Approach of the Study

A psychological approach is an approach that applies principles of modern psychology to characters or situations within literary work or to the person who wrote the work. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories as cited in Kennedy 1999: 1947 have changed our understanding about human behavior by exploring human’s thoughts such as wish fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious and repression. According to him language in literature is able to reflect unconscious fears and desires. He admitted himself had learned psychology mostly from studying literature. He believed that author of literary work “had such profound insight into human nature that his characters display the depth and complexity of real people. Unresolved conflicts that give rise to any neurosis are the stuff literature. A work of literature, he believes, is the external expression of the author’s unconscious mind. According to Freud, literary work must be treated like a dream, applying psychoanalytic techniques to the text to uncover the author’s hidden motivations and repressed desires Bressler, 1999: 153. According to Freud, as taken from Bressler 1999: 159, an author’s chief motivation for writing any story is to gratify some secret desire, some forbidden wish that probably developed during the author’s infancy and was immediately suppressed and dumped in the unconscious. The outward manifestation of the suppressed wish becomes the literary work itself. Freud declares that the literary work is therefore the author’s dream or fantasy. Psychoanalytic criticism focused mainly on the author. Known as psychobiography, this method of analysis begins by amassing biographical data of an author through biographies, personal letters, lectures, and any other document deemed related in some way to the author. Psychoanalytic critics believed they could theoretically construct the author’s 30 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI personality with all its idiosyncrasies, internal and external conflicts, and most importantly, neuroses. In turn, such devised theory, they believed, could illuminate an author’s individual works, giving rise to latent content in the author’s texts. By gaining an in-depth understanding of the author, these critics assumed they would be better able to interpret an author’s cannon. In later studies, the psychoanalytic critics focused on character analysis, studying the various aspects of characters’ mind found in author’s cannon. Individual characters within a text now became the focus, believing that the author had in mind a particular personality for his or her characters. A character’s motivations and actions, then, became more complex than simply the author’s ideas. According to Freud, playwright had such profound insight into human nature that his characters display the depth and complexity of real people. Freud and disciples believed that great literature truthfully reflects life. Psychological criticism employs three approaches. First, it investigates the creative process of the artist. Second is the psychological study of particular artist. Most modern literary biographies employ psychology to understand their subject’s motivation and behavior. The third is the analysis of fictional characters. Freud’s study shows psychological approach tries to bring modern insights about human behavior into the study of fictional people is act Kennedy, 1999: 1947.

C. Method of the Study

In doing the research of the study, the library research method was used. There are two kinds of data used in the study. First, the novel written by the great 31 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI playwright, Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray which was published on 2003 was used as the primary data. Second, the secondary data were books that were used to provide theories, such as Bressler’s Literary Criticism, Abrams’ A Glossary of Literary Terms, Murphy’s Understanding Unseen, etc. Some critical reviews and theories obtained from some Internet sites were also used. Firstly, the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde was read focusing on the content. Afterward, the novel was re-read to understand it more and to analyze it. The story is very important because the form of this literary work is a novel and therefore it holds the biggest role in conveying the author’s idea or state of mind. Next the writer formulated three questions. These three questions represented the problems that needed to be solved. The first question dealt with the characters in the novel. The second question dealt with the depiction of the battle between the pleasure and reality principles within the novel. The third had to do with the question of how this battle of two principles reflects the author’s inner conflict. Thirdly, relating parts into whole. This step tried to make the information from step one and two become one. Therefore, in this step the information that can answer the problem was gathered to analyze the novel. In this step this novel was analyzed based on the theories and references that were able to help in answering the problems. The fourth step was making conclusion toward the analysis. This step was the conclusion of the analysis of the novel. In this step the important points in the 32 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI