscious constantly battle with the unconscious, in making decisions regarding how to act and how to behave in life (Watts et al. 2009:54). It is in the unconscious that the sexual urges and the “pressure of need” (Wright 1998:33) are driven and derived, and will appear and have influence upon an individual through their actions and personalities (Wright, 1998; Plotnik, 2005; Watts et al. 2009).
Alongside creating and harbouring sexual or pressuring desires, the unconscious is also where memories, feelings and thoughts are stored (Plotnik 2005). It is in the unconscious that Freud believed that any thoughts, feelings, memories or desires which may be psychologically harmful are stored, because they have been previously pushed out of consciousness, as a defence mechanism by the mind, to protect the individual, referred to by Freud as repression (Esterson 2004). These repressed memories or feelings are hidden away and not permitted to re-enter the conscious mind.
However, Freud’s interest with the unconscious and its effects upon individuals has lead him and others to believe that what is held in the unconscious can indeed revert to an individual’s consciousness, and one way in which this has become apparent is through the use of psychoanalytical criticism in literary texts. Freud took his theories of the unconscious mind and repression and applied it to literature, this was referred to as psychoanalytic criticism. By doing so, Freud attempted to identify with the psyche of creators of certain texts.
Freud’s interest in the psychology of the author became the focal point of his interest in art and literature (Childers & Hentzi 1995). Freud performed a psychoanalytic analysis on William Shakespeare’s Play, Hamlet, through the concept of the Oedipus Complex (Cantor 2004: 21). Freud described an Oedipal Complex as wishing to kill one’s father to sleep with one’s mother (Plotnik 2005). This can be classified as a sexual desire or “pressure” that manifests within the unconscious during childhood, and later becomes apparent during adulthood (Plotnik 2005).
Throughout Freud’s analysis of Hamlet, Freud describes Hamlet’s relationship with Claudius as an identification or empathy for Claudius, who killed Hamlet’s father and married his mother, as Claudius is acting out Hamlet’s own Oedipal fantasies (Orr 1991). Freud discovered that Shakespeare composed Hamlet after the death of his own father and applied psychoanalytic criticism to this fact; he described Hamlet as a way for Shakespeare to replicate his own repressed desires stored in his unconscious.
While psychoanalytic thought has been influential, and its “impact in many disciplines has been profound” (Orr 1991:322), the methodology of it has been scrutinised and is often unaccepted by critics. Wasiolek (1974), as cited by Orr (1991) says that using the technique can often be messy, and the concluding claims can be extreme have no particular use. Criticism was gathered by Marxist groups and other critics about the misleading effects of psychoanalysis, however it is recognised that this form does have its place and is influential within contemporary criticism (Childers & Hentzi 1995).
Being a useful tool to discover the underlying psyche of the creator behind the literary works, it will continue to remain a useful tool for textual criticism (Childers & Hentzi 1995). Romanticism became predominant in literature in the 18th and 19th centuries. There was a shift in inspiration for authors; creative texts were inspired by imagination, uniqueness, development and nature, rather than reason and logic, which inspired The Enlightenment, which was another concept spreading at the time (Day 1996:13). As the idea of imagination emerged in alignment ith romanticism through the 18th and 19h century, it implored writers and other artists to generate new ideas and put them into their work (Day 1996:16).
Characteristic of the Romantic period was the connection and interest the author had with nature, and how the experiences were at the heart of the works produced in this period (Harding 1982). Supernatural experiences were also important as a device to signify the shift from the rational and logical, into writings that were ‘a vehicle for communicating states of mind’ (Harding 1982:39).
The reconciliation between psychoanalysis and how it can be applied to textual criticism, in alignment with the broader notion of Romanticism is not fully possible. As psychoanalytic criticism was developed some time after the Romantic period, with Romanticism spreading through the 18th and 19th centuries and psychoanalytic criticism developing through the middle of the 20th century, similarities could be drawn on when comparing the two. A key idea, if not the most important, being that both the Romantics and psychoanalytics share the concept of the unconscious.
In addition to Freud’s theory of the unconscious and repressed feelings, thoughts, memories and desires, the Romantics went through similar processes when creating their works (Plotnik 2005). In Shelley’s 1977 essay ‘A Defence of Poetry’, he claimed how the writing of poetry does not involve a mechanical reasoning or methodology, but instead comes as an inspiration and is derived through imagination. Shelley states that, for poetry there is “some invisible influence” (1997:504) a “power arises from within” (p. 04) and that “the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure” (p. 504).
By stating this, Shelly is inferring that a great poet, or artist’s consciousness is not aware of the greatness it is producing, meaning that an individual cannot attribute their work to their conscious mind; instead, the influence is coming from somewhere deeper in the mind, which from a Freudian perspective would suggest the unconscious. Both Freud and Shelley’s share common ground in the belief that artistic work can be attributed to the unconscious.
Romanticism of the 19th century influenced Freud’s mind model that was created to understand the role of the unconscious, in particular the drive of sexuality (Landow & Sullivan 1988). Freud did not base his theory of the mind around the Romantics ideas, but was rather influenced by what inspired them to produce the literacy that they did (Landow & Sulliva, 1988). While Romanticism built upon the idea of reason by adding a sense of emotion will (or, imagination), Freud built on these concepts further by adding an additional component, that being passion (Landow & Sullivan 1988).
Freud saw these elements; reason, will and passion as being likened to his areas of the mind, ego, superego and the unconscious (Landow & Sullivan 1988). While it is imperative to retain that Freud’s psychoanalysis is in fact a science; Freud himself began in the field of biology and physics, and Romanticism is a 19th century literary movement that signified a shift from The Enlightenment philosophy and the domination of reason in artistic works, the uses of applying psychoanalysis to literature, and the similarities of Freud’s unconscious to the Romantics imagination are not dissimilar (Landow & Sullivan 1988; Day 1996).
The intention of both of these concepts needs to be considered when concluding whether or not the two can be reconciled. The Romantics believe that their work is an expression of their imagination, and that they provide a mimesis of the natural world around them through their works (Beardsley & Wimsatt 1972). Romantic writing gave meaning and expressed what was intended in their imaginations and by reviewing and examining their work, critics are able to “retrieve the meaning of this imagination act” (Beardsley & Wimsatt 1972: 336).
When looking at texts produced by the Romantics, it is not only surface that needs to be considered, but rather the life and mind of the producer in addition (Beardsley & Wimsatt 1972). In Booth’s discussion, he describes his belief in all creative works having implied authors, that is, an author that is understood through the literature itself, rather than having any actual understanding of the author’s life (Booth 1961). To remove the concept of this implied author and understand the text as a single entity, would remove the creative influence that we perceive within a text (Booth 1961).
As the Romantics idea of authorship was that their unconscious was coming out through their work, the implied author that Booth describes is a much stronger connection between the reader or viewer, and the creator (Beardsley & Wimsatt 1972). Beardsley & Wimsatt (1972) refer to the term “biographical criticism”, referring to the psychoanalytic approach to studying text, where one uses a text to analyse and make assumptions about the author’s life.
Essentially, this is what psychoanalysis in literature is. Psychoanalysis examines a text in order to understand the psyche of the author, and in alignment with this, the Romantics also believed that their intentions or non-intentions would be evident through examining their texts or products. The purpose of psychoanalysis essentially grasps what the Romantics intended to be understood through their works.
Irrespective of the criticism surrounding the psychoanalytic approach, such as the psychoanalyst dismissing the text and reducing it to merely a collection of authorial moments (Beardsley & Wimsatt 1972:342), it is apparent that the concept of psychoanalysis being applied to text is not dissimilar to the Romantic’s intention. As Romanticism and Freud’s concept of psychoanalysis emerged in differing centuries, it is difficult to fully reconcile both concepts. However, it is possible to discuss the common ground they share.
It is apparent in literature surrounding and supporting these ideas, that both concepts share the same view or motivation of the unconscious thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories shining through when the mind is actively creating, though they are given different names. As Freud based his studies on psychology, biology and physics, which do not immediately relate to literature, the intention of Romanticism cannot entirely relate, as Romanticism is based on imagination; though the central ideas of Romanticism and Psychoanalysis are not entirely dissimilar; they complement each other.
