Psychoanalytic Analysis: Connecting
Once you actively read your story, you may have found a concept or topic that interests you. For guidance, the included list discusses common topics that are used in psychoanalysis. Most of these entries were inspired by research from Lois Tyson’s book Critical Theory Today, A User-Friendly Guide. This book is a great beginning manual for students who have never analyzed or written critical analyses before.
PSYCHOLOGICAL dISORDERS
After reading a piece and analyzing a character’s behaviors and motives, you can become aware of characteristics that may align with particular personality disorders and conditions. You may even be able to pinpoint a specific degree of a disorder. Unfortunately, a strong Psychoanalytic criticism does not simply diagnose a character or an author with a disorder. An effective critic will use knowledge about the disorder as fuel to propel a broader commentary of the piece. How have societal influences driven an individual’s psyche to this point? How will this person’s environment reflect their psychological struggles?
For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Jay Gatsby could possibly suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But, why? What comment does this reality make on Gatsby himself and on Jazz-Age America? A solid Psychoanalytic criticism could draw on Gatsby’s narcissism in relation to his relationships, highlighting constant abandonments and emotional struggles as root causes. This reality could directly connect to the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so a critic could then shift into a broad-range commentary on the narcissistic tendencies of individuals that influenced The Great Gatsby and led to the overall downfall of American economies and moral strongholds, resulting in the Great Depression.
Another appropriate example could be found in J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. Audiences could assume that Holden suffers from Avoidant Personality Disorder, which could lead to a Psychoanalytic criticism drawing on Holden’s childhood experiences. A solid criticism could analyze Holden’s feelings of abandonment after his brother Allie’s death, further analyzing his actions with others in adolescence and young adulthood. Holden Caulfield’s realities could then be transferred to highlight the realities of adolescents in the 1950s, highlighting the lives of those in post-war reconstruction.
So, yet again, the goal is not to diagnose but to draw holistic, societal and environmental conclusions. However, I have included a list of the ten most common personality disorders (courtesy of the APA) as a rudimentary starting point. Visit the drop-down list for further information.
dEATH
Living beings in society have a supposed “death drive” subconsciously integrated into everyday existence. Humans attempt to emotionally distance themselves from death; however, this avoidance only propels them closer to their graves. Psychoanalytic criticism attempts to “account for the alarming degree of self-destructive behavior we see both in individuals, who seem bent on destroying themselves psychologically, if not physically, and in whole nations, whose constant wars and internal conflicts often seem much like a form of mass suicide” (Tyson 21). By analyzing the underlying influences of death, readers can often gain a deeper understanding of character motivations and authorial intents. For example, a character’s fear of death may not merely be a fear of biological death, but a fear of loss in general: a loss of romance, a loss of connection, or a loss of money perhaps. An author’s fear may be manifesting in a character’s actions, so a strong Psychoanalytic criticism could analyze the connections.
dREAMS
Psychoanalytic criticism evaluates dreams in two main forms: latent and manifest content. Latent content is the underlying, unconscious message of the dream, while manifest content is the actual content of the dream. Since most “dreamers create all the ‘characters’ in their dreams, there is a real sense in which each person we dream about is really a part of our own psychological experience that we project during the dream into a stand-in” (Tyson 19). By analyzing the underlying messages and influences of characters’ or authors’ dreams, readers can often gain a deeper understanding of character motivations and authorial intents. For example, a character who dreams that her sister was sexually assaulted could actually be projecting a suppressed and internalized sexual assault. By analyzing the life of an author and comparing his or her realities with the character’s dreams, a Psychoanalytic critic could analyze the overall impact of sexual assault on daily functions and family life.
rACISM
Some critics may choose to analyze the ways in which a novel, short story, or poem reveal the debilitating psychological effects of racism, especially when these effects are internalized by its victims, which we see in the belief of many minorities/minority characters that their race has the negative qualities ascribed to it by elitist societies. A novel could show how racism results in an internal self-contempt and a subsequent projection of anger on other persons or groups. That subsequent projection of anger could spark an unraveling of family heritage, civilian confidence, or personal isolation. So, a single act of racism could impact an entire family, town, or country. Critics could write a detailed commentary on these linked effects in the context of a particular novel.
fAMILY
A character’s (and an author’s) deepest psychological tensions often appear and manifest in family interactions. Parents, spouses, siblings, and children often act as strong and appropriate figures on which to project anxieties, emotions, and fears. Psychoanalytic criticism can often research the connections between a character’s past experiences and his or her present relationships. For example, a Psychoanalytic reading of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman might examine the ways in which Willy Loman’s flashbacks to the past are really regressive episodes brought on by his present psychological trauma: his own and his son’s lack of success in the business world, success Willy needed in order to assuage the massive insecurity he’s suffered since his abandonment in child‑ hood by his father and older brother. The play is thus structured by the return of the repressed, for Willy has spent his life repressing, through denial and avoidance, his psychological insecurity and the social inadequacy and business failure that have resulted. From a psychoanalytic perspective, then, Death of a Salesman might be read as an exploration of the psychological dynamics of the family: an exploration of the ways in which unresolved conflicts about our roles within the family are “played out” in the workplace and “passed down” to our children.
cHILDHOOD
The early lives of characters often have underlying influences on both identity development and future actions. For example, a Psychoanalytic reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) might reveal the ways in which Victor’s creation of a monster responsible for the deaths of his family and friends serves his unconscious need to punish his father and mother (for whom Elizabeth is an obvious surrogate) and play out the intense, unresolved sibling rivalry created by their adoption of Elizabeth, the “perfect” child, when Victor was five years old. The total absence of any normal childhood jealousy on Victor’s part, coupled with his frequent protestations of love for the newcomer who dethroned him as the sole object of parental attention and affection, suggest the repression of feelings of abandonment that, because they are kept in the unconscious, are never resolved. You might cautiously speculate on the relationship between the representation of psychological abandonment in the novel and the experiences of abandonment Mary Shelley apparently suffered in her own life: her mother died shortly after Mary was born; her father found single parenthood more than he could handle; and the woman her father subsequently wed neglected Mary in favor of her own daughter by a previous marriage.
“cOMING OF AGE” (BILDUNGSROMAN)
In literature, characters often face uncertain realities as they age. The “coming of age” trope persists throughout many novels, and it denotes the psychological and moral growth of a protagonist from youth to adulthood. Through a Psychoanalytic lens, The Catcher in the Rye reveals the depression the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, suffers due to the death of his young brother, Allie. Allie’s premature passing elicits Holden’s cynical views of the world and the “phonies” around him. Holden isolates himself from those around him in order to shy away from the complexities of life. Salinger uses a hat, a museum, and a merry-go-round to illuminate Holden’s inner turmoil with people, the notion of adulthood, and growing up. Ultimately, an effective analysis could analyze the shifts that Holden Caulfield experiences as he grapples with an innate fear of abandonment. It could then shift into an analysis of 1950s society, highlighting the realities of childhood in that decade.