Literary theory: Difference between revisions

Psychoanalytic criticism, is one of the initial approaches within the school of literary criticism. This concept is used by critics to analyze the unconsciousness of the mind. Originally constructed by Sigmund Freud when he was studying patients in an asylum, ''Introductory Guide to Critical Theory'' says, Freud began his researches into the workings of the human mind in 1881, after a century during which Europe and America saw the reform of the insane asylum and an ever-increasing interest in "abnormal" psychological states, especially the issue of "nervous diseases" (which was the first phenomenon that Freud studied, examining the nervous system of fish while gaining his medical degree at the University of Vienna from 1873 to 1881).<ref name=Ref3/> Holland says, the psychoanalytic literary critic's primary job is to foreground that psychological element in what he or she says about books. In other words, the psychoanalytic critics should be interpreting their own, if you will, countertransference to the text or whatever else they are describing.<ref name=Ref4/>