Chapter 3 Writing about Character and Motivation: Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

3.1 Literary Snapshot: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

We are becoming acquainted more and more with our young hero Alice, who has had some literary theory adventures in Chapter 1 "Introduction: What Is Literary Theory and Why Should I Care?" and Chapter 2 "Writing about Form: Developing the Foundations of Close Reading". Let’s continue our journey with Alice in this chapter as we explore psychoanalytic literary criticism. We’ll provide the links to Carroll’s text again, just in case:

http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CarAlic.html

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CarGlas.html

When Alice tumbles down the rabbit-hole in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), she enters a fantasy realm that is quite different from her world of the here-and-now:

Her adventures are described as a dream, and she exclaims after the fall that it was all “Curiouser and curiouser!”

In Through the Looking-Glass (1872), Alice, after entering Looking-Glass Land via a magic mirror, encounters two odd brothers, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Alice and the brothers come upon the Red King, who is snoring:

The dream in Looking-Glass Land seems more a nightmare for Alice, for she is scared that she is merely a figment of someone’s dream, their imagination—that’s an idea that might bring us all to tears!

We all have dreams, and we recognize that dreams often mirror the oddness and nonsense that Alice encounters in Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land. Dreams, in fact, are central to psychoanalytic literary criticism and have become the stuff of popular psychology, where dream interpretation continues to be a lucrative industry, as seen at Dream-Books.net (http://dream-books.net/popPsychology-dream-books.html).

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, famously defines dreams as the “road to the unconsciousness” in his monumental work The Interpretation of Dreams (1899).Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.

So let’s enter the wacky and wonderful world of psychoanalytic literary criticism with a few more excerpts from literature:

3.2 Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism: An Overview

“Do I wake or sleep?” Keats’s question is perplexing, one we have probably asked ourselves. For our dreams often seem as real as our waking life. We dream, we wake, and we try to recollect our dream, which somehow seems to tell us something that we should know. We may tell friends our dreams, especially those strange ones that haunt our imagination, and they may venture an interpretation for us by reading our dream. Dreams are stories of our mind, albeit often bewildering narratives in need of interpretation.

Psychoanalytical literary criticism, on one level, concerns itself with dreams, for dreams are a reflection of the unconscious psychological states of dreamers. Freud, for example, contends that dreams are “the guardians of sleep” where they become “disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes.”Sigmund Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams in The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, (New York: Norton, 1989). To Freud, dreams are the “royal road” to the personal unconscious of the dreamer and have a direct relation to literature, which often has the structure of a dream. Jacques Lacan, a disciple of Freud, was influenced by Freud’s psychoanalytical theories and contended that dreams mirrored our unconscious and reflected the way we use language; dreams, therefore, operate like language, having their own rhetorical qualities. Another Freud disciple, Carl Jung, eventually rejected Freud’s theory that dreams are manifestations of the personal unconsciousness, claiming, instead, that they reflect archetypes that tap into the “collective unconsciousness” of all humanity.Sigmund Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams in The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, (New York: Norton, 1989).

In this chapter, we explore three popular psychoanalytical approaches for interpreting literature—Freudian, Lacanian, and Jungian. In general, there are four ways to focus a psychoanalytical interpretation:

1. You can analyze the author’s life.
2. You can analyze the thematic content of the work, especially the motivations of characters and the narrator(s).
3. You can analyze the artistic construction of a text.
4. You can analyze yourself or the reader of the literary work using reader-response theory, which we examine in detail in Chapter 6 "Writing about Readers: Applying Reader-Response Theory".

Here is a quick overview of some psychoanalytical interpretations that demonstrate these approaches.

3.3 Focus on Sigmund Freud (1856–1939): Unconscious Repressed Desire

Photo by Max Halberstadt, 1922.

“Freud is inescapable. It may be a commonplace by now that we all speak Freud whether we know it or not, but the commonplace remains both true and important. Freud’s terminology and his essential ideas pervade contemporary ways of thinking about human feelings and conduct.” So writes Peter Gay, a recent biographer of Freud, in his introduction to The Freud Reader (1989).Peter Gay, "Introduction" in The Freud Reader, (New York: Norton, 1989) pg. xiii.

Gay is certainly correct: Freud is part of our everyday vocabulary: the “Oedipal complex” and “slips-of-the-tongue” are two Freudian concepts with which you are probably familiar already.

Freud’s legacy resides in his theory of human sexual development. He believes humans are driven by the pleasure principleThe driving force of all humans that centers on desire, particularly sexual desire., where sexual desires and aggressive behavior are controlled by the reality principleThe moral or social forces that provide a moral code and restrict the pleasure principle., the so-called restrictions we follow to conform to proper behavior. Consequently, our drive for unbridled pleasure is repressed by the reality principle and becomes sublimated or buried in the unconsciousThe part of our mind that is buried deep within consciousness and seeks outlets.. Initially, Freud categorized the mind according to three levels: the conscious (what we remember), the preconscious (what we can easily retrieve from our memory), and the unconscious (what cannot be retrieved into consciousness). Freud’s map of the mind focuses on the tension between the conscious and the unconscious.

Ultimately, much of Freudian psychoanalysis concerns itself with how the unconsciousness attempts to break through the repression barrier and enter consciousness. A popular way to view the tension between the conscious and the unconscious is to imagine an iceberg:

Figure 3.1 Freud’s Conception of the Human Psyche

*Note: Ego is free-floating in all three levels.

In The Ego and the Id (1923), Freud further defines his conception of the mind. He theorizes that the mind contains the idThe “it” of life force for humans—the center of our instincts, our libido, our desires., the egoThe “I” that seeks to balance the opposing forces of the id and the superego., and the superegoThe moral code that reflects a variety of authority—social, parental, religious. (or the ego-ideal).Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams in The Freud Reader, (New York: Norton, 1989) p. 630–638. The id (the “it”) is the center of our instincts, our libido, which naturally seeks gratification, and is driven by the pleasure principle; the id is primarily sexual and aggressive in nature, purely biological. In turn, the superego (the “above me”) is the moral conscience—the “law”—that tells us what is right or wrong, permissible or not permissible. The superego is constructed from parental authority, societal law, religious prohibitions, and so on; is societal; and is driven by the reality principle. It follows, then, that the ego (the “I”) is the moderator of the id (pleasure) and the superego (moral conscience). In other words, the ego is the compromise of the id and the superego, a delicate balance of the mind.

Freud posits that mental illnesses result from a faulty ego, one unable to accept the id-superego push and pull. If the mind is unable to release those repressed desires through some outlet, then a person can develop a mental illness—various neuroses like psychosis, paranoia, and schizophrenia. The goal of this chapter is not to provide you with an overview of Freudian psychoanalysis as it relates to treating mental illness; instead, our goal is to show you how to apply Freud’s theories to the interpretation of literature.

Central to Freud’s schematic of the mind is the Oedipal or Oedipus complexThe process of sexual development for boys defined by desire for the mother and feeling threatened by the father. (OC), for it is the OC that ultimately forms the ego. To Freud, all humans pass through three stages of sexual development. During the oral stageStage in which a child is driven to incorporate objects with himself or herself, thus creating wholeness and unity., a child is one with its libido, its sexual desire satisfied by oral sucking, particularly of the mother’s breast. Continued thumb-sucking during childhood, for example, represents a child not completely through the oral stage of development. Next, the child passes through the anal stageAggressive stage of development in which a child learns control of the bodily functions., whereby it experiences the mastery of its own bodily functions, gaining pleasure from the ability to control bodily functions. Freud believes the anal stage is primarily aggressive and leads to the desire for mastery over others. Those who have read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) will recognize that the stranded children are stuck in the anal stage without any authority to control them, especially after the breaking of the conch shell.William Golding, Lord of the Flies (New York: Penguin, 1984). Finally, the child enters the phallic stageStage in which a child discovers his or her sexual organs—specifically, the presence or lack of a penis—and begins sexual development., where the child’s sexual desire is concentrated on the genitals, which become an erogenous zone that fulfills pleasure. In effect, the oral, anal, and phallic stages reflect libidinal sexual desires central to the pleasure principle.

Enter the father. Enter the reality principle. Enter the OC. The OC comes directly from Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, a tragedy about the hero Oedipus, who learns from the Delphic oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother; he tries to avoid the prophecy, only to fall victim to patricide and incest.Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea, 2007). Unknowingly, Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother. After learning what he has done, Oedipus blinds himself in penance of his horrific deeds. Now that’s a twisted tale! Freud’s OC approximates the tragedy of Oedipus Rex: the boy, as Freud tells us, has a desire for the mother and begins to see the father as a threat to this desire. Thus the boy wishes to rid himself of his father and possess the mother. The father, symbolic of the law or lawgiver, steps in and, with the threat of castration or emasculation, turns the boy away from the mother. The boy then represses his desire for his mother (and his desire to be rid of the father) into the unconscious. In a sense, the father represents the superego, the authority. By successfully negotiating the OC, the boy is gendered; he learns how to direct his sexual desire to appropriate objects and usually grows into a healthy sexual human being.

What of the girl, you ask? Well, you probably shouldn’t ask. Freud’s OC is highly sexist. At one point in his career Freud referred to women as the “dark continent,” and he is known most for his rhetorical question: “What does a woman want?” Indeed, Freud did not have an answer, and many feminists would argue that he didn’t even have a clue! He does not provide an adequate explanation for the girl’s journey through the process; in fact, Freud claims that the girl has an easier route through the OC since she accepts the notion of castration because she doesn’t have the male appendage. In other words, the girl, already symbolically castrated, does not fear the father; instead, she turns toward the father for the missing phallus, her completion, and thus rivals the mother for the father’s affection. You can probably see why nearly all of Freud’s critics have recognized the limitations of his claims about women.

At this point you may be shaking your head in skeptical amazement, for Freud’s theories do tax the imagination. One major critique of Freud is that we cannot verify his theories empirically. In other words, we are asked to believe Freud because he tells us to believe him. For literary critics, however, this theory—or story—that Freud creates, one that he develop from reading literature (Oedipus Rex), has tantalizing possibilities for literary interpretation.

There’s a bit more to Freud that we’ll want to examine—dreams—but let’s look at another use of the Freudian OC in literary analysis. Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment (1975) provides a provocative—and controversial—case for a Freudian interpretation of literature, in this case fairy tales.Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Vintage, 1976). Bettelheim contends that fairy tales often depict Oedipal tensions. Let’s look at one example, “Jack and the Beanstalk,” which you can read at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/English_Fairy _Tales/Jack_and_the_Beanstalk.“Jack and the Beanstalk,” in English Fairy Tales, 3rd ed., ed. Joseph Jacobs (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890), http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/English_Fairy_Tales/Jack_and_the_Beanstalk.

This tale exemplifies a child’s journey through the OC. The beanstalk, symbolizing the phallus, is a metaphor for fatherly authority. Jack’s stealing of the goose that lays the golden egg from the giant and subsequent cutting down of the beanstalk, which leads to the giant’s demise, symbolizes Jack’s freedom from the fear of the fatherly authority as he becomes his own person, his own man. By chopping down the beanstalk, then, Jack symbolically castrates the giant and is able to give up his pleasurable desire for the land of plenty on top of the beanstalk and live in the world of reality. Of course, it helps to have that goose. If fairy tales suggest Freudian designs, as Bettelheim tells us, then it seems reasonable other literature may reflect Oedipal desires. Thus a psychoanalytic reading of a text may lead to some illuminating conclusions. As with any Freudian readings, there are those who will reject Freud’s very premises, and this is true with Bettelheim, for many fairy-tale scholars have looked at the limits of his claims. Yet they are still powerful.

Illustration by Herbert Cole for Ernest Rhys’s Fairy Gold: A Book of Old English Fairy Tales (London: J. M. Dent, 1906).

We must add another dimension to Freud’s theory to complete its frame, which will come full circle and connect us to Alice’s concern that she is a dream of the Red King. To summarize Freudian theory so far, the human mind is structured around the id-ego-superego triad that represents the tension between the pleasure and the reality principle; the ego is the moderator between pleasure and reality and is formed by entering the OC. The ego balances the id and superego by repressing those id desires that are not socially acceptable—which includes the desire for the mother—into the unconscious. To remain psychologically healthy, according to Freud, the human mind must be able to let those repressed desires escape. Slips of the tongue and jokes are two outlets. Think of dirty jokes. By telling a dirty joke or laughing at one, we are able to alleviate our fears or laugh at something that is normally not permissible. Think of a slip of the tongue, where you are repressing some desire that unconsciously slips out in normal conversation. A clever definition of such a slip is as follows: It’s when you say one thing, but mean a mother. Get it?

Yet there is one other outlet that is vital to Freud: dreams. They are the primary outlets for these repressed desires, the “royal road,” as Freud expressed it, to the unconscious.

This chapter begins with a brief overview of the importance of dreams to psychoanalytic literary criticism. And Freud’s theory of dreams may be his most important contribution to literary analysis. Freud defines dreams as hidden ways of accessing repressed wishes or desires. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) is Freud’s masterwork on dream interpretation. If dreams are fulfillments of repressed wishes and desires, then dreams provide a means for the pleasure principle—the id—to have a convenient outlet. Freud identifies the dreamworkThe overall structure of our dreams, made up of the latent content, manifest content, and secondary revision. as constructed of the latent contentThe unregulated desire that is deep inside us and is often threatening to us., the manifest contentStage of the dreamwork where structure is brought to the latent content., and the secondary revisionThe dream we remember, placed in a fable or story-form structure.. The latent content is like a bubbling cauldron of desire, so deep and seething that it appears unintelligible. To bring some meaning to this cauldron, the dreamwork operates by allowing the manifest content to provide a structure for the latent content; the manifest content orders and arranges the dream into a story that uses images and symbols to convey meaning. To continue with our analogy, as the dreamer looks into the bubbling cauldron of the latent content, he or she takes a ladle and dips into the cauldron and pours latent content into a bowl, the bowl representing the manifest content, a smaller and more structured container. Literal food for thought!

The primary recipe for such symbolization and image making is a dash of condensationWhen two or more images or things are compressed into one composite image or thing. (compression of information) and a tablespoon of displacementPlacing desire onto another, safe object or outlet. (placing desire onto a safe/other object). Condensation operates by taking two or more images and compressing them into a composite picture (i.e., a dream where a person looks like an amalgam of other people you know). Displacement, on the other hand, operates by substituting one thing or image for another (i.e., Freud once interpreted a car to represent the autoeroticism of the dreamer). Secondary revision, finally, is the dream the dreamer remembers and attempts to interpret (or have someone else interpret); during the secondary revision, any gaps or illogicalities of the dream from the manifest content is filled in and smoothed over—the dreamer revises the story to make it more literary, to imbue it with more sense. Another way to see secondary revision is to view it as interpretation: as we interpret a dream, we interpret a piece of literature. If a dream has a narrative structure, then it follows that it requires reading and interpreting, making a dream similar to a poem, play, short story, or novel.

In On Dreams (1914), Freud provides some strategies for reading dreams by discussing various symbols that work by condensation and displacement and become dramatized or put into a story form.Sigmund Freud, On Dreams (New York: Cosimo, 2010). A central dream symbol, one that is essential to the OC, is the phallic symbolSymbol that represents the male/masculine power, usually sharp, long objects.—guns, knives, swords, pens, even a banana. Related to the phallic symbol is the yonic symbolSymbols that represent the female/feminine power, usually round objects., any round object or object of fecundity that may symbolize female fertility—symbols of the womb. Some symbols become more universal: agricultural images represent fertilization, as do spring and summer. Be forewarned: not everything in a text is a phallic or yonic symbol. Freudian symbol hunting can at times be a dangerous occupation, for every pen—say the one you are probably holding in your hand right now—is not necessarily a phallic symbol, even if as some Freudians pun: “Pen-is power”! Freud once said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but that leaves open the possibility that sometimes that cigar might mean something else.

Freud also suggests that the dream symbolism of condensation and displacement also operates through various defense mechanisms or coping strategies that we use every day. RepressionDefense mechanism in which one forgets—or, alternately, actively refuses to think about—something that was unpleasant or traumatic. (forgetting or refusing to think about something that was unpleasant or traumatic); sublimationDefense mechanism in which one channels one’s emotions into a socially acceptable outlet rather than the outlet that one might prefer but is not considered appropriate. (channeling one’s emotions into a socially acceptable outlet); projectionDefense mechanism in which one denies one’s feelings and believes (or claims) instead that someone else has these emotions. (assigning one’s own feelings to someone else); reaction formationDefense mechanism in which one expresses the opposite of what one really feels. (expressing the opposite of what one really feels); and rationalizationDefense mechanism in which one attempts to justify something—an event, one’s emotions or behavior, and so on—to explain it away. (trying to justify something, to explain it away) are other ways for the mind to grapple with unconscious desires that haunt the psyche. And Freud contends that as the mind is split between the unconscious and the conscious, this schism is a product of the two great motivating factors—ErosDriving force in humans that is concerned with desire, sexual desire, love, and so on. (desire, sexual intimacy, love) and ThanatosThe driving force of death; humans have a simultaneous fear and fascination with this unknown. (death, the fear and attraction of death). That our desire for life will ultimately be defeated by the inevitable reality of death is a central concern that leads to repression.

Freud’s psychoanalytic theories have been extremely influential to literary criticism. Dreams are, after all, like literature in need of interpretation. In fact, argues Freud, literature operates like a dream. In “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” (1908), Freud specifically connects psychoanalysis to literature and literary interpretation.Sigmund Freud, “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,” in On Freud’s “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,” ed. Peter Fonagy, Ethel Spector Person, and Servulo A. Figueira (London: Karnac, 1995). A writer is a dreamer, finding outlets for his or her unconscious, repressed desires. As reader and interpreter of a literary work, then, you gain pleasure from reading. We see in Chapter 6 "Writing about Readers: Applying Reader-Response Theory" that reader-response interpretation approximates Freud’s reader “wish-fulfillment” as a textual strategy.

In general, Freudian literary criticism is a powerful critical lens to use when viewing much literature. You have at your disposal a wide array of literary tools to use: repression of the conscious mind into the unconscious, pleasure versus reality principles, the id-ego-superego connection, the Oedipal complex, dreams and dream symbolism, and the various defense mechanisms. Often, a psychoanalytical reading will open up the text dramatically. We can now examine the theories of Jacques Lacan, who makes Freud even more applicable to literary interpretation.

3.4 Focus on Jacques Lacan (1901–81): Repressed Desire and the Limits of Language

Image courtesy of Pablosecca, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lacan-by-pablo-secca.png.

Jacques Lacan, in many ways, is more popular than Freud in literary analysis, though Freud is certainly more famous across disciplines. And the fact remains that Lacan is a Freudian—his theory is dependent on Freud. When Lacan writes that “the unconscious is structured like a language,” he moves Freud from the biological realm into the realm of language.Dor, Joël. Introduction to the Reading of Lacan: The Unconscious Structured Like a Language. (New York: Other Press, 1998) pg. 244. Freudian literary criticism is primarily external to a work of art: we read and interpret according to Freud’s theories, applying, for example, the id-ego-superego triad to Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark,” as a student example demonstrates later in the chapter. Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism, on the other hand, can be seen as internal to the work, for it focuses on the actual language of the literary work. In other words, the text becomes alive, having its own mind, its own psyche. Lacanian psychoanalysis is textual, part of the artistic, formal construction of the literary work.

As you remember, Freud posits that the mind is divided between the conscious and unconscious, the dividing line between the two states representing the repression barrier. Lacan positions language in this dichotomy by modifying the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure, who argued that words (or signs) work within a system of other signs (our language). However, Saussure believes a sign is only an arbitrary marker between the signifierThe first part of the sign system that represents that sign or signifier, the actual word for the signifier, or an example. (the form the sign takes—a sound, a symbol, or a word) and its signifiedThe second part of the sign system; the tangible object or “real” concept that is represented by the signifier. (the concept the sign represents). Lacan, who felt that the signifier (the word) dominated the signified (the actual “thing” the word represents), represents the sign system as follows:

Thus to say a cat is a cat is to say the following:

This “bonding” between the signifier and signified is arbitrary, argues Saussure, for we could have easily labeled the “essence of the cat” a trilgy and been hollering for years, “Here, trilgy…trilgy…trilgy.” But Saussure contends that once an arbitrary sign is constructed, it remains bonded together and unchangeable, like two sides to a piece of paper. Language, consequently, is a system of signs, where words take on their meaning only in relationship to other words. Lacan revises Saussure by suggesting that signs are not stable, but in fact are continually shifting; words are a mere approximation of meaning, thus Lacan’s emphasis on the word over the actual “thing” the word represents.

Lacan, then, views words, the signifiers, the marks of letters on a page, as central to the creation of meaning (or the essence of the signified). Words bring meaning to the object; the signified is meaningless without the signifier. Language, consequently, throws a person into a sign system that never captures meaning, the human thrust into the language of desire. Or to put it plainly, if you like cats, then having the word cat nicely printed in your lap is not as fulfilling as having that actual furry creature purring in your lap.

To a degree, the sign, split between the signifier and the signified, acts like a repression barrier: Freud’s unconscious becomes the Lacanian signified—meaning—which can never be fulfilled since language—the signifier—approximates meaning. If Lacan is correct (and, of course, this is a pretty big “if”), then our unconscious is “structured like a language,” and it follows that the human subject is divided between our name (for us, John Pennington and Ryan Cordell) and our signified (for us, the essence of “John Pennington” and “Ryan Cordell”). Lacan distinguishes the dual self by labeling the moi“Me,” which in Lacanian thought represents the image a person has of himself or herself. (the image the person has of himself or herself) and the je“I,” which in Lacanian thought is the actual speaking subject, the person. (the speaking subject that positions the person in language) as parts of the self:

Another way of comprehending the moi/je dichotomy is to understand how a pronoun operates in a conversation. If you say to a friend—“I would love to go to a movie tonight, wouldn’t you?”—I = You and the You = Your friend. When your friend responds—“You have a good idea; I’d sure like to go”—the I = Your Friend and You = You. Lacan claims that language creates our identity and places us within the system of language, which, as we remember, is arbitrary and approximate. Language, as Lacan defines it, represents “the unconscious [that] is structured like a language,” yet this language “is the discourse of the Other,” the Other being language.Dor, Joël. Introduction to the Reading of Lacan: The Unconscious Structured Like a Language. (New York: Other Press, 1998) pg. 244.

Central to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is the Oedipal complex, and Lacan modifies the complex by making it a product of language acquisition. He argues that a child passes through the ImaginaryThe stage where the child believes in wholeness of identity; this is a prelinguistic stage. and the SymbolicThe stage represented by language, law, and order—those socially accepted beliefs. and strives to attain the RealThe sought-after stage that is unattainable since it eludes any attempt to name it in language—the concept of “death” is an example., roughly equivalent to the anal, oral, and phallic stages. The Imaginary stage is prelinguistic, similar to the id with its chaotic collection of desire. During the Imaginary stage, the child has no clearly defined sense of self; instead, it is a mass of fluid desire, Lacan’s image for this is an omelet or egg, a human Humpty Dumpty so-to-speak. In this amorphous Imaginary state, the child has no boundaries since it has no self. However, the child passes through the Mirror stageStage where child passes from the Imaginary (believing in unity) to the Symbolic (which is a world of differences)., where it sees itself reflected in the mirror, and this reflection provides the child with an image of itself, one at first of ideal completeness. The child identifies with the reflection in the mirror. Yet this image of completeness is quickly shattered, for the child must misread itself, for it simultaneously sees itself as unified and as an object, an Other. Thus the beginning of the split subject. It is important to note that during the Mirror stage the child begins to acquire language, learning immediately that what is desired and the words used to identify that object of desire are not the same. Language in the Mirror stage fragments the myth of the unified self contained in the Imaginary stage.

During the Imaginary and Mirror stages, the child is subject to the desire-of-the-motherFound in the Imaginary and Mirror stages, where the mother is one with the child and satisfies all wants and desires., whereby the child has complete desire for the mother and believes the mother in turn exists solely for the child’s pleasure. Again, a division occurs as the self misreads itself in terms of the image the self projects into the mirror (or interprets from the reflection). Mother is both self and other, as is the child’s identity. Enter the father—again. By this time, the child is cast into the Symbolic stage by being thrust into the language of differences. Since language is based on the signifier | signified, it follows that once a child is inserted into language it sees that its desire—the naming of objects—is never fulfilled by the object itself, for language is arbitrary and empty. Furthermore, the child is thrown into a world of differences, for words only take on meaning in relation to other words, primarily the differences between words: male/female; father/son; mother/daughter; moi/je.

Consequently, the child, now split from itself, seeks fulfillment in other objects, the objet petit a“Little object ‘a.’” The desire to find such an object, which provides temporary meaning, yet shifts since the sign system is only an approximation of meaning., loosely translated as “little object ‘a.’” The objet petit a is a product of language, so it cannot really be found. Lacan contends that language operates as to preclude the child’s fulfillment of finding an objet petit a. The mirror reflection becomes an apt metaphor: you are the reflection in the mirror, yet that reflection only “reflects” you (it truly isn’t you). The distance between the mirror and where you are standing symbolizes the gap or gulf between words and a person’s identity. That Alice is able to cross through the mirror into Looking-Glass Land, for example, represents her desire—she is in an imaginary realm (her mind?) where she can attempt to satiate her desire.

Lacan insists then language is a source of our desire but that language becomes the source of frustrated desire since words can never capture desire or the essence of meaning. Think about what happens when you stumble across a word you don’t know: you look it up in a dictionary, only to find that the word is defined by other words, which have their own meanings, which you could look up in a dictionary, which…and we are in an endless, infinite loop. Take the word liminal. What does it mean? The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines liminal as a “sensory threshold,” as something “barely perceptible,” and as an “intermediate state, phase, or condition” that might exist between life and death.Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “liminal,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liminal. Now do you know what the word really means? Or are you a bit frustrated? One thing we do know for sure is that Alice travels to liminal spaces when she tumbles to Wonderland and when she crosses over to Looking-Glass Land.

Let’s place all this in a tighter format. Remember, Freud claims that the dreamwork uses displacement and condensation to create the manifest content of the dream. For Lacan the dreamwork is a manifestation of language—displacement resides in metonymySubstitution of a name or word that is closely associated with the thing that is meant; for instance, “White House” used to indicate the executive branch of the government. and condensation in metaphorWhen one object is equated with another, thus substituting for that object: “my love is a red red rose” (metaphor), rather than “my love is like a red red rose” (simile).:

Wondering what metonymy and metaphor are? In A Handbook to Literature, C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon provide excellent definitions of these literary devices. Metonymy is “the substitution of the name of an object closely associated with a word for the word itself. We commonly speak of the monarch as ‘the crown,’ an object closely associated with royalty thus being made to stand for it.”C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon, eds., A Handbook to Literature (Upper Saddle, NJ: Pearson, 2009). Metaphor is “an analogy identifying one object with another and ascribing to the first object one or more or the qualities of the second.”C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon, eds., A Handbook to Literature (Upper Saddle, NJ: Pearson, 2009).

In effect, metonymy works by displacement, residing on a horizontal axis that reflects the displacement; thus, “a” is displaced by “b,” which is displaced by “c,” and so on. Metaphor, in turn, operates by substitution, and can be placed on a vertical axis where one thing stands in completely for another: “a” = “b.”

You can now see how Lacan’s theory begins to come together. Metonymy, being displacement, is a result of the Mirror stage where the child recognizes its reflection first as a complete substitution for itself (a metaphor), but it soon realizes that the reflection is of an Other, a displacement of the self (a metonym). Thus, since language is split between signifier | signified, it primarily operates as metonymy. Language as metonymy always leaves a gap or absence or lackThat which is created by language since no word can capture the essence of the sign or thing named., since no complete meaning can be attained. Language, consequently, is like the unconscious, which strives to fulfill repressed desire. Another way of understanding language as a gap is to open a dictionary to find a meaning of a word, as we have discussed earlier. Cast into a language of desire, humans are unable to find stable meaning, for language cannot satisfy desire; we continually search for an objet petit a that will fulfill us, but that objet is based on a lack, for it is simply a product of language.

If Lacan subscribes to Freud’s Oedipal complex, then the father must become a significant player in the development drama of the individual. Lacan argues that the desire-of-the-mother, a product of the Imaginary stage, is replaced by the name-of-the-fatherRepresented by the phallus, this is the law and authority that constrains self and desire., the phallusThe privileged sign that represents the name-of-the-father., which represents law and authority and brings some boundary to the self. The phallus or name-of-the-father is not the sexual organ itself, but a symbolic representation that is similar to the superego. The phallus is another objet petit a, but it operates as an anchoring point along the horizontal axis of metonymy. As the human subject floats through language on the metonymic plane, it searches for the phallus and temporarily finds the phallus as a metaphor on the vertical plane. Thus the phallus becomes the privileged signifier, for it helps the split subject achieve temporary meaning in the endless journey through the language of desire. However, the phallus can never be secured, for it too resides in language and quickly slips away. Thus the search for the phallus or name-of-the-father is a frustrated desire since it is a product of language.

Finally, Lacan constructs the ideal realm called the Real, the ultimate place where the Imaginary and Symbolic stages can meet. To Lacan, though, the Real is only symbolic and beyond the reach of language—it represents the unattainable; it represents desire. The Imaginary and Symbolic are like two sides of a sheet of paper, similar to the signifier and signified; the Real is like a Möbius strip constructed from strands of paper where the Imaginary and Symbolic become entangled and lost in the web between the Imaginary and the Symbolic.

M.C. Escher's “Moebius Strip II” © 2012 The M.C. Escher Company-Holland. All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com.

    Lacan’s theory is complex and at times confusing, yet like Freud’s it is intriguing. His revising of Freud’s concepts “into” language makes his theory particularly applicable to literary interpretation, for literature is based on language, which is structured like the unconscious. Whereas Freud suggests the literary work is structured like an author’s dream in need of interpretation, Lacan proposes that language itself is a dream of condensation and displacement; therefore, Lacan’s theory is centered more in actual language and less in the peculiar workings of each individual author and reader. Literary interpretation based on language, then, attempts to find meaning in a work that will elude us because language slides away from us. Our desire for interpretation, in a sense, can only be temporarily reached via an anchoring point (a written paper), but that point will be undercut with subsequent papers and interpretations.

Furthermore, Lacan’s Imaginary, prelinguistic stage is appealing to feminist critics, for the Imaginary seems a maternal stage of unity that does not rely on a girl’s symbolic castration to enter into the realm of the Symbolic, for both male and female are immersed into language, which casts each into a world of differences. In Freud’s theory, a girl is defined by lacking—she desires the male organ that she does not have. Lacan, however, situates all this in language, revealing that women are marginalized not biologically but linguistically, for the privileged signifier is the phallus, or patriarchy.

3.5 Focus on Carl Jung (1875–1961): The Archetypal Collective Unconsciousness

Carl Jung, like Lacan, was a disciple of Freud’s, but unlike Lacan, Jung eventually split from Freud, believing that Freud focused too heavily on the importance of sexual desire and the repression that that desire causes. Jung felt that Freud’s theories were, simply, too vague and could be manipulated to fit any scheme. Jung’s complaint seems justified, for Freudian analysis can become reductive as a reader finds phallic symbolism in every knife and fork and yonic symbolism in the soup bowl. Freud’s claim that the unconscious is a result of a person’s repressed desire (which of course is sexual, libidinal), is challenged by Jung, who argues that the mind is constructed of multiple layers of consciousness, the unconscious composing only one of those layers. Jung’s map of the mind is like a house with several stories: on one level lives the conscious, on another the personal unconscious (similar to Freud’s unconscious), on another the collective unconsciousThe universal storehouse of images common to all humanity., which represents a universal storehouse of images that are common to all humanity. Jung clearly separates himself from Freud, for the collective unconscious is much larger than the unconscious, suggesting that a commonality is shared by all humans—including the importance of myth, ritual, and religion.

The collective unconscious can be accessed through various archetypesParticular images or symbols that are part of the collective unconscious. The major archetypes include the Self, the shadow, the anima, and the animus. that represent for a particular culture a variation of the collective unconscious. Archetypes are like universal Tupperware containers; a particular culture, society, or individual fills that container with its more “personal” symbol-mixture that is molded by the archetype container yet maintains its individual flavor. Thus an archetype is simultaneously universal and particular. Archetypes are those “big dreams” of a culture.

The overriding archetype for Jung is the SelfKey archetype that represents the total personality but is unknown, leading to the quest or search for “self.”, the image of wholeness or individuation. Jung’s graphic depiction of the Self is the mandala⊕; symbol for the unified Self—wholeness., a circle containing four harmonious parts.

The mandala is beginning and end, perfectly balanced by the four chambers, which composes the unification of the whole Self. Jung’s concept of the collective Self, as you can see, is diametrically opposed to Freud’s and Lacan’s fractured and split individual self. According to Jung each person wears an outward face to the world, a mask or personaThe outward face that a person wears into the world that hides the true self., while the inward face contains the shadowKey archetype that challenges the concept of self; the shadow is the dark side of the Self, or the moral problem that the Self must confront. and the anima/animus. The shadow is the dark side of the Self that we all hope to hide; it is also the “moral problem” that the Self must grapple with on its way to wholeness. The Self must eventually recognize its shadow as part of its nature. The doppelgänger is the German literary term for the double, and it captures the dark side of the human. Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) is a prototypical story of the double; it focuses on the experiences of the mannered Dr. Henry Jekyll and his alter ego, the beastly Mr. Hyde.Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886; Project Gutenberg, 2011), http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42/pg42.html. Stevenson’s novel famously suggests that the shadow resides naturally in the Self, though the Self wears a mask to hide that shadow side to the world and to the Self.

Classics Illustrated cover for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1943).

Furthermore, every Self has its own masculine or feminine counterpart to the personality: the animaArchetype for the man. The anima represents the maternal, Eros, and desire. is the female part of the male; the animusArchetype for the woman. The animus represents the paternal, Logos, and reason. is the masculine part of the female. The anima embodies Eros—desire—a maternal archetype that is both positive (the nurturing mother) and negative (the devouring witch). Anima archetypes include the Great Mother, the Tempting Whore, and the Destroying Crone. Conversely, the animus embodies Logos—reason—and is paternal, symbolized by the Great Father, the Wise Old Man, the Lover, and the Destroying Angel archetypes. Both anima and animus have positive and negative dimensions. As the shadow side of the Self is usually hidden or repressed inside, the anima or animus side of the Self is also internalized and hidden, for the Self is unwilling to recognize its feminine or masculine side. That is why the Self will project its opposite onto others, which explains erotic heterosexual love: the male and female are united, finding their anima or animus completed by their partner. Jung falls into the same trap as Freud to a degree—they both make essentialist assumptions about gender.

Since the goal of the Self is harmony, as seen in the mandala, the Self undertakes the archetypal quest to achieve syzygyThe state of unity when the quest for the whole Self is achieved., the fulfillment of unity, of balance. Jung fathoms that the mythsAn archetypal story that mirrors the quest for the complete Self. Myths are part of the collective unconsciousness. of a culture highlight the Self’s quest for completeness, symbolized by the mandala, and the quaternion Christ is the ideal unified Self, containing Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and Mary (thus balancing the anima and animus). Unlike Freud, who saw no value in religion, Jung’s theory is cemented in religion, with the Self a reflection of God. The quest to find the Self, consequently, is a quest for God within the Self, symbolized by Christ, the purest archetype of the God-in-the-human-self. The quest for the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend, for example, symbolizes search for the unity of Self and God. Such a quest becomes the foundation for a culture’s archetype, this archetype being a variation of the “big dream” of the collective unconscious, the grand archetype.

But how can you apply Jung to literary criticism? In “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry” (1922), Jung explains how literature and the writer operate under the archetype.Carl Jung, “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry,” in Twentieth Century Theories of Art, ed. James M. Thompson (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1999), 151–67. Literature is not necessarily based on the personal unconscious of the writer, but on the unconscious mythology that is part of the collective unconsciousness. A writer, then, draws from the collective unconscious for the archetype. Literature is a powerful tool that operates like myth, ritual, and religion.

Other critics have adapted Jungian ideas. Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890–1915), an anthropological compendium of cross-cultural myths, complements Jung’s theories of myth.Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough (1922; Project Gutenberg, 2003), http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3623. Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) positions Jung in his definition of the monomyth—the departure, initiation, and return of the hero who finds completeness and wholeness during the quest.Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed. (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008). George Lucas, for example, wrote the original Star Wars Trilogy as a modern myth that exemplifies Campbell’s archetypal patterns. Darth Vader, the dark side of the Self, must be confronted, while the need for balance and control and harmony is found in Ben Kenobi’s “force,” which Luke Skywalker must master in order to confront his dark side, his Self, his father.Star Wars Trilogy: Episode IV, A New Hope; Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back; and Episode VI, Return of the Jedi, directed by George Lucas (1980; Beverly Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox, 2004), DVD. The most recent example of this myth is seen in Harry Potter’s confrontation with Voldemort.

Jungian criticism is often applied to literature that is considered more mythic—fairy tales, fantasy, and medieval romances. In Fairy Tales: Allegories of Inner Life (1983), J. C. Cooper argues that “Jack and the Beanstalk” depicts common archetypes of the Fool and Trickster, as Jack moves from the fool (for buying “magic” beans) to the trickster (who can outwit the giant).J. C. Cooper, Fairy Tales: Allegories of Inner Life (London: Aquarian, 1983). To Cooper, the fairy tale is about the universal pattern where goodness triumphs over evil, where ingenuity and innocence defeat brutality. Cooper’s reading is far different than Bettelheim’s.

While Jungian criticism is often applied to texts that privilege fantasy over realistic narrative, the theory can find uses in all forms of contemporary literature, as seen in John Neary’s recent Shadows and Illuminations: Literature as Spiritual Journey (2011), in which he examines the work of writers as diverse as Jonathan Safran Foer, Yann Martel, Toni Morrison, to Jane Hamilton.John Neary, Shadows and Illuminations: Literature as Spiritual Journey (Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2011).

3.6 Reading Keats’s “Urn” through the Psychoanalytic Lens

Keats’s “Urn,” as you have discovered, lends itself well to the psychoanalytic perspective. Compare the classroom discussion with some critical applications of psychoanalytic theory to Keats’s poem. Leon Waldoff in Keats and the Silent Work of Imagination (1985), for example, demonstrates how Keats’s loss of family members creates “feelings of separation anxiety,” especially the loss of his mother and brother Tom.Leon Waldoff, Keats and the Silent Work of Imagination (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985). This loss becomes manifest in “an unconscious determinant” that creates key symbols in Keats’s odes, the Grecian urn being an example.Leon Waldoff, Keats and the Silent Work of Imagination (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985). The urn symbolizes, argues Waldoff, an “undying longing for permanence” that symbolizes an “unending quest conducted at the deepest levels of the mind by the silent work of the imagination, which repeatedly seeks to heal an insistent sense of loss and to deal with its more conscious complement—a penetrating awareness of the transience of human life and a concern with philosophical questions raised by that awareness.”Leon Waldoff, Keats and the Silent Work of Imagination (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985). The urn, like the other artifacts in Keats’s odes (nightingale, autumn, melancholy), shows “the fundamental impossibility of controlling imagination and the desire impelling it toward a finer conception of its object.”Leon Waldoff, Keats and the Silent Work of Imagination (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985). Waldoff contends Keats’s melancholia that results from familial loss “provides a structure or context within which the unconscious processes evident in the poetry may be seen to work with cohesion and unity of purpose in the direction they give to the imagination.”Leon Waldoff, Keats and the Silent Work of Imagination (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985). Keats’s life, then, is the key subtext that is the foundation of the odes.

A Lacanian reading could extend Waldoff’s argument: the poet, unable to regain the lost past, attempts through poetry to fulfill this desire for his mother and brothers. The urn is an object of desire—objet petit a—that acts as a temporary anchoring point for the poet. However, since the poem generates meaning through language, and since language cannot fulfill desire, the urn image ultimately fails to fulfill; it is a “Cold Pastoral.” Keats’s repetition of the word happy in stanza three—“More happy love! more happy, happy love”; “Ah, happy, happy boughs”; “And happy melodist”—reflects the emptiness of language that tries to capture true desire. Happy can only approximate “happiness,” the signified that the poet wishes to convey. In a sense, Keats’s poem attempts to reach the Real to satiate the longing to move from the Symbolic realm that continually frustrates fulfillment.

Finally, in The Nightingale and the Hawk: A Psychological Study of Keats’s Odes (1964), Katharine M. Wilson provides a Jungian interpretation of the odes. She argues that Keats’s odes are attempts to tap into the archetypal collective unconsciousness, for poetry works by “images…which come from the deeper layers of the poet’s psyche, rather than from his superficial observation, or from his personal unconscious.”Katharine M. Wilson, The Nightingale and the Hawk: A Psychological Study of Keats’s Odes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964). The odes are Keats’s “quest for the Self.” In “Urn,” in particular, “beauty for Keats was entangled with intimation of the Self”; thus beauty’s “permanence lies in the realm of the psyche.” “The urn is like a frozen archetype,” argues Wilson. “It is a permanent object passed from generation to generation of sorrowing humanity, but has fixed on its objects of beauty.”Katharine M. Wilson, The Nightingale and the Hawk: A Psychological Study of Keats’s Odes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964). The urn, consequently, as frozen archetype epitomizes truth and beauty that resides in the Self, that Self tapping the larger collective unconscious for its images.

3.7 Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism: A Process Approach

When you write a critical paper using a psychoanalytic approach, you need to determine the focus you will use. Will you focus on the author? On the characters or the narrator? On the formal construction of the text? Often, a reading will draw from all three levels (as does Waldoff’s interpretation of Keats). Since psychoanalyzing an author requires considerable biographical research, many students opt to focus on character, theme, or text. You should also be guided by the following:

1. You must clearly define your psychoanalytic approach to the work—Freudian, Lacanian, Jungian, or some combination. You could explore ideas in a journal entry to help you focus on your critical approach. You should then construct a working thesis that will be your guide. Ask yourself the following: How does my psychoanalytic approach help my reader better understand the work I am interpreting? Is my application of psychoanalytic theory too reductive or forced onto the literary work?
2. You then need to reread the text through the psychoanalytic lens, taking notes and jotting down quotations that can be used for support in your paper. At this stage you should be amassing evidence to support your working thesis.
3. You should then construct a more concrete working thesis and informal organizational plan that will guide you as you write your draft. Remember, your paper must be organized around a clear focus/thesis.
4. You should finally get some feedback on your paper by sharing your draft with your instructor and classmates. Use this feedback for revision.

3.8 Student Writers at Work: Jenn Nemec’s Jungian Psychoanalytic Reading of “The Birthmark,” Susan Moore’s Freudian Reading of “The Birthmark,” and Sarah David’s Lacanian Reading of “The Birthmark”

Literary theory provides a lens through which we view a literary work, be it in a New Critical close reading of a short story, a feminist or gender reading of a poem, or a reader-response interpretation of a dramatic play. In fact, the theory we apply to a literary work will partly determine what we find in the work and how we interpret that work. For this chapter, you will see how theory guides your interpretation. The three papers below, which came from the same class, focus on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” (serialized in a magazine in 1843; published in a story collection in 1846). Jenn found Jungian theory fascinating, Susan was intrigued by Freud, while Sarah was challenged by Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of language.

You can access “The Birthmark” at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=HawBirt.sgm &images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1.

In this section we trace Jenn’s writing process.

3.9 Student Sample Paper: Susan Moore’s “The Desire for Perfection in Hawthorne’s ‘The Birthmark’”

3.10 Student Sample Paper: Sarah David’s “A Lacanian Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Birthmark’”

3.11 End-of-Chapter Assessment

3.12 Suggestions for Further Reading