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 * Psychoanalytic Criticism**

=﻿__ ﻿Facts About Psychoanalytic Criticism __=
 * ==== Discusses unconscious mind ====

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 * ====Campares texts to dreams, and centers on repression ====
 * ====Text = Author's psychological issues ====
 * ====Since they may be repressed thoughts or feelings, author may not realize that he/she is doing this ====
 * ==== Ignores author's intent ====
 * ==== Analyzes what author did not consciously intend to say ====

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Sigmound Freud

 * Founder of psychoanalysis
 * Believed that the unconsious mind was the source of our motivations
 * Freud's Model of the Psyche **

- Example : Precious stole chicken from a diner on her way to school as an instinct to fufill her need to eat, despite the conciquences that might have occured if she was caught.
 * **Id** - completely unconscious part of the psyche that serves as a storehouse of our desires, wishes, and fears as well as basic needs such as eating and drinking. The id houses the libido, the source of psychosexual energy. (most concerned with the pleasure principle - satisfaction NOW and not later, regardless of the circumstances and whatever the cost.)

- Example : Precious later agree's to let a class mate get her some chips.
 * **Ego** - mostly to partially (<--a point of debate) conscious part of the psyche that processes experiences and operates as a referee or mediator between the id and superego. (most concerned with the reality principle - tries to satisfy the id, but in a way that is socially exceptable)


 * **Superego** - often thought of as one's "conscience"; the superego operates "like an internal censor [encouraging] moral judgments in light of social pressures" (123, Bressler - see //General Resources// below).

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Lacan's model of the Psyche is broken down into 3 developmental stages

 * **Imaginary** - a preverbal/verbal stage in which a child (around 6-18 months of age) begins to develop a sense of separateness from her mother as well as other people and objects; however, the child's sense of sense is still incomplete.
 * **Symbolic** - the stage marking a child's entrance into language (the ability to understand and generate symbols); in contrast to the imaginary stage, largely focused on the mother, the symbolic stage shifts attention to the father who, in Lacanian theory, represents cultural norms, laws, language, and power (the symbol of power is the **phallus**--an arguably "gender-neutral" term).
 * **Real** - an unattainable stage representing all that a person is not and does not have. Both Lacan and his critics argue whether the real order represents the period before the imaginary order when a child is completely fulfilled--without need or lack, or if the real order follows the symbolic order and represents our "perennial lack" (because we cannot return to the state of wholeness that existed before language).

If we break up Pecious's life into Lacan's model: <span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">What does this say about Saphire? media type="youtube" key="PLNShGOgqWQ?fs=1" height="385" width="480"
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">**Imaginary** - within 18 months of age Precious recieved her first experiance with sexual abuse, possibly creating a set view of how other people will treat her for the rest of her life. Considering the trust issues she has a teenager and insecurity with how people view her, she has very concrete idea's of the world around her and what her role in it is.
 * **<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Symbolic **<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> - This stage was one that Precious did not even start to grasp untill she began to break away from the abuse that she had endured for her entire life. She was illiterate, and if this stage is linked to the father figure, that could be the reason she did not learn how to read and write. The differance that she saw with the social norms and her fathers actions could have made her turn away from the normal need to express herself, and comunicate with others around her.
 * **<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Real **<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> - This is the image that Precious imagins her self as, and wants to be, a famous person. One that is rich and beutiful, loved, and cared for.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">If we go by her unconcious intent the model of psyche that Saphire set up could mean several different things, such as her concern for the direction our society was headed. Or the unsettled feelings she may have had with the way the comunity handled social problems in the eighties. as well as her own fears or experiances with abuse.

Carl Jung

 * Studied dreams much like Freud
 * Believed that dreams were a tool to help us grow, not to release extreme sexual desires.
 * Believed that sexual drive doesn't motivate us as much as the fear of death.

Freud and Jung had a working relationship from 1907 to 1912 when they had a falling out. It wasn't their different theorys on dreams that caused the friction, it turns out that each man learned from studying eachothers dreams that Freud was sleeping with Jung's wife and Jung was sleeping with one of his younger female patients.

Although the emphasis of this page is the author's psychological state and the effect on what or how they write, we can also look at the reader's response and how their point of view affects the way they perform the text mentally. See the following essay for an example: [|Clint's Essay]

Are there any themes in the text that the character uses to make sense of their world? For example, in the short story //The Tell-Tale Heart//, the narrator habitually watches the old man, creating a routine. Could this routine calm the narrator or give him the confidence he needed to take action?

Psychoanalytic critics, much like New Critics focus on “what the author intended”. The subconscious mind creates pure thoughts which are then distorted by the conscious mind.

One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche (Delahoyde). This being said, what can we assume about the authors of both //Push// and //The Tell-tale Heart//?

Resources [] [] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Gleitman, Henry. //Third Edition Psychology.// New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 1991. Print.