A Brief View On Freudian Psychoanalysis And Psychoanalytic Criticism
A Brief View on Freudian Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Criticism
Abstract: At the beginning of twentieth century, Sigmund Freud had invented psychoanalysis method to analyze humans' behavior. Now, with more and more modification, Freud's original method and view are losing favor. However, as a quite unique way, psychoanalysis has approached literature criticism. Psychoanalytic criticism, based on Freudian psychology, was born in the twentieth century and soon became one of the most important and popular ways to criticize literary works. In this paper, I tried to interpret the concept of the psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic criticism through certain examples, and find the relationship between them.
Key words: Psychoanalysis Freud Literary works
The relationship between psychology and literature can be dated back to the early ages in ancient Greece. In ancient Greece, literary psychology had already had its root. Plato had once mentioned, the creation of literary works came from inspiration, which was like a magnet bestowed by god of poem to the poets. The poets would be in a state of mania and out of mind when they possessed the inspiration. That is an attempt to link inspiration with the unconsciousness. Plato's student, Aristotle, was an outstanding psychologist. He said when people enjoyed the theater, they were delightful to perceive and sympathize. He invented the term of Katharsis Effect, which happened when people were enjoying a tragedy. This effect balanced different feeling including fear and sympathy, which was benign to peoples' health.
Greeks had an intuitive view on literary psychology, but in the medieval times, Christianity and feudalism had greatly slowed down the development of peoples' psychology. Even after the Renaissance, though the obstacles were cleared out, classicalism had put too much attention on structure and formality. Only in nineteenth century, when psychology became an independent science...
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