EL 113

• Sigmund Freud


  Neurologist and founder of psychoanalytic theory
• Psychoanalytic theory


  Focus on mind-body connection to personality, main parts are conscious and unconscious mind
• Unconscious mind


  Contains thoughts, feelings, and desires not accessible to conscious awareness but influence behavior and perceptions
• In literature, the unconscious mind can be seen in the symbols and imagery used by authors, as well as in the actions and motivations of their characters
• One's inability to face reality can be interpreted as a manifestation of her repressed desires and traumatic experiences
• Id, Ego, Superego


  Different parts of personality that interact to influence decisions and behavior
• Freudian slips (parapraxis)


  • Calling current partner by ex's name
  • Calling teacher 'mom'
  • Saying wrong word
  • Misinterpreting written/spoken word
• Types of Freudian slips

  • Repression
  • Mental errors
  • Avoidance
  • Thought suppression
  • Language processing
• Dream analysis


  Windows into the unconscious mind, symbolic representations of desires, fears, and anxieties
• Dream content


  • Manifest content (actual matter)
  • Latent content (underlying meaning)
• Dream


  Series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep
• Dream symbols


  • Male imagery (towers, rockets, guns, etc.)
  • Female imagery (caves, rooms, walled-in gardens, etc.)
• Four aspects of dreamwork

  • Dream displacement
  • Condensation
  • Representability
  • Secondary revision
• Psychoanalytic criticism


  Literary theory that explores the unconscious elements of a text and how they relate to the human psyche
• Psychoanalytic criticism allows us to delve deeper into the psyche of characters and understand their motivations and behaviors
• Psychoanalytic criticism can be overly focused on the author's biography and personal experiences, rather than on the text itself
• Psychoanalytic criticism can be reductionist, reducing complex works of literature to simple psychological explanations
• Reader's role in psychoanalytic criticism

  Reader's unconscious desires and motivations can influence their interpretation of a work of literature
• Types of defenses


  • Selective perception
  • Selective memory
  • Denial
  • Avoidance
  • Displacement
  • Projection
  • Regression
  • Repression
  • Sublimation
  • Rationalization
  • Reaction formation
• Archetype


  A perfect or representative example of something, a universally understood symbol, term, or pattern of behavior
• Symbols


  A word or object that stands for another word or object
• Collective unconscious


  Represents a form of the unconscious, containing memories and impulses of which the individual is not aware
• Compromise formation


  The conscious form of a repressed wish or idea that has been modified or disguised, as in a dream or symptom, so as to be unrecognizable
• Anxiety


  Occurs when defenses break down temporarily, causing more psychological problems
• Core issues


  Mental schemas that one has about oneself and the world, often unconscious
• Types of anxiety


  • Fear of intimacy
  • Fear of abandonment
• Anxiety


  When defenses break down temporarily causing more psychological problems
• Anxiety


  Can be an important experience because it can reveal our core issues
• Core issues


  Mental schemas that one has about oneself and the world, often unconscious, coming to the surface only under specific psychosocial stress
• Fear of intimacy


  • Afraid of being close to someone
  • The chronic and overpowering feeling that emotional closeness will seriously hurt or destroy us and that we can remain emotionally safe only by remaining at an emotional distance from others at all times
• Fear of abandonment


  • The unshakable belief that our friends and loved ones are going to desert us or don't really care about us
  • The overwhelming worry that people close to you will leave
  • Feel intense anxiety when they think about or confront the possibility of a relationship ending or of being alone
• Fear of betrayal


  • The nagging feeling that our friends and loved ones can't be trusted
  • Afraid of giving trust to another person
  • Violation of a person's trust or confidence, of a moral standard, etc.
  • Proditiophobia
• Low self-esteem


  • The belief that we are less worthy than other people and, therefore, don't deserve attention, love, or any other of life's rewards, often believing we deserve to be punished by life in some way
• Insecure/unstable sense of self


  • The inability to sustain a feeling of personal identity, to sustain a sense of knowing ourselves
  • Identity disturbance
  • Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
  • Your self-image, goals, and even your likes and dislikes may change frequently in ways that feel confusing and unclear
• Oedipal fixation


  • A dysfunctional bond with a parent of the opposite sex that we don't outgrow in adulthood and that doesn't allow us to develop mature relationships with our peers
  • Oedipus complex - a boy's attraction toward the mother
  • Electra complex - a girl's attraction to the father
• Karl Marx was a Jewish philosopher and political scientist, known as one of the most influential socialist thinkers in the 19th century
• Friedrich Engels was a German philosopher, economist, historian, political theorist, and revolutionary socialist who shared Marx's socialist beliefs and provided support financially as well as intellectually
• Ideology


  A system of ideas, beliefs, values, and principles that form the basis of a particular social, political, economic, or cultural theory or movement
• Bourgeoisie


  The property-owning class who own the means of production (e.g., factories) and employ and exploit the proletariat. Those who control the world's natural, economic, and human resources
• Proletariat


  Those who have nothing to sell but their labor-power (their capacity to work), the majority of the global population who live in substandard conditions and perform the manual labor