Psychoanalysis

Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street

Freudian Principles

- This alienation and dehumanization can also be explained in Psychoanalytic terms.

- On this view, the lawyer’s alienation from his employees is a function of his narcissism.
His high-handedness, his sense that Bartleby is “useful” to him, indicates a pathological
inability to empathize, to create a libidinal bond beyond his own ego.
- The belief that he is providing sanctuary for Bartleby, so that he will not fall into the
hands of “some less indulgent employer” (38), masks his own narcissistic gratifications
according to which Bartleby’s alienation provides a “morsel” for his conscience.
- Bartleby not only stands for the guilt engendered in modern civilized societies by the
forces of repression but also for the super-ego that administers that guilt.
- He is a persistent reminder of the need for repression and the need to abide by social
conventions. He is at once “perverse,” “peculiar,” and “unaccountable,” like the
repressed unconscious wishes and desires that populate dreams, and a “valuable
acquisition,” a model of acquiescence to the reality principle.
- However, Bartleby’s curious refusal to work (indeed, to live) is a final relinquishment of
reality. His own narcissistic tendencies lead not to a strict adherence to the reality
principle, which we find in the lawyer’s case, but rather to an unfettered acceptance of
the pleasure principle.
- Through the compulsive repetition of his mantra – “I prefer not” – Bartleby relives in
order to manage some unrecovered trauma, symbolized perhaps by his prior
employment at the Dead Letter Office. It is no wonder that he succumbs to the pleasure
principle and a radical flight from pain and tension that fuels what Freud calls the “death
drive.” For unlike the lawyer, whose adherence to the reality principle has resulted in
the repression of desires that might threaten his livelihood, Bartleby opens himself up
to the primal pleasure of death, to a return to the stasis and peace of an original
inorganic state, a process hauntingly symbolized by his wasting away in the Tombs.

Psychoanalysis

As a neurologist practicing in Vienna in the late nineteenth century, Freud was troubled that he
could not account for the complaints of many of his patients by citing any physical cause.
Diagnosing his patients as hysterics, he entered upon analyses of them (and himself) that led
him to infer that their distress was caused by factors of which perhaps even they were unaware.
He became convinced that fantasies and desires too bizarre and unacceptable to admit had
been suppressed,buried so deeply in the unconscious part of their being that, although the
desires did not have to be confronted directly, they led to neuroses that caused his patients’
illnesses.

- For Freud the unconscious plays a major role in what we do, feel, and say, although we
are not aware of its presence or operations.
Freud did not come by these ideas easily or quickly. As early as 1895, he published, with Joseph
Breuer, Studies in Hysteria, an important work asserting that symptoms of hysteria are the
result of unresolved but forgotten traumas from childhood. Five years later, he wrote The
Interpretation of Dreams, in which he addressed the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, a
treatment in which a patient talks to an analyst about dreams, childhood, and relationships with
parents and authority figures.

- Using free associations, slips of language, and dreams, Freud found ways for an analyst
to help a patient uncover the painful or threatening events that have been repressed in
the unconscious and thus made inaccessible to the conscious mind. In psychoanalytic
criticism, the same topics and techniques form the basis for analyzing literary texts.

Just after the turn of the century, Freud himself began to apply his theories to the interpretation
of religion, mythology, art, and literature. His first piece of psychoanalytic criticism was a review
of a novel by the German writer William Jensen, “Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva”
(1907). In it he psychoanalyzed the novel’s central character, noting the Oedipal effects behind
the plot. (Freud was not alone in asserting the close relationship between dreams and art. In
1923 Wilhelm Stekel published a book on dreams, saying that no essential difference exists
between them and poetry. Around that same time, F. C. Prescott, in Poetry and Dreams, argued
for a definite correspondence between the two in both form and content.) The concern with
literature soon turned to the writers themselves and to artists in general, as Freud questioned
why art exists and why people create it. In that search, he wrote monographs on Dostoyevsky,

In 1910 the depth that Freud’s approach could add to literary analysis was made apparent in a
(now classic) essay on Hamlet by Ernest Jones, in which Jones argued that Hamlet’s delay in
taking revenge on Claudius is a result of the protagonist’s own “disordered mind.” More
specifically, Jones saw Hamlet as the victim of an Oedipal complex that manifests itself in manic-
depressive feelings, misogynistic attitudes, and a disgust for things sexual. According to Jones,
Hamlet delays his revenge because he unconsciously wants to kill the man who married his
mother, but if he punishes Claudius for doing what he himself wished to do, that would, in a
sense, mean that he was killing himself. Also derived from his Oedipal neurosis, his repressed
desire for Gertrude, who is overtly affectionate toward him, causes him to treat Ophelia with
cruelty far out of proportion to anything she deserves. When he orders her to a nunnery, the
slang meaning of brothel makes it clear that he sees all women, even a guiltless one, as
repugnant. Throughout the play, his disgust toward sexual matters is apparent in the anger
evoked in him by the marriage of Claudius and Gertrude as well as in his repulsion of Ophelia.

Since Freud’s era, and since Jones’s landmark essay appeared, psychoanalytic criticism has
continued to grow and develop, generating, for example, the related genre of psychobiography,
which applies psychoanalytic approaches to a writer’s own life. Today psychoanalytic criticism
shows few signs of slowing down. Nevertheless, Freud’s work continues to provide the
foundation of this approach. Although not all of his thoughts apply to literature, some concepts
have had enormous impact on the way we understand what we read. They have even affected
the way writers construct their works.

The Unconscious Probably the most significant aspect of Freudian theory is the primacy of the
unconscious. Hidden from the conscious mind, which Freud compared to that small portion of
an iceberg that is visible above the surface of the water, the unconscious is like the powerful
unseen mass below it. Because the conscious mind is not aware of its submerged counterpart, it
may mistake the real causes of behavior. An individual may be unable to tell the difference
between what is happening and what she thinks is happening. In short, our actions are the
result of forces we do not recognize and therefore cannot control.

In Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown,” for example, Brown finds himself in just
such a dilemma. Even well past the events of his night in the forest, he is not sure of what was
real and what was a dream. His journey is psychological, as well as physical, for he moves from
the security of consciousness to the unknown territory of the unconscious, a powerful force that
directs him in ways he neither expects nor understands. He leaves the village of Salem, where
social as well as spiritual order prevails, to go into the forest, where the daylight, and the clarity
of vision and understanding it seems to confer, gives way to darkness and frightful confusion of
perceptions. In the end, Brown can no longer tell reality from dreams, good from evil.

The Tripartite Psyche In an effort to describe the conscious and unconscious mind, Freud divided
the human psyche into three parts: the id, the superego, and the ego. They are, for the most
part, unconscious. The id, for example, is completely unconscious; only small parts of the ego
and the superego are conscious. Each operates according to different, even contrasting,
principles.

The id, the libido, the source of our psychic energy and our psychosexual desires, gives us our
vitality. Because the id is always trying to satisfy its hunger for pleasure, it operates without any
thought of consequences, anxiety, ethics, logic, precaution, or morality. Demanding swift
satisfaction and fulfillment of biological desires, it is lawless, asocial, amoral. As Freud described
it, the id strives “to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the
observance of the pleasure principle.” Obviously the id can be a socially destructive force.
Unrestrained, it will aggressively seek to gratify its desires without any concern for law, customs,
or values. It can even be self-destructive in its drive to have what it wants. In many ways, it
resembles the devil figure that appears in some theological and literary texts, because it offers
strong temptation to take what we want without heeding normal restraints, taboos, or
consequences. Certainly the id appears in that form in “Young Goodman Brown.” It is presented
in the person of Brown’s fellow traveler, who appears to Brown immediately after he thinks to
himself, “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!” The narrator suggests the
embodiment of Brown’s id in the figure by describing him as “bearing a considerable
resemblance” to the young man. Even before the older man’s appearance, from the very outset
of the journey, Brown recognizes that he is challenging acceptable behavior by leaving the highly
regulated life of Salem; the pull of the id to disregard the usual restrictions and to participate in
acts normally forbidden in the village intensifies as he walks deeper into the forest. As
Hawthorne points out, Brown becomes “himself the chief horror of the scene.”

To prevent the chaos that would result if the id were to go untamed, other parts of the psyche
must balance its passions. The ego, which operates according to the reality principle, is one such
regulating agency. Its function is to make the id’s energies nondestructive by postponing them
or diverting them into socially acceptable actions, sometimes by finding an appropriate time for
gratifying them.
Although it is for the most part unconscious, the ego is the closest of the three parts of the
psyche to what we think of as consciousness, for it mediates between our inner selves and the
outer world. Nevertheless, it is not directly approachable. We come closest to knowing it when
it is relaxed by hypnosis, sleep, or unintentional slips of the tongue. Dreams, then, become an
important means of knowing what is hidden about ourselves from ourselves.

The third part of the psyche, the superego, provides additional balance to the id. Similar to what
is commonly known as one’s conscience, it operates according to the morality principle, for it
provides the sense of moral and ethical wrongdoing. Parents, who enforce their values through
punishments and rewards, are the chief source of the superego, which furnishes a sense of guilt
for behavior that breaks the rules given by parents to the young child. Later in life, the
superegois expanded by institutions and other influences. Consequently, the superego works
against the drive of the id and represses socially unacceptable desires back into the
unconscious. Balance between the license of the id and the restrictions of the superego
produces the healthy personality. But when unconscious guilt becomes overwhelming, the
individual can be said to be suffering from a guilt complex. When the superego is too strong, it
can lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction with the self.

For Goodman Brown, the descent into the unconscious (the night in the forest) presents a
conflict between the superego (the highly regulated life he has known in Salem) and the id (the
wild, unrestrained passions of the people in the forest). Lacking a viable ego of his own, he turns
to Faith, his wife, for help. Unfortunately, she wears pink ribbons, a mixture of white (purity)
and red (passion), which indicates the ambiguity of goodness and Brown’s clouded belief in the
possibility of goodness throughout the remainder of his life.

The Significance of Sexuality Prior to Freud, children were thought to be asexual beings,
innocent of the biological drives that would beset them later. Freud, however, recognized that it
is during childhood that the id is formed, shaping the behavior of the adult to come. In fact,
Freud believed that infancy and childhood are periods of intense sexual experience during which
it is necessary to go through three phases of development that serve specific physical needs,
then provide pleasure, if we are to become healthy, functioning adults.

The first phase is called the oral phase, because it is characterized by sucking—first to be fed
from our mother’s breast, then to enjoy our thumbs or, later, even kissing. The second is the
anal stage, a period that recognizes not only the need for elimination but also the presence of
another erogenous zone, a part of the body that provides sexual pleasure. In the final phase, the
phallic stage, the child discovers the pleasure of genital stimulation, connected, of course, to
reproduction. If these three overlapping stages are successfully negotiated, the adult personality
emerges sound and intact. If, however, these childhood needs are not met, the adult is likely to
suffer arrested development. The mature person may become fixated on a behavior that serves
to fulfill what was not satisfied at an early age.

The early years, therefore, encompass critical stages of development because repressions
formed at that time may surface as problems later. Around the time the child reaches the
genital stage, about the age of five, he or she is ready to develop a sense of maleness or
femaleness. To explain the process by which the child makes that step, Freud turned to
literature. Referring to the plot of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Freud pointed out that the
experience of Oedipus is that of all male children. That is, just as Oedipus unknowingly kills his
father and marries his mother, a young boy forms an erotic attachment to his mother and
unconsciously grows to desire her. He consequently resents his father because of his
relationship with the mother. Fearing castration by the father, the male child represses his
sexual desires, identifies with his father, and anticipates his own sexual union. Such a step is a
necessary one in his growth toward manhood. The boy who fails to make that step will suffer
from an Oedipal complex, with ongoing fear of castration evident in his hostility to authority in
general.

In the case of girls, the passage from childhood to womanhood requires successful negotiation
of the Electra complex. In Freudian theory, the girl child, too, has a strong attraction for her
mother and sees her father as a rival, but because she realizes that she has already been
castrated, she develops an attraction for her father, who has the penis she desires. When she
fails to garner his attentions, she identifies with her mother and awaits her own male partner,
who will provide what her female physiognomy lacks.

In “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne clearly implies that Brown’s troubling impulses are
sexual and that they are not his alone. The sermon of the devil figure promises Brown and Faith
that they will henceforth know the secret sins of the people of Salem: “how hoary-bearded
elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; . . .
how fair damsels—blush not, sweet ones—have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me,
the sole guest to an infant’s funeral.” The catalog leaves no doubt that sexual passion is part of
the human condition, and left unrestrained, it leads to grave offenses. Freud explains that as
both boys and girls make the transition to normal adulthood, they become aware of their place
in a moral system of behavior. They move from operating according to the pleasure principle,
which dictates that they want immediate gratification of all desires, to an acceptance of the
reality principle, in which the ego and superego recognize rules, restraint, and responsibility.
Goodman Brown, unable to discern reality or define moral behavior, remains outside the adult
world. We are told, “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did
he become from the night of that fearful dream.” On the Sabbath, he cannot bear to listen to
the singing of the psalms nor hear the words of the minister’s sermon. He lives separate and
apart from his society.

The Importance of Dreams The vast unconscious that exists beneath the surface of our
awareness seems closest to revelation when we sleep. Our dreams, according to Freud, are the
language of the unconscious, full of unfulfilled desires that the conscious mind has buried there.
Their content is rarely clear, however, for even in sleep the ego censors unacceptable wishes.
Through the use of symbols that make repressed material more acceptable, if not readily
understandable to us, the ego veils the meaning of our dreams from direct apprehension that
would produce painful recognition. As in literature, the process may take place through
condensation. For example, two desires of the psyche might be articulated by a single word or
image in a dream, just as they are in a poem.

Condensation can also take place through displacement—moving one’s feeling for a particular
person to an object related to him or her, much as metonymy uses the name of one object to
replace another with which it is closely related or of which it is a part. When dreams become too
direct and their meanings too apparent, we awaken or, unconsciously, change the symbology.
As noted, Young Goodman Brown is never certain whether he has dreamed his experience or
lived it. Indeed, the ambiguity and uncertainty about the other villagers and their part in the
satanic communion haunt him for the rest of his life. He returns to the village and the light of
day, but what is real and what is fantasy elude him.

The meanings of the symbols remain unrevealed to him. As a window into the unconscious,
dreams become valuable tools for psychoanalysts in determining unresolved conflicts in the
psyche, conflicts that a person may suspect only because of physical ailments, such as
headaches, or psychological discomfort, such as claustrophobia. When dreams appear in
literature, they offer rich insights into characters that the characters’ outer actions, or even their
spoken words, might never suggest. Because dreams are meaningful symbolic presentations
that take the reader beyond the external narrative, they are valuable tools for critics using a
psychoanalytic approach.

Symbols Freud’s recognition of the often subtle and always complex workings

of sexuality in human beings and in literature led to a new awareness of what

symbols mean in literature as well as in life. If dreams are a symbolic expression

of repressed desires, most of them sexual in nature, then the images through

which they operate are themselves sexual ones.

Although Freud objected to a general interpretation of dream symbols,

insisting that they are personal and individual in nature, such readings are not

uncommon. Although this approach to understanding symbols has sometimes

been pushed to ridiculous extremes, it undeniably has the capacity to enrich

our reading and understanding in ways that we would not otherwise discover.

The symbols in “Young Goodman Brown” are replete with sexual suggestion that is rarely made
explicit in the story. Many of those that play a part in

Brown’s initiation, such as the devil’s staff, which is described as “a great black

snake … a living serpent,” are male images, suggesting the nature of Brown’s

temptation. The satanic communion is depicted as being lighted by blazing fires,

with the implication of intense emotion, especially sexual passion. The burning

pine trees surrounding the altar, again masculine references, underscore that the

repressions of nature exercised in the village give way to obsessions in the forest.

There are female symbols, too. For example, entering the forest suggests returning to the dark,
womblike unknown. What if Young Goodman Brown had not
actually undergone the experience and had only dreamed it? The event is still

significant, because dreams can function as symbolic forms of wish fulfillment.

Brown’s nighttime journey, the nature of which is powerfully deepened by

the symbolic imagery, leaves its mark on him. He is thereafter a dark and brooding man, leading
Richard Adams in his essay “Hawthorne’s Provincial Tales” to

argue that Brown fails to mature because he fails to learn to know, control, and

use his sexual feelings. That is, he cannot love or hate; he can only fear moral

maturity. He never manages to emerge from his uncertainty and consequent

despair. He has been required to acknowledge evil in himself and others, including his wife, so
that he can recognize goodness, but having failed the test, he is

left in a state of moral uncertainty. The result is moral and social isolation.

Creativity The connection between creative expression and the stuff of dreams

was not lost on Freud. His curiosity about the sources and nature of creativity is

reflected in the monographs he wrote on creative artists from various times and

cultures, including Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, and Michelangelo. Freud

recognized that the artist consciously expresses fantasy, illusion, and wishes

through symbols, just as dreams from the unconscious do. To write a story or a

poem, then, is to reveal the unconscious, to give a neurosis socially acceptable

expression. Such a view makes the writer a conflicted individual working out

his or her problems. Freud explained the idea this way in Introductory Lectures on

Psycho-Analysis:

The artist has also an introverted disposition and has not far to go to

become a neurotic. He is one who is urged on by instinctual needs

which are too clamorous. He longs to attain to honor, power, riches,

fame, and the love of women; but he lacks the means of achieving these

gratifications. So, like any other with an unsatisfied longing, he turns

away from reality and transfers all his interest, and all his libido too, to

the creation of his wishes in the life of fantasy, from which the way

might readily lead to neurosis.

In the process of engaging in his or her own therapy, said Freud, the artist

achieves insights and understanding that can be represented to others who are

less likely to have found them.

Such views have led some critics to focus their attention not on a text but

on the writer behind it. They see a work as an expression of the writer’s unconscious mind, an
artifact that can be used to psychoanalyze the writer, producing

psychobiography. (A good example of this genre is Edmund Wilson’s The

Wound and the Bow.) Of course, to do such a study, one needs access to verifiable

biographical information, as well as expertise in making a psychological analysis.

Most literary critics, though they may be able to find the former, usually lack

the latter. Indeed, one might ask whether such an undertaking is literary criticism

at all.

Summing Up In the end, when you make a Freudian (psychoanalytical) reading of a text, you will
probably limit yourself to a consideration of the work

itself, looking at its conflicts, characters, dream sequences, and symbols. You

will use the language Freud provided to discuss what before him did not have

names, and you will have an awareness that outward behavior may not be consonant with inner
drives. You will avoid oversimplification of your analysis, exaggerated interpretations of
symbolism, and excessive use of psychological jargon.

If you do all this, you will have the means to explore not only what is apparent

on the surface but what is below it as well. As Lionel Trilling pointed out in The

Liberal Imagination, Freud has provided us with “the perception of the hidden

element of human nature and of the opposition between the hidden and the

visible.”

Carl Jung and Mythological Criticism

Once a favored pupil of Freud, Carl Jung (1875–1961), a Swiss physician, psychiatrist, and
philosopher, eventually broke from his mentor, then built on his

teacher’s ideas in ways that made Jung an important figure in the new field of

psychoanalysis. His insights have had significant bearing on literature as well.

Like his teacher, Jung believed that our unconscious mind powerfully directs
much of our behavior. However, where Freud conceived of each individual

unconscious as separate and distinct from that of others, Jung asserted that some

of our unconscious is shared with all other members of the human species. He

described the human psyche as having three parts: a personal conscious, a state

of awareness of the present moment that, once it is past, becomes part of the

individual’s unique personal unconscious. Beneath both of these is the collective unconscious, a
storehouse of knowledge, experiences, and images of the

human race. It is an ancestral memory—shared and primeval—often expressed

outwardly in myth and ritual. Young Goodman Brown’s presence at the forest

gathering, for example, can be described as participation in a ritual binding the

past to the present. As Jung explained it, “This psychic life is the mind of our

ancient ancestors, the way in which they thought and felt, the way in which

they conceived of life and the world, of gods and human beings.” Its contents,

because they have never been in consciousness, are not individually acquired.

They are inherited.

Literary scholars began to understand the relevance of these ideas to literature as they found
correspondences in plots and characters in works by writers in

disparate circumstances who could not have been known to each other. Gilbert

Murray, for example, was so struck by the similarities he found between Orestes

and Hamlet that he concluded they were the result of memories we carry deep

within us, “the memory of the race, stamped … upon our physical organism.”

That is why such criticism is sometimes called a mythological, archetypal,

totemic, or ritualistic approach, with each name pointing to the universality of

literary patterns and images that recur throughout diverse cultures and periods.

Because these images elicit perennially powerful responses from readers the

world over, they suggest a shared commonality, even a world order. As a result,

archetypal criticism often requires knowledge and use of nonliterary fields, such

as anthropology and folklore, to provide information and insights about cultural

histories and practice.

Although the collective unconscious is not directly approachable, it can be

found in archetypes, which Jung defined as “universal images that have existed

since the remotest times.” More specifically, he described an archetype as “a

figure … that repeats itself in the course of history wherever creative fantasy is

fully manifested.” It is recognizable by the appearance of nearly identical images

and patterns—found in rituals, characters, or entire narratives—that predispose

individuals from wholly different cultures and backgrounds to respond in a

particular way, regardless of when or where they live.

Although archetypes may have originated in the unchanging situations of

human beings, such as the rotating seasons or the mysteries of death, they are

not intentionally created or culturally acquired. Instead, they come to us instinctually as

impulses and knowledge, hidden somewhere in our biological, psychological, and social natures.
As critic John Sanford explained it, archetypes “form

the basis for instinctive unlearned behavior patterns common to all mankind and

assert themselves in certain typical ways.” In literature we recognize them and

respond to them again and again in new characters or situations that have the

same essential forms we have met before and have always known. For example,

when we meet Huckleberry Finn or the Ancient Mariner (as Maud Bodkin

pointed out in Archetypal Patterns in Poetry), we are connecting with archetypes,

re-creations of basic patterns or types that are already in our unconscious, making

us respond just as someone halfway around the world from us might.

Archetypes appear in our dreams and religious rituals, as well as in our art

and literature. They are media for the telling of our myths, which, according to

Jung, are the “natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious

and conscious cognition.” By becoming conscious of what is generally unconscious, we integrate

our lives and formulate answers for things that are unknowable, such as why we exist, why we
suffer, and how we are to live. By uniting

the conscious and unconscious, archetypes make us whole and complete.

Living fully, Jung believed, means living harmoniously with the fundamental

elements of human nature. In particular, we must deal with three powerful

archetypes that compose the self. They are the shadow, the anima, and the

persona. All three are represented in literature.

The shadow is our darker side, the part of ourselves we would prefer not to

confront, those aspects that we dislike. It is seen in films as the villain, in medieval mystery plays
as the devil, and in powerful literary figures like Satan in

Paradise Lost. Young Goodman Brown clearly confronts (and rejects) his shadow

in the figure of his nocturnal traveling companion. The anima, according to

Jung, is the “soul-image,” the life force that causes one to act. It is given a feminine designation
in men (like Brown’s Faith), and a masculine one (animus) in

women, indicating that the psyche has both male and female characteristics,

though we may be made aware of them only in our dreams or when we recognize them in
someone else (a process Jung referred to as projection). The persona

is the image that we show to others. It is the mask that we put on for the external world; it may
not be at all what we think ourselves to be inside. The persona

and anima can be thought of as two contrasting parts of the ego, our conscious

personality. The former mediates between the ego and the outside world, the

latter between the ego and the inner one.

To become a psychologically healthy, well-balanced adult—or, as Jung put

it, for individuation to occur—we must discover and accept the different sides

of ourselves, even those we dislike and resist. If we reject some part of the self,

we are likely to project that element onto others—that is, we transfer it to something or
someone else, thereby making us incapable of seeing ourselves as wrong

PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM 63

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or guilty. Instead, we see another person or institution to be at fault. In these

terms, Young Goodman Brown’s despondency can be seen as the result of his

failure to achieve individuation. He projects his shadow on the forest companion

and later on the entire community. He fails to nurture his anima, leaving Faith

behind and, in the end, suspecting her of the faithlessness he has committed.

And, finally, his persona, the face that he shows to the world, is a false one. He

is not the “good man,” the pious Puritan, he claims to be. The healthy individual develops a
persona that exists comfortably and easily with the rest of his personality. Young Goodman
Brown, unable to integrate all parts of his personality,

dies an unhappy neurotic, or as Hawthorne puts it, “They carved no hopeful

verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.”

There are, of course, many different archetypes, with some more commonly

met than others. Some of the characters, images, and situations that frequently

elicit similar psychological responses from diverse groups of people can be found

in the lists that follow. Whenever you meet them, it is possible that they carry

with them more power to evoke a response than their literal meanings would

suggest.

Characters

■ The hero. Heroes, according to Lord Raglan in The Hero: A Study in

Tradition, Myth, and Drama, are distinguished by several uncommon events,

including a birth that has unusual circumstances (such as a virgin mother); an

early escape from attempts to murder him; or a return to his homeland,

where, after a victory over some antagonist, he marries a princess, assumes

the throne, and only later falls victim to a fate that may include being banished from the
kingdom only to die a mysterious death and have an ambiguous burial. The archetype is
exemplified by such characters as Oedipus,

Jason, and Jesus Christ. Sometimes the story may involve only a journey

during which the hero must answer complex riddles, retrieve a sacred or

powerful artifact, or do battle with superhuman creatures to save someone

else, perhaps a whole people. The quests of some of the knights in Alfred,

Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, such as those made by Gawain and

Galahad, are examples.

■ The scapegoat. Sometimes the hero himself becomes the sacrificial victim
who is put to death by the community in order to remove the guilt of the

people and restore their welfare and health. On occasion, an animal suffices

as the scapegoat, but in literature, the scapegoat is more likely to be a human

being. Again, Jesus Christ is an example, but a more recent retelling of the

story is found in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.”

■ The outcast. The outcast is a character who is thrown out of the community as punishment for
a crime against it. The fate of the outcast, as can be

seen in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is to wander throughout eternity.

Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown also finds himself separated from his

community following his refusal to join in the forest communion. He cannot listen to the hymns
of the assembled congregation on the Sabbath, kneel

with his family at prayer, or trust in the virtue of Faith, his wife. He is lonely

and alone.

■ The devil. The figure of the devil personifies the principle of evil that

intrudes in the life of a character to tempt and destroy him or her, often by

promising wealth, fame, or knowledge in exchange for his or her soul.

Mephistopheles in the legend of Faust is such a figure, as is the old man

whom Young Goodman Brown meets in the forest. The latter, with his

snakelike staff, purports to have been present at ancient evil deeds. Brown

even refers to him as “the devil.”

■ Female figures. Women are depicted in several well-known archetypes.

The good mother, such as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, is associated with

fertility, abundance, and nurturance of those around her. The temptress, on

the other hand, destroys the men who are attracted to her sensuality and

beauty. Like Delilah, who robs Samson of his strength, she causes their

downfall. The female who inspires the mind and soul of men is a spiritual

(or platonic) ideal. She has no physical attractions but, like Dante’s Beatrice,

guides, directs, and fulfills her male counterpart. Finally, women are seen as

the unfaithful wife. As she appears in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, the unfaithful wife, married to
a dull, insensitive husband, turns to a more desirable
man as a lover, with unhappy consequences.

■ The trickster. A figure often appearing in African American and American

Indian narratives, the trickster is mischievous, disorderly, and amoral. He

disrupts the rigidity of rule-bound cultures, bringing them reminders of their

less strict beginnings. For example, in the tales of Till Eulenspiegel, which

date back to the sixteenth century, Till, a shrewd rural peasant, outwits the

arrogant townspeople and satirizes their social practices.

Images

■ Colors. Colors have a variety of archetypal dimensions. Red, because of its

association with blood, easily suggests passion, sacrifice, or violence. Green, on

the other hand, makes one think of fertility and the fullness of life, even hope.

Blue is often associated with holiness or sanctity, as in the depiction of the

Virgin Mary. Light and darkness call up opposed responses: hope, inspiration,

enlightenment, and rebirth in contrast with ignorance, hopelessness, and death.

■ Numbers. Like colors, numbers are invested with different meanings. The

number three points to things spiritual, as in the Holy Trinity; four is associated with the four
seasons (and, by extension, with the cycle of life) and

the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water). When three and four are

combined to make seven, the union produces a powerful product that is

perfect and whole and complete.

■ Water. Another common image, water is often used as a creation, birth, or

rebirth symbol, as in Christian baptism. Flowing water can refer to the passage of time. In
contrast, the desert or lack of water suggests a spiritually

barren state, as it does in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

■ Gardens. Images of natural abundance, such as gardens, often indicate a paradise or a state of
innocence. The best-known, of course, is the Garden of Eden.

■ Circles. Circles can be presented simply or in complex relationships with

other geometric figures. By their lack of beginnings and endings, circles

commonly suggest a state of wholeness and union. A wedding ring, for

example, brings to mind the unending union of two people.

■ The sun. Like the seasons, the sun makes one think of the passage of time.

At its rising, it calls to mind the beginning of a phase of life or of life itself; at

its setting, it points to death and other endings. At full presence, it might

suggest enlightenment or radiant knowledge.

Situations

■ The quest. Pursued by the hero, mentioned earlier, the quest usually involves a difficult search
for a magical or holy item that will return fertility

and abundance to a desolate state. Certainly, the boy in James Joyce’s

“Araby” goes to the bazaar in search of a fitting offering for the sister of his

friend Mangan, whom he has sanctified with his young love. It is both a

holy quest and a romantic one. A related pattern is that of the need to perform a nearly
impossible task so that all will be well. Arthur, for example,

must pull the sword from the stone if he is to become king. Often found as

part of both these situations is the journey, suggesting a psychological, as

well as physical, movement from one place, or state of being, to another.

The journey, like the travels of Ulysses, may involve a descent into hell.

■ Death and rebirth. Already mentioned in connection with the cycle of the

seasons, death and rebirth are the most common of all archetypes in literature. Rebirth may
take the form of natural regeneration, that is, of submission to the cycles of nature, or of escape
from this troubled life to an endless

paradise, such as that enjoyed before the fall into the sufferings that are part

of mortality. For example, in “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge presents a landscape

that is both savage and holy, a landscape of heaven and hell, ending with a

vision of a transcendent experience in which the speaker/holy man has

“drunk the milk of Paradise.”

■ Initiation. Stories of initiation deal with the progression from one stage of

life to another, usually that of an adolescent moving from childhood to

maturity, from innocence to understanding. The experience is rarely without

problems, although it may involve comedy. In its classic form, the protagonist

goes through the initiation alone, experiencing tests and ordeals that change
him so that he can return to the family or larger group as an adult member.

Northrop Frye and Mythological Criticism

In 1957, Northrop Frye advanced the study of archetypes, at least as they apply

to literature, with the publication of Anatomy of Criticism, in which he presented

a highly structured model of how myths are at the basis of all texts. Although he

66 CHAPTER 4

did not accept Jung’s theories in their entirety, he used many of them as the basis

of his efforts to understand the functions of archetypes in literature. He spoke of

a “theory of myths,” by which he really referred to a theory of genres as a way of

understanding narrative structures. All texts, he concluded, are part of “a central

unifying myth,” exemplified in four types of literature, or four mythoi, that are

analogous to the seasons. Together they compose the entire body of literature,

which he called the monomyth.

The mythos of summer, for example, is the romance. It is analogous to the

birth and adventures of innocent youth. It is a happy myth that indulges what we

want to happen—that is, the triumph of good over evil and problems resolved in

satisfying ways. Autumn, in contrast, is tragic. In the autumn myth, the hero does

not triumph but instead meets death or defeat. Classic tragic figures, like Antigone

or Oedipus, are stripped of power and set apart from their world to suffer alone.

In the winter myth, what is normal and what is hoped for are inverted. The depicted world is
hopeless, fearful, frustrated, even dead. There is no hero to bring

salvation, no happy endings to innocent adventures. Spring, however, brings

comedy: rebirth and renewal, hope and success, freedom and happiness. The

forces that would defeat the hero are thwarted, and the world regains its order.

According to Frye, every work of literature has its place in this schema.

Currently the mythic or archetypal approach is less frequently used than it

was in earlier decades. Some readers complain that it overlooks the qualities of

individual works by its focus on how any given text fits a general pattern. When

a novel is seen as but one of many instances of death and rebirth, for example, its
uniqueness is ignored and its value diminished. However, the process of relating

a single work to literature in general and to human experience as a whole gives

the work of literature stature and importance in the eyes of other readers. It

relates literature to other areas of intellectual activity in a reasoned, significant

manner. Certainly the archetypal approach is worth knowing and sometimes

using, for it yields insights about both literature and human nature that other

approaches fail to provide. It considers a work in terms of its psychological,

aesthetic, and cultural aspects, making such an analysis a powerful union of three

perspectives.

Jacques Lacan: An Update on Freud

Since the 1960s, the Freudian approach, which had waned in popularity, has

experienced a renaissance due to the ideas of a French psychoanalyst named Jacques Lacan. His
work has been described as a reinterpretation of Freud in light of

the ideas of structuralist and poststructuralist theories (see Chapter 8). Looking at

Freudian theory with the influence of the ideas of the anthropologist Claude

Lévi-Strauss and linguists Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobsen, Lacan’s

work is far-ranging and complex, innovative, and not easily understood. Some

would even call it obscure.

In the mid-1950s, Lacan startled the world of psychoanalysis by calling for a

new emphasis on the unconscious but with significant differences from the

Freudian approach. His ideas and practices were at such odds with those of

many other psychoanalysts that he was expelled from the International Psychoanalytical
Association, leading him to form a new professional organization with

colleagues and followers of like mind. From that point on, Lacan set himself on a

course of developing new theories independent of the established profession. He

explained these theories in publications called Écrits, which were actually lectures

for graduate-level students.

Lacan’s remarks upset his colleagues not because he was interested in understanding the
behavior of the conscious personality by analyzing the unconscious,
as the Freudians tried to do, but because he was interested in defining the unconscious as the
core of one’s being. Freud’s concept of the unconscious as a

force that determines our actions and beliefs shook the long-held ideal that we

are beings who can control our own destinies; Lacan further weakened the

Western humanist concept of a stable self by denying the possibility of bringing

the contents of the unconscious into consciousness. Whereas Freud wanted to

make hidden drives and desires conscious so they could be managed, Lacan

claimed that the ego can never replace the unconscious or possess its contents

for the simple reason that the ego, the “I” self, is only an illusion produced by

the unconscious. It was a monumental challenge to our sense of who we are.

Lacan’s concept of adult psychology also set him apart from Freud, who

believed that the healthy psyche was characterized by unity. In contrast, Lacan

recognized that it is always fraught with fragmentation, absence, and lack. This

stance has, of course, made Lacan’s ideas particularly attractive to the poststructuralists (see
Chapter 8).

Another difference from the Freudians was Lacan’s notion that the unconscious, “the nucleus of
our being,” is orderly and structured, not chaotic and

jumbled and full of repressed desires and wishes, as Freud conceived of it. In

fact, Lacan asserted that the unconscious is structured like a language. He

expanded such ideas by turning to Saussure, though with a few significant modifications.
Saussure (see Chapter 8) pointed out that the relationship between a

word and a physical object is arbitrary, not inherent, and that it is maintained by

convention. We know one signifier from another not because of meanings they

naturally carry but because of the differences signifiers have from one another.

Unlike Saussure, who saw a signifier and a signified as two parts of a sign,

Lacan saw in the unconscious only signifiers that refer to other signifiers. Each

has meaning only because it differs from some other signifier. It does not ultimately refer to
anything outside itself, and the absence of any signified robs the

entire system of stability. In these terms, the unconscious is a constantly moving

chain of signifiers, with nothing to stop their shifting and sliding. The elements
of the unconscious are all signifiers, but they have no reference beyond themselves, making
them unstable. The signified that seems to be “the real thing” is

actually beyond our grasp, because, according to Lacan, all we can have is a conceptualized
reality. Language becomes independent of what is external to it, and

we cannot go outside it. Nevertheless, we spend our lives trying to stabilize this

system so that meaning and self become possible.

As evidence for his argument that the unconscious is structured like language, Lacan pointed out
that analysts routinely study language as a means of

understanding the unconscious. He states in particular that two elements identified by Freud as
part of dreams, condensation and displacement, are similar to

metaphor and metonymy. More specifically, condensation, like metaphor, carries

several meanings in one image. Likewise, displacement, like metonymy, uses an

element of a person or experience to refer to the whole. In addition, the importance that Freud
attributed to other linguistic devices, such as slips, allusions, and

puns, to provide insight into the unconscious is, according to Lacan, further evidence of the
linguistic basis of the unconscious. Thus, the unconscious, the very

essence of the self, is a linguistic effect that exists before the individual enters into

it, leaving it open to analysis. If the linguistic system is extant before one enters

into it, however, there can be no individual, unique self, a concept that is profoundly disturbing
to many.

To the reader coming to Lacan’s theories for the first time, they may seem

to be more philosophical than literary. They have a bearing on literary analysis,

however, in several important ways.

Character Analysis First of all, Lacan’s rejection of the unique self changes our

way of examining characters. Rejecting the traditional view of the human self as

a whole, integrated being and accepting Lacan’s view of it as a collection of signifiers that point
to no signified, leaving one fragmented, means changing the

way we think and talk about characters. If the psychologically complete personality is not
possible, how is the reader to view the figures found in narratives?

Lacan’s description of how the psyche evolves is helpful in developing new

ways of reading to accommodate his views of the self. As he explained it, our

movement toward adulthood occurs as several parts of our personality develop

in search of a unified and psychologically complete self, which, though it can

never be achieved, can be approached by stabilizing the sliding of signifiers.

Consequently, we move through three stages, or orders as Lacan calls them—

the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic, corresponding to the experience of

need, demand, and desire. It should be noted that this evolution is not entirely

sequential, as the orders sometimes overlap each other. Underlying the process,

so the assumption goes, is language as the shaper of our unconscious, our conscious minds, and
our sense of self.

It should be noted that disagreement exists among scholars about the nature

and significance of Lacan’s orders, due partly to the complexities of the concepts

that underlie them and also because he revised his thinking from time to time.

(He is also accused by some of being a bad writer.) Consequently, the explanations

provided here may not entirely concur with explanations provided in other texts.

The new infant exists in a state of nature, a psychological place characterized

by wholeness and fullness. It does not recognize itself as an individual that is

complete and distinguishable from other people or objects. It knows only that

it has needs (food, for example) and does not distinguish itself from the mother

or any object that satisfies them. It exists in the Real Order, a psychological state

characterized by unity and completeness.

Somewhere between six and eighteen months of age, the baby sees its own

reflection and begins to perceive a state of separation between itself and the

surrounding world, an experience known as the mirror stage, which is part of

the Imaginary Order. In a preverbal state, the baby becomes aware of its body

only in bits and pieces—whatever is visible at any given moment—but does not

yet conceive of itself as whole, although it can recognize other people as such.

The mirror stage introduces a sense of possible wholeness, because the image

looks like other objects with discrete boundaries. However, to have boundaries

means recognizing that the child is separate from the mother, not one with her.

It is an awareness that is accompanied by a sense of loss. The sense of unity with

others and with other objects has been lost and, along with it, the sense of security that it
provided.

The infant thinks the reflection is real and uses what it sees to create the ego,

the sense of “I.” It is only an illusion, however, and she is, in actuality, not

whole and complete. Thus the “self” is always manufactured by the mistaken

acceptance of an external image for an internal identity. Lacan refers to it as the

“other” because it is not the actual self, only an image outside of the self. He

spelled it with a small “o” to distinguish it from the “Other,” or those remaining

elements that exist outside the self, objects and people that the infant comes to

know before becoming aware of its own “other.” It is known as an “ideal ego,”

because it is whole and nonfragmented and has no lack or absence. In other

words, the individual makes up for the union that has been lost by misconceiving

the self as whole and sufficient; but such an assumption is illusory and, hence,

referred to as the Imaginary.

When the awareness of being separate comes, as it must if the individual is to

move from nature to culture, the baby desires to return to that earlier period of

oneness with the mother. Its needs at this point turn into demands, specifically

demands for attention and love from another that will erase the separation that

the baby knows, but such a reunion is not possible. One can never return.

When the infant realizes it is not connected to that which serves its needs,

when it recognizes the Other and its own other, it begins to enter the Symbolic

Order. (During that process it overlaps to some degree with the Imaginary.) The

symbolic introduces language that takes the place of what is now lacking. It

names what is missing and substitutes a sign for it, stopping the play and movement of signifiers
so that they can have some stable meaning. Because a person

must enter language to become a speaker and thereby name the self as “I,” it

masters the individual and shapes one’s identity as a separate being. In the Symbolic Order
everything is separate; thus, to negotiate it successfully, a person

must master the concept of difference, difference that makes language possible
(that is, we know a word such as light because it is not the word fight) and difference that makes
genders recognizable.

The Symbolic also initiates socialization by setting up rules of behavior and

putting limits on desire. Whereas the Imaginary Order is centered in the mother,

the Symbolic Order is ruled by what Lacan calls the Law of the Father, because

it is the father who enforces cultural norms and laws. According to Lacan, there

are biological sexual differences, but gender is culturally created. This means that

because the power of the word and being male are associated, the boy child must

identify with the father as rule giver, and the girl must acknowledge that, as such,

the father is her superior. Both male and female experience a symbolic castration,

or a loss of wholeness that comes with the acceptance of society’s rules.

Actually, Lacan refers to the ultimate center of power by several names. He

calls it the phallus, referring not to a biological organ but to a privileged signifier, the symbol of
power that gives meaning to other objects. Neither males nor

females can possess the phallus totally, though males have a stronger claim to it.

Instead, human beings go through life longing for a return to the state of wholeness when we
were one with our mother, manifested in our desire for pleasure

and things. But wholeness will always elude us.

He also calls it the Other, all that world beyond the self. To be the Other

would be to bridge the separation that exists between the self and the center of

language, the center of the Symbolic. Because such an act is not possible, the

human being experiences an ongoing “lack,” which Lacan calls “desire,” an unsatisfiable
yearning to merge with the Other and rule all.

Not surprisingly, Lacan has met with some criticism about his description of

the Symbolic Order, with its emphasis on the superiority of the father that the

girl must acknowledge. Positive outcomes of the challenge that his ideas present

have been found in the adaptations and extensions of his theories by such feminist critics as
Julia Kristeva Kristeva and Hélène Cixous. On the other hand,

there are those who share Francois Roustag’s opinion that Lacan’s work is an

“incoherent system of pseudo-scientific gibberish.”

Obviously Lacan’s ideas are interesting to the literary critic because they provide more ways of
understanding and analyzing characters. A reader can look for

symbolic representations of the Real Order, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic to

demonstrate how the text depicts the human being as a fragmented, incomplete

being. In “Young Goodman Brown,” for example, evidence of the three orders

points to lack and absence that make wholeness impossible. The protagonist

longs for the wholeness provided by the Real, but it eludes him. He does not

know and can never know the true “self,” and he resists the acceptance of

society’s rules, the power of the group. Clearly suffering from a loss that he can

never recover, he exemplifies the fragmented being who is unable to achieve the

completeness he desires.

Antirealism In addition to changing the way characters are analyzed, Lacan’s

theories of language, in particular his assertion that language is detached from

physical reality, also affect literary analysis. For example, his theories make it difficult to read a
narrative as being realistic. The traditional assumption that a fictive world exists as a real one is
no longer valid if language is not connected to

referents outside of it. Instead, the reader must accept that a narrative is likely to

be broken and interrupted. It may, like other signifiers, refer to other narratives.

Lacan’s early association with surrealist writers and painters is evident in the tendency of his
followers to favor bizarre and nonlinear narratives.

Jouissance Lacan’s ideas are also germane to the work of the critic, because he

acknowledged that literature offers access to the Imaginary Order and a chance

to reexperience the joy of being whole, as we once were with our mother. The

Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall
learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any
time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

word Lacan used, jouissance, means “enjoyment,” but it also carries a sexual

reference (“orgasm”) that the English word lacks. As Lacan used it, it is essentially phallic,
although he admitted that there is a feminine jouissance.

WRITING PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM

Prewriting
Once you are accustomed to taking a Freudian, mythological, or Lacanian approach, you will
begin to notice meaningful symbols and will pay close attention

to dream sequences as a matter of course. If you are not used to reading from

these perspectives, however, you may want to be intentional about noting aspects of a work
during prewriting that could be significant.

If you are interested in using Freudian theory, you can begin by making

notes about a selected character, then writing a descriptive paragraph about him

or her. The following questions can help to get you started:

■ What do you see as the character’s main traits?

■ By what acts, dialogue, and attitudes are those traits revealed?

■ What does the narrator reveal about the character?

■ In the course of the narrative, does the character change? If so, how

and why?

■ Where do you find evidence of the id, superego, and ego at work?

■ Does the character come to understand something not understood at the

outset?

■ How does the character view him- or herself?

■ How is he or she viewed by other characters?

■ Do the two views agree?

■ What images are associated with the character?

■ What principal symbols enrich your understanding of the characters?

■ Which symbols are connected with forces that affect the characters?

■ Does the character have any interior monologues or dreams? If so, what do

you learn from them about the character that is not revealed by outward

behavior or conversation?

■ Are there conflicts between what is observable and what is going on inside

the character? Are there any revealing symbols in them?

■ Are there suggestions that the character’s childhood experiences have led to

problems in maturity, such as uncompleted sexual stages or unresolved

dilemmas?

■ Where do the characters act in ways that are inconsistent with the way they

are described by the narrator or perceived by other characters?

■ Who is telling the story, and why does the narrator feel constrained to tell it?

How can you explain a character’s irrational behavior? What causes do you

find? What motivation?

An archetypal approach can start with these questions:

■ What similarities do you find among the characters, situations, and settings of

the text under consideration and those in other works that you have read?

■ What commonly encountered archetypes do you recognize?

■ Is the narrative like any classic myths you know?

■ Where do you find evidence of the protagonist’s persona? Anima/animus?

Shadow?

■ Does the protagonist at any point reject some part of his or her personality

and project it onto someone or something else?

■ Would you describe the protagonist as individuated, as having a realistic and

accurate sense of self?

You can begin a Lacanian approach by considering the following questions:

■ Where do you recognize the appearance of the Real, Imaginary, and/or

Symbolic Orders?

■ How do they demonstrate the fragmented nature of the self?

■ Are there instances where the Imaginary interrupts the Symbolic Order?

■ Is the character aware of the lack or absence of something significant in the

self?

■ Are there objects that symbolize what is missing or lacking?

■ Do you find examples of the mirror stage of the developing psyche?

■ Is the text an antirealist one that subverts traditional storytelling