Psychoanalytic Criticism Review of Related Theories

3. Psychoanalytic Criticism

Psychoanalytic criticism is a literary criticism which involves the techniques and the process of psychoanalysis in interpreting components in literature. Psychoanalysis itself is a form of therapy which is used to cure mental disorder by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious element in mind. By using this method in literary work, we can understand the characteristic of a character in a literary work. The method of doing this is by getting through inside the mind of a character and after letting the character talk freely or express the story, the repressed fears and conflicts which are causing the problem will all appear and be brought to conscious mind and being faced by the character instead of still buried under the unconscious part of the mind. The theories are developed by the figure that is famous when we discuss about psychoanalytic criticism, Sigmund Freud 1856-1939 Barry, 2002: 96. English letter students learn the theme, the development of characters in great literature using psychoanalytic criticism. Therefore, psychoanalytic criticism is allowed to be used in this research. According to Barry, psychoanalytic critics give central importance, in literary interpretation, to the distinction between the conscious and unconscious mind: They pay close attention to unconscious motives and feelings, whether these be a those of the author, or b those of the characters depicted in the world. They demonstrate the presence in the literary work of classic psychoanalytic symptoms, conditions and phases of emotional and sexual development in infants Barry, 2002: 105. When analyzing through Psychoanalytic criticism, it is not separable if not imputing the id, ego, and superego, the three types of personality like what is concluded by Freud. He also found the idea of self defense mechanisms of a human being, some ways to devote our physic energy from anxieties. Later on, the writer discusses them more about what id, ego, superego and defense mechanisms are. a. The Id, Ego, and Superego In Freud‘s work, it is maintained that our personality consists of the ego, super-ego and the id. These types of personality roughly are represented as consciousness, conscience, and unconsciousness. According to Freud that is stated in Theories of Personalities by Jess Feist and Gregory Feist, id is the most primitive personality in mind and its purpose is to satisfy the basic desires, so that we can call id as pleasure principle. In short, id is an element of personality which is primitive, chaotic, and related to part of unconscious mind. It is also unchangeable, containing amorality, illogical, disarranging, and full of propulsion energy but outflowing the energy just to satisfy the desire of pleasure principle Feist, 2009: 28. While ego, is the element of personality which is connected to reality. Ego is being tamed by reality principle, which is invoked to replace i d‘s pleasure principle. Ego is the decision maker of things because ego can work in the conscious, unconscious and not conscious, so ego is over the id and superego. In short, ego, as the most top area of personality is in charge to control the demand from id while considering the moral value from superego Feist, 2009: 29. Superego represents the aspect of moral and idealism from personality which is controlled by moralistic and idealistic principles. Superego is developed from ego, and like ego, it has its own source energy. However, what makes it different from ego in one condition – is it does not have connection to the outside world so that the demand of superego becomes not realistic without the participation of ego Feist, 2009: 30. According to psychology expert, Kendra Cherry, the id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes of the instinctive and primitive behaviors. According to Freud, the id is the source of all psychic energy, making it the primary component of personality and the ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality. The ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world. From Barry‘s book, it is stated that superego could be described as a condition when we are very aware, so that we could think clearly and we could differentiate which is good or bad. The three of them should balance each other, if not; the patient could fearly having mental disorder Barry, 2002: 97. b. Defense Mechanism There are several psychic procedures by ego whose function is to lessen or even avoid something that will bother our mind. One of the terms might be called as transference, it is a situation whereby the character under analysis redirects the emotions recalled towards someone or something to release the tension which is buried, thus, the resentment felt towards a tragedy might be reactivated but directed against something else. This might be seen as defense mechanism, that is, as psychic procedures for avoiding painful admissions or recognitions. Another one of them is dream work, the process by which real events or desires are transformed into dream images. These include: displacement, whereby one person or event is represented by another which in some way linked or associated with it, perhaps because of a similar sounding word, or by some form of symbolic substitution. Thus, characters, motivation and events are represented in dreams in very ‗literary‘ way, involving the translation, by the dream work, or abstract ideas or feelings into concrete images Barry, 2002: 98. The desire to do something or to have something is as big as the dream work itself. The dream work grows bigger following the bitter past event heshe gets in the past. It links a substitution and could lead into the unbalanced personality which id dominates more than two others. In Freud‘s theory there are several defense mechanisms that are often revealed by an individual. The first time, he just develops the basic concept of each mechanism, and then later, descriptions of many defense mechanisms are developed more by his daughter and followers. If it has been mentioned that transference is one division of defense mechanism, some partial of defense mechanism will be reviewed in following sections. In his book, Jerry Burger states that repression is the most important of the defense mechanism. Repression is an active effort by the ego to push the threatening material, such as the bad drives from id, out of conscious or keeping out that drives from ever reaching consciousness. For example, one night a boy sees his father physically assaulting his mother. When later asked about the experience, the boy insists he has never seen anything at all like that. He may not be lying. Instead, he buries the horrifying scene that he sees to be told to others and therefore simply repressed it out of conscious. Freud says that each of us uses this kind of mechanism, for we all have material in our unconscious mind we would rather not bring into awareness. Using repression with a large number of powerful thoughts drains the large amount of energy. And also, strong ego is also needed, or else the battle of reaching stable personality can be lost Burger, 2010: 47. Repression hides the drives by id and throws them in the part of unconscious mind. And then what will happen to the drives next? Freud assures that the drives will still maintain in unconscious mind. Then, this drives sometimes will urge to go back to conscious mind within the same shift until it creates anxiety which cannot be controlled by that individual. After that, the drives will be expressed out by that individual into different types of outcome. It could be a positive outcome or negative outcome that will result other people harmed. The pressure by the unwanted drives also could be distributed into dream, mistaken utterance, or even other defense mechanism Feist, 2009: 35. The next mechanism is called sublimation . It is to be said as the most mature and the most productive way to fade anxiety. Many psychoanalysts often refer sublimation as the only truly successful defense mechanism. When using sublimation, the ego distributes the threatening unconscious drives into culturally and socially acceptable actions. For example, the aggressive id drives can be sublimated into playing hockey or football. Sublimation is the channel of repression which modifies the socially unacceptable drives and also anxiety into creativity. The sublimation work is really productive because the id is allowed to express its aggression while ego does not have to use energy to hold back the impulse, and athlete is admired for playing aggressive in sport Burger, 2010: 47.

C. Theoretical Framework