Psychological Approach

Literary influences on Freud:

•Freud was not the first to talk about the workings of the psyche. The romantics, both English and European, had earlier delved into the workings of th emind. Diderot’s Rameaus’ Nephew influenced Freud deeply. In this work, Rameaus’ nephew stands for the irrational element in human nature which Freud later called id.

•Diderot represents the reason that controls impulses. Freud calls this reasoning faculty the ego, and the super ego. Rousseu’s Confessions is another work that deeply influenced Freud, as it opened his eyes to the immortal self that lies hidden in the depths of even a good man.

•The concept of free love was aired by Shelley and Byron in England and by Schlegel, Schopenhauer and Stendhal in Europe.

This concept strengthened Freud’s concept of the libidinous id struggling against the rational ego and superego.
 Literary influences on Freud:

•Freud was not the first to talk about the workings of the psyche. The romantics, both English and European, had earlier delved into the workings of th emind. Diderot’s Rameaus’ Nephew influenced Freud deeply. In this work, Rameaus’ nephew stands for the irrational element in human nature which Freud later called id.

•Diderot represents the reason that controls impulses. Freud calls this reasoning faculty the ego, and the super ego. Rousseu’s Confessions is another work that deeply influenced Freud, as it opened his eyes to the immortal self that lies hidden in the depths of even a good man.

•The concept of free love was aired by Shelley and Byron in England and by Schlegel, Schopenhauer and Stendhal in Europe.

This concept strengthened Freud’s concept of the libidinous id struggling against the rational ego and superego.

 The Influence of Freud on Literary Criticism:

•Freud has affected literary criticism in three ways:

•First, psychological terms are being increasingly used in literary criticism. Conrad Aiken’s Skepticism: Notes on Contemporary Poetry and Herbert Read’s Reason and Romanticism, are marked by an excess of psychological terms. These early critics used psychologial tools indiscriminately and injudiciously.

•They tried to trace erotic motives and meanings in all literary works under the sun. As years passed by, this initial enthusiasm subsided and the light cast by psychology on literature began to appear more substantial.

•Based on psychology in general and Freudian findings in particular, many perceptive studies of the creative process began to appear.

•I.A. Richards’s Principles of Literary Criticism paved the way for such studies. I.A. Richards analysed the constituents of aesthetic experience. He said hat gret literature contributed to ‘synaesthetic equilibrium’ and evoked ‘a harmonious kind of response’ from the audience. Following him, Ogden and Wood published the Foundations of Aesthetics.  In his essay Antony in Behalf of the Play, Kenneth Burke examines the unconscious relation between the writer and the reader.

•The second contribution made by Freudian psychology is that psychoanalysts psychoanalyse creative authors in an effort to find out how the maladjustments of the authors colour their works. The following is a list of such psychological biographies – i) Sir Harold Nicolson’s Tennyson: Aspects of his life, Character and poetry.  ii) Joseph Wood Krutch’s Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius, John Middleton Murry’s The Son of Woman: The Story of D.H.Lawrence, etc.,  

•The third contribution made by Freud is that psychology is being increasingly used to explain fictitious characters. The critic becomes a psychoanalyst, searching for subconscious forces which motivate a character. A classic example of such psychoanalysis is Ernest Jones’s study of Hamlet in which he attributes Hamlet’s delay in avenging his father’s death to his (Hamlet’s) mother-fixation or oedipal complex. Following this study, Ernest Kris wrote a psychological study of Prince Hal’s conflict, identifying Hotspur with super ego and Falstaff with Id.

•Following Freud, Adler with his concept of the inferiority complex and Jung, with his theory of the collective unconscious, enriched the psychoogist’s armoury. Yet, many charges were levelled against the psychological approach. One that is psychologists mistake poets for dreamers. The dreamer has no control over his dream but the poet has control over his product.

•The overenthusiasm of some Freudian critics who scent erotic motives behind every character is certainly questionable.