Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud
Jacque Lacan
How we understand ourselves as
individuals and how literature
plays a part in this
Lacan - Psychological theory
Psychoanalytic theory deals with these
questions
• How do we understand ourselves as
individuals?
• How can literature help us understand
ourselves?
• How do we become fully functioning members of
society?
• How do we gain a sense of identity?
Our Unconscious
• The unconscious is the foundation of all being and it is
structured like language.
• Our unconscious is made up of wishes, desires, images
that are always the signifiers and never the signified.
• There is an endless chain of signifiers without an anchor.
• Self is an illusion, the product of the unconscious.
• How do we go from infancy to the illusion called “self”
The process of becoming an adult (a “self”) is the
process of creating an illusion of an anchor, a stable
reference point for all the signifieds.
• The Other is a structural position in the symbolic order. It
is the place that everyone and everything is trying to get
to.
A part of Lacan’s theory
Concept
Phase of development
•Need (mother’s breast) •Real (perfect unity, no language)
0-6 months
•Demand (need
•Imaginary (sense of self is a
recognition and love, not
just objects) 6-18 months
misperception of self in mirror)
•Desire (since self is
•Symbolic
other, there is a sustained
and never-ending lack)
After language
(The symbolic order is
the place of adulthood. Submit to rules of
language. Law. Language. Restriction.)
Reality vs Real
• Reality: fantasy world constructed through
language/signifiers. Our idea of the real.
• Real: a materiality of existence beyond
language and thus beyond expressibility.
Lacan’s Mirror Stage
• the mirror stage is a phenomenon to which
I assign a twofold value. In the first place,
it has historical value as it marks a
decisive turning-point in the mental
development of the child. In the second
place, it typifies an essential libidinal
relationship with the body image.
Tension between real and imaginary
Desire = fantasy
therefore
Desire = lack
The objet a
• Desire’s main task is to keep itself circulating.
• That objet a is perceived as a missing piece, shows that
Other is not clearly distinguished from self. Value comes
from being perceived as a missing part of the subject
self.
• The meaning is in the pursuit. The pursuit of the objet a
is the condition for the production of art – the enjoyment
of otherness. The objet a grants an excuse for the
pursuit. There is a reason to pursue otherness when you
see self as lacking.
• The missing piece is retroactively given. It was not
necessarily ever missing. It’s just a perception.
• Narrators can work like advertising. To create the
perception in the reader that something is missing.
Abjection
• Abjection and the abject character embracing what we are supposed to be
pushing away as impure.
–
–
–
–
–
Abject hero (Shrek) (Quasimodo)
Abject characters haunt the edges of society
Physical abjection can be impossible to mask
Young deal with abjection especially as adolescents.
Notice how Arnold is abject in our next novel.