Psychoanalytic Criticism

Psychoanalytic Criticism

The text states that:

“If psychoanalysis can help us better understand human behavior, it
must be able to help us better understand literary texts, (and art)
which is about human behavior.”
Freud’s Ice Berg
The Unconscious…
*storehouse of painful
experiences, emotions, wounds, f
ears, guilty desire and unresolved
conflicts
*comes into being when we are
very young through repression
*until we find a way to know and
acknowledge to ourselves the true
cause of our repressed
wounds, fears, guilty desire and
unresolved conflicts we hang onto
them in disguised, distorted and
self-defeating ways.
*desires not to recognize or
change our destructive behaviors
because we have formed our
identities around them.
Stephanie Skalisky
Another Day in...Surrealist School Date 1987-
1997
Defenses:
The processes by which the
contents of our unconscious are
kept in our unconscious…in other
words…they are the processes by
which we keep the repressed
repressed in order to avoid
knowing what we feel we can’t
handle knowing.
*selective memory
*denial
*avoidance
*displacement
*projection
*regression
*under ordinary circumstances
keep us unaware of our
unconscious experience, and our
anxiety, even if it is somewhat
prolonged or recurrent

• Standing Woman
• Giacometti, Alberto,...
• 1953
Le Surrealism Book
Andre Breton
Poem-Object
André Breton
1941
Carved wood bust

of a man, oil
lantern, framed
photograph, toy
boxing gloves and
paper mounted
on drawing board.
Rene Magritte
Sensational News
1926
We have access to our unconscious, if we know how to use it, through our dreams and through any creative activities we
engage in because both our dreams and our creativity, independent of our conscious will or desire, draw directly on the
unconscious.
Dreams and Dreams Symbols
• During sleep our

unconscious is free to
express itself, and it
does so in our dreams.
• Even in our dreams
there is some
censorship, some
protections against
frightening insights
into our repressed
experiences and
emotions, and that
takes the form of
dream displacement.
• It may be helpful to
think of the dream’s
manifest content as a
kind of dream
symbolism that can be
interpreted much the
way we interpret
symbols of any kind.
• There are some images
that tend to have the
same symbolic
meaning from dreamer
to dreamer, as least if
those dreamers are
members of the same
culture.
Joan Miro, Personages in
the Night
These unconscious desires find symbolic expression in art as in dreams. Art is sublimation, the translation of instinctual desires into higher
aims, and the goal of psychoanalytic criticism is to reveal the hidden content of the work that underlies and determines its manifest
content.
Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown,
University of Toronto
• Dali’s “Old Age, Adolescence and Infancy” The Three Ages. 1940
• Each person we dream
about is really a part of
our own psychological
experience that we Surrealism and Dreams
project during the
dream onto a “stand
in”.
• Dreams about children
almost always reveal
something about our
feelings toward
ourselves or toward
the child that is still
within us and probably
still wounded in some
way.
• Male imagery (phallic
images) may represent
sex, aggression or both.
• Female imagery may
represent maternal
control or a need for
nurturing.
• Water, (fluid, changeab
le, soothing, dangerous
, often deeper than it
looks) can represent
sexuality, emotions, or
the realm of the
unconscious.
• Water also is related to
our experience in the
womb…so dreams
about water may relate
to our relationship with
our mother.
• Dreams about buildings
may relate to the
institution that the
building represents for
the dreamer.
Woman, Old Man, and

Max Ernst
Paris 1923,
Instead of using psychoanalysis to cure themselves of any disturbances, the surrealists saw the unconscious as a wellspring of untapped
creative ideas. "A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not opened" is a famous quote from Freud. The surrealists were less
interested in interpretation of their dream symbols than they were in the expressive capacity of such states.
(eyecone art-modern surrealism web site)
Jackson Pollock
Painting-1945
Telephone Receiver Cover in Lobster
Dali, Salvador, 1904-1989
According to the display caption at Tate Gallery: Dali drew a close analogy between food and sex.
Joys and Enigmas of a Strange Hour
Giorgio de Chirico
Freud’s Death Drive
Jackson Pollock
Biological Drive-psychological and physical self Untitled
destruction. 1943
• This is Freud’s attempt to

explain individuals intent
on destroying
themselves and warring
nations.
• Death relates to our fear
of abandonment and
occurs to different
degrees and with
different results in each
individual.
She-Wolf
Jackson Pollock
1943
In suggesting that
human beings have a
death drive, Freud’s
attempt was to
account for the
alarming degree of
self-destructive
behavior he saw both
in individuals, who
seemed bent on
destroying themselves
psychologically if not
physically, and in
whole nations, whose
constant wars and
internal conflicts could
be viewed as little
other than a form of
mass suicide.
The Meaning of Sexuality
*Freud called this drive eros and
placed it in opposition to thanatos, the
death drive.
*For psychoanalysis, there is no
meaningful difference between normal
and abnormal, and the issue isn’t one
of moral vs immoral behavior; there
are merely psychological differences
among individuals, and the issue is one
of nondestructive vs destructive
behavior.
*Concerns the relationship of the
superego (social values and taboos we
internalize), id (psychological reservoir
of our instincts, our libido or sexual
energy), and the ego (conscious self
that experiences the external world
through the senses and plays referee
between the id and superego).
Dali, Salvador
The Dream of Venus: costume design
Date 1939
Lacanian Psychoanalysis
From the Art Review: Who is Jacques Lacan…
John Haber in New York City
In his theory, the unconscious

works like a language. The mind
teems with desires that grow real
only when translated into
symbols, as in Freud’s device of
free association. Like words in a
language, the associations are
arbitrary.
Marc Chagall
The Living Room by Balthus
1966
We Are the Dead Men
Albert Tucker
1940
Conversations Among the Ruins
Georgio De Chirico
Victor Brauner-1947
“Each painting that I make is projected
from the deepest sources of my
anxiety….”
The painter’s notebook, given to Max

Pol Fouchet
Title unknown
Teitge, Thomas J.
1978
Idaho artist.
Anthony Aziz and
Sammy Cucher
Dystopia Series-Chris 1994

Anthony Aziz and Sammy
Cucher
Dystopia Series-Lynn
Anthony Aziz and Sammy
Cucher
Dystopia Series-Ken
Equivocal Colors
Yves Tanguy
1943
Yves Tanguy was inspired to

make art by the inner world
of dreams and the
subconscious mind. Rather
than reflecting the external
world.
Kelly Ellsworth
Automatic Drawing
Influenced by the
Surrealist
movement, but he
never claimed any
specific style of
movement.
Object
Number One
The Burning
Giraffe
• 1937
• Oil on panel
• 13.78 in x 10.63 in
"...just because I
don't know the
meaning of my
art, does not mean it
has no
meaning..." S.D
Object Number Two
Leonard Meiselman
"Genocide" 2007
“Whenever I feel confused

and hurt, I try to get into my
studio. If I can make some
marks with paint or pencil I
can get closer to my feelings
and I seem to understand
things better. The process of
paintings reveals me to
myself.”
http://www.lmeiselman.com
Object Number Three
What the Water Gave Me.

Frida Kahlo
1938

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Psychoanalytic Criticism

The text states that:

Carved wood bust

• During sleep our

Woman, Old Man, and

• This is Freud’s attempt to

In his theory, the unconscious

The painter’s notebook, given to Max

Dystopia Series-Chris 1994

Yves Tanguy was inspired to

“Whenever I feel confused

What the Water Gave Me.

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