My analysis concerns Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), and their contribution to psychoanalysis theory and criticism. Psychoanalysis has become progressively more prominent in our daily lives during the last one-hundred and fifty years in western civilization (although psychoanalysis critical theory may have waned a bit), even to the point that we can now choose virtually any literary text from any era and explicate it psychoanalytically. For instance, our Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism discusses a few literary works psychoanalytically in Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles; Hamlet, by William Shakespeare; and “The Purloined Letter,” by Edgar Allan Poe, all of which I will discuss from a psychoanalytical perspective.
Freud’s theory of psycho-sexual developments in the formative years specifies that any fixation at a particular stage creates a problem, namely neurosis, later on. These stages are oral, anal, phallic, and genital. It appears that Hamlet may have had a fixation at the phallic stage during his formative years, which answers in part why he was unable to consummate sexual intimacy with his love, Ophelia. He may have never successfully overcome the prerequisite for the genital stage. Instead, Hamlet’s unresolved Oedipus complex created a fixation with his mother. Furthermore, Freud maintains that his inability to exact revenge on his murderous uncle “who did away with his father and took that father’s place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes his own childhood realized” (Leitch 817-819). This explains why Hamlet is subconsciously conflicted over killing a man who did what Hamlet subconsciously wanted to do himself, kill his father, the King.
According to another of Freud’s psychoanalytical explications, in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, it is apparent that the author had unconscious awareness of Freud’s psycho-sexual theories, again, the fixation of the phallic stage. “King Oedipus, who slew his father, Laïus, and married his mother Jocasta, merely shows us the fulfillment of our own childhood wishes” (Leitch 816). Furthermore, Freud implores us to acknowledge “those same impulses, though suppressed, are still to be found” (Leitch 816). Lacan continues Freud’s tradition of psychoanalysis explication of literature with his “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter”’ in 1955 (Leitch 1158).
Poe’s short story, published in 1845 (Leitch 1158), deals with a signifier, a letter, that presumably has no signified, as no one, save the Queen, knows what is in the letter (Poe 1-14). However, as readers we can imagine a signified in the context that the letter’s revelation to the King spells a lot of trouble for the Queen. Accordingly, the letter could be from a lover, a political figure involved in intrigue, or just about anyone that fits the reader’s fancy. Though, as a reading audience, we can only assume. The quest for the letter, according to Lacan, is in effect Freud’s repetition compulsion, which Lacan calls repetition automotive (Leitch 1158). According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, repetition compulsion is “an irresistible tendency to repeat an emotional experience or return to a previous psychological state.” For the protagonist, Dupin, it is the satisfaction of doing to Minister D what Minister D had done to the Queen, stealing back the purloined letter, thereby out-foxing Minister D while at the same time making a hefty financial profit from the reward. We can only conjecture when Poe wrote this short story that he may have intuitively known what repetition automotive was, even if it had not been articulated by Freud and Lacan at that time. Nevertheless, from Lacan’s perspective, Poe was having a “good time” writing this erudite short story, incorporating his knowledge of Latin, French and his refined vocabulary, in this superb psychological mystery story (Lacan 1-12). Thus, these three perspectives of literary works exemplify psychoanalysis criticism and theory at work. Consequently, it stands to reason that literary critics, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and major critical theory students have the ability to explicate literature psychoanalytically, and thus gain a more intimate knowledge of the authors and their characters.
Works Cited
Lacan, Jacques. “Seminar on The Purloined Letter,” 20 March 2011,
Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print
Poe, Edgar. “The Purloined Letter, 18 March 2011, enotes
No comments:
Post a Comment