Psychoanalysis Flashcards
Method
Compare original with translation Ignore manifest content and read latent Seek conflicts or contradictions Focus on divisions and misrecognitions Account for multiple possibilities
Mode
Allegory – for conflict between and within characters
Production – sources of literary creativity
Reception – what psycho-social, cultural dynamics affect the way we read
Purpose
Relieve suffering, improve human life
Deepen understanding of human psyche
Uncover universal themes, structures
Discover what is unsaid (repressed) in text
Challenge long-held dichotomies (repression)
Analyze character as reflective of all human psychical dynamos and social interactions
Analyze psychology of author
Types
Freudian – importance of dreams, the unconscious, tripartite psyche, sexual/familial relations, creativity, symbolism
Archetypal – collective unconscious, instinctive structure, universal, subjectivity, archetypes
Lacanian – unconscious structured like a language, subject, transcendental signifier and the sign
Feminist – rejected phallus as center of psychic life, recover repressed feminine in discourse, reinvigorate things rejected as feminine, advocate rejecting physical or intellectual pleasure over symbolic order
Supplements
Doesn’t normalize sexuality or cure abnormality, but attempts to relieve suffering
Involves not just character analysis or psychoanalyzing the author
Concerns language and structure and what is repressed or unsaid in each
Helps us interpret texts of all kinds because they are produced by people
Can be used to comment on social and historical values within a culture and the way it employs language
Uses literature to confirm truth-value of theory
What does Jung believe about art in relation to science?
“Art by its very nature is not science, and science by its very nature is not art; both these spheres of the mind have something in reserve that is peculiar to them and can be explained only in its own terms.”
Why do people discover symbolism in art according to Jung?
people get wiser and re-discover art because their attention to deeper meaning sharpens
*less likely to value the art for aesthetic reasons
Jung’s argument against psychoanalyzing art
“it has long been known that the scientific treatment of art will reveal the personal threads that the artist, intentionally or unintentionally, has woven into his work”
* don’t read too much into art- art for art’s sake * turns art into clinical cases * neurotic readings- make all art commonplace versus unique
How is art related to psychology according to Jung?
“the practice of art is a psychological activity”
