Psychoanalytical Criticism- Julia Kristeva

 

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Psychoanalytical Criticism- Julia Kristeva

Welcome to the New edition of Psychoanalytical Criticism. As we navigate the complex landscapes of modern literary theory, certain figures stand as towering beacons, challenging how we think about language, identity, and the very fabric of our being. Following our deep dive into the foundational works of Freud, Jung, and Lacan, it feels only fitting to turn our attention to a revolutionary thinker who built upon, and radically departed from, their ideas: Julia Kristeva.

This newsletter Psychoanalytical Criticism- Julia Kristeva will serve as your primer to Kristeva’s world, where psychoanalysis, linguistics, and feminism collide. We’ll be untangling her complex ideas about how literature interacts with discourses of insanity, and how the act of writing is fundamentally tied to the formation—and sometimes the fragmentation—of our identity.

Introduction

Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, and novelist. She moved to Paris in the 1960s and quickly became a central figure in the influential Tel Quel group of intellectuals. Drawing from (and debating with) giants like Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, Kristeva’s work is a unique synthesis of linguistics, psychoanalysis, and political theory.

Her central project explores the interconnection between language and the speaking subject—that is, how we, as individuals, come to be through language. She is particularly fascinated by the margins of identity: the points where the self threatens to dissolve into madness, ecstasy, or poetic revolution.

Key Concepts:

To understand Kristeva’s contribution to discourses on insanity and literature, we must first get to grips with her unique vocabulary.

1. The Semiotic and The Symbolic

This is perhaps Kristeva’s most crucial contribution, a direct development from Lacan’s ideas.

• The Symbolic Order: Borrowed from Lacan, this is the realm of language, law, order, and social structure. It is the world of grammar, syntax, and shared meaning—the ‘dictionary definition’ of things. To enter the Symbolic is to accept societal rules (especially the Law of the Father) and to communicate in a way that others can understand. It’s the domain of conscious, rational thought.
• The Semiotic Chora: This is Kristeva’s groundbreaking concept. The Semiotic (from the Greek semeion, meaning ‘sign’) is a pre-linguistic, primal realm of experience. It is associated with the maternal body and the pre-Oedipal phase (before the child enters the language-based Symbolic order). It’s not language itself, but the rhythms, tones, pulses, and drives that underlie it. Think of the babbling of a baby, the cadence of poetry, or the raw, uncontrolled sounds of anguish or joy. It is the raw energy of communication before it is shaped into logical sense.

Why it matters for madness and literature: Kristeva argues that a healthy subject exists in a constant, dynamic dance between the Semiotic and the Symbolic. The Semiotic drives constantly disrupt and challenge the rigid order of the Symbolic, infusing language with desire, rhythm, and emotion. Literature, especially poetry, is a controlled space where this disruption can happen safely. Madness, in Kristevan terms, can be seen as a catastrophic collapse of this balance—where the powerful, chaotic forces of the Semiotic overwhelm the structuring capacity of the Symbolic, threatening the individual’s sense of a coherent self.

2. Abjection

A concept that has become incredibly influential in gender studies and theories of horror.

• What it is: Abjection is the violent, visceral reaction of horror and revulsion we feel towards something that profoundly disturbs our sense of identity, system, and order. It is not about something being evil or dirty in a simple sense, but about something that blurs the lines between self and other, subject and object, life and death.
• Common examples: A corpse (it shows us our own materiality and death), bodily fluids like blood or pus (they remind us that the body’s boundaries are permeable), spoiled food (something that was once nourishing becomes revolting). The abject is what we must jettison or ‘ab-ject’ from ourselves to maintain a clean and proper self.

Why it matters for madness and literature: The process of abjection is fundamental to forming an identity. By rejecting what is ‘not us’, we define what ‘us’ is. Kristeva links this powerfully to the maternal body—the original source of nourishment and comfort that must be rejected for the child to become a separate individual. Literature, particularly Gothic and horror genres, is a stage for exploring the abject. Think of Frankenstein’s monster (a blurred line between life and death) or the pervasive bodily horror in much modern writing. Furthermore, societal discourses often label madness as ‘abject’—something to be hidden away because it disturbs our rational, symbolic order.

3. Intertextuality

A term Kristeva coined that is now a cornerstone of literary studies.

• What it is: Kristeva argued that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another.” This means that no text exists in a vacuum. Every novel, poem, or play is in dialogue with every text that came before it. It absorbs, references, contradicts, and reworks them.

Why it matters for madness and literature: If identity is formed in language, and language is inherently intertextual, then our very selfhood is a mosaic of the voices, stories, and discourses we have absorbed. This challenges the romantic idea of the ‘lone genius’ author or the completely autonomous self. When a character’s identity fractures into madness (e.g., in works like The Yellow Wallpaper or Hamlet), we can often read this as a failure to successfully manage the multitude of conflicting internalised ‘texts’ and voices—be they social expectations, familial demands, or traumatic memories.

4. The Subject-in-Process / On Trial

Kristeva directly challenges the idea of a fixed, unchanging, unified identity.

• What it is: For Kristeva, the subject is never a finished product. We are perpetually ‘in-process/on trial’ (sujet en procès—a brilliant pun meaning both ‘in process’ and ‘on trial’). Our identity is constantly being formed, challenged, and re-formed through the never-ending tension between the Semiotic (drives, desires) and the Symbolic (law, language).

Why it matters for madness and literature: This view makes madness not a static state but a potential within all subjectivity. The ‘trial’ of being a self can sometimes break down. Literature is the ultimate record of this trial. The stream-of-consciousness novel (e.g., Virginia Woolf), which captures the pre-Symbolic flow of thought, is a perfect example of writing that explores the ‘subject-in-process’. It shows the self not as a solid thing, but as a continuous, and often precarious, event.

Literature, Madness, and Identity Formation

So, how do these complex ideas help us examine the relationship between writing and identity, particularly through the lens of madness?

1. Writing as a Cathartic Rehearsal of Selfhood: The act of writing is a symbolic practice (it uses language) but it is fuelled by semiotic drives (emotion, rhythm, unconscious desire). In putting words to experience, an author—and by extension, a reader—is actively engaged in the process of forging an identity. For characters on the brink of madness, writing can be a desperate attempt to impose Symbolic order on Semiotic chaos. Think of the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper whose journal is her only outlet as her sense of self unravels under the weight of patriarchal medical discourse.

2. Social and Medical Discourses as Symbolic Law: The ways a society defines ‘sanity’ and ‘insanity’ are powerful Symbolic forces. These definitions are not neutral; they are historically constructed and often serve to police boundaries (e.g., the Victorian-era medicalisation of female ‘hysteria’, which pathologised women’s discontent). Literature frequently exposes the violence of these discourses by giving voice to the ‘abject’ figures they exclude.

3. Gender and Madness: Kristeva’s work is deeply feminist. The association of the Semiotic with the maternal and the pre-Oedipal creates a powerful link between femininity and that which threatens the patriarchal Symbolic order. Historically, therefore, women’s speech and expression have more easily been labelled ‘irrational’ or ‘hysterical’—a way of policing the Semiotic disruption they represent. Literature by female authors often explores this tension directly, wrestling with the need to speak within the Symbolic order while also expressing semiotic drives that order devalues.

4. Modernism and the Fractured Self: Kristeva’s theory is a superb key for understanding Modernist and Postmodernist literature. These movements, with their fragmented narratives, stream-of-consciousness techniques, and rejection of linear plots, formally replicate the breakdown of a unified self. They allow the Semiotic to erupt into the Symbolic structure of the novel itself, mirroring the modern experience of alienation and psychological fragmentation.

Conclusion:

In an age where we are constantly curating our identities online, where discourses of mental health are both more prevalent and more contested, and where the boundaries of the self feel perpetually under threat, Kristeva’s work is not just academic—it is profoundly urgent.

She teaches us that the self is not a fortress to be defended, but a continuous, often messy, negotiation. She shows us that literature is not an escape from this reality but its most powerful rehearsal room. And she insists that what society calls ‘madness’ is often just the visible, terrifying, and ultimately human struggle of the ‘subject-on-trial’, a struggle that art has always sought to document and understand.

Julia Kristeva's Key Works 

1. Revolution in Poetic Language (1974): The essential text. This is where she first fully elaborates her seminal concepts of the Semiotic and the Symbolic and their dynamic interaction in avant-garde poetic language.
2. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980): A more focused and gripping read. She develops her theory of abjection through analyses of biblical law, Céline's literature, and art. Excellent for understanding the horror of blurred boundaries.
3. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1987): Explores depression not as a lack of meaning but as an unnameable grief, linking it to artistic creation. Analyzes works by Holbein, Dostoevsky, and Marguerite Duras.
4. Tales of Love (1983): Examines the history of "love" as a discourse and its role in the construction of the subject. Complements her work on identity formation.

Psychoanalytical Criticism- Jacques Lacan

 

Jacques Lacan

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Psychoanalytical Criticism- Jacques Lacan

Following our research on Freudian basics, we now turn to a thinker who at the same time revolutionized and shocked the world of psychoanalysis: the French master, Jacques Lacan (1901-1981). Where Freud delved into the hidden chambers of the mind, Lacan insisted that the key to these chambers was not buried deep within, but was in fact all around us—woven into the web of language itself.

This Newsletter Psychoanalytical Criticism- Jacques Lacan delves into Lacan’s complex and inspiringly disruptive ideas. We will unpack his central claim—that the unconscious is structured like a language—and explore its deep implications for literature, identity, and the very notion of selfhood. Our investigation will focus on the intricate interplay between writing and the formation of identity, scrutinising how social, medical, and historical constructions of insanity are not just reflected in, but are produced by, the language we use to describe ourselves and our world.

Introduction:

To understand Lacan is to understand a fundamental shift. While Freud used language as a tool to access the unconscious (through free association, dream interpretation), Lacan argued that language is the very structure of the unconscious itself. For Lacan, we do not use language; we inhabit it. Our desires, our fears, and our very sense of self are constituted within its networks and constraints.

This perspective makes Lacanian theory exceptionally powerful for literary studies. If the unconscious and literature both operate under the same linguistic rules, then a literary text becomes a privileged object for analysis—not as a symptom of an author’s neurosis, but as a direct manifestation of the unconscious processes of language.

Key Concepts: A Lexicon for the Modern Analyst

Navigating Lacan requires a new vocabulary. Here are the essential terms, decoded.

• The Unconscious is Structured Like a Language

Ø  This is Lacan’s most famous and foundational axiom. He rejected the idea of the unconscious as a seething, chaotic cauldron of primal urges. Instead, he proposed it is orderly, logical, and follows the rules of linguistic systems. We can analyse dreams, slips of the tongue, and literary texts using the same tools we use to analyse poetry or prose—specifically, the mechanisms of metaphor and metonymy.

• Signifier and Signified

Ø  Lacan draws from linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. A signifier is the sound-image or written word (e.g., the letters T-R-E-E). The signified is the mental concept it evokes (the idea of a tall, woody plant). For Saussure, the two were inseparable. Lacan, however, radically pried them apart. He argued the relationship between signifier and signified is never stable or guaranteed. The signified is perpetually slipping under the chain of signifiers. We never finally grasp meaning; we endlessly move from one signifier to another in a never-ending quest for a fullness of meaning that is always deferred.

• The Mirror Stage

Ø This is Lacan's theory of how the ego is formed. Between 6-18 months, an infant recognises its own reflection in a mirror (or similar reflective surface, like the affirming gaze of a parent). This image is a misrecognition (méconnaissance)—it provides an illusion of coherence, mastery, and totality that the infant, who still experiences its body as uncoordinated and fragmented, does not truly feel. This idealised, external image becomes the core of the ego, which Lacan therefore saw as fundamentally built on a fantasy. The ego is not the seat of autonomy but a constructed entity, born from identification with an external image.

• The Three Orders: The Real, The Imaginary, The Symbolic

Ø  Lacan described human experience as structured by three intertwined registers:

§  The Real: Not everyday reality, but that which is beyond language, unrepresentable, and impossible to articulate. It is the traumatic, pre-linguistic stuff of experience, always outside symbolisation. We encounter it in moments of shock, trauma, or overwhelming jouissance.

§  The Imaginary: The realm of images, identification, and illusion. It is dominated by dyadic relationships (like mother-child) and is the seat of the ego. It is the order of misrecognition and deception, where the self feels whole and unified. It is associated with the maternal.

§  The Symbolic Order: The most crucial order for Lacan. This is the realm of language, law, culture, and social structures. It is the "big Other" that governs our lives with its rules, prohibitions, and norms. Entering the Symbolic Order through language is what socialises us but also introduces lack and separation from the immediate, dyadic world of the Imaginary. It is associated with the Name-of-the-Father, the symbolic law that breaks the primordial bond with the mother.

• Desire and Lack

Ø For Lacan, desire is not a biological drive towards a specific object (like hunger). It is a constant state of lack (manque). We are born into lack upon entering the Symbolic Order, which separates us from the (imagined) plenitude of the maternal body. We then spend our lives seeking objects (objets petit a) that we believe will fill this void. But these objects always fail. Desire is always the desire for something else, and it is this endless movement of desire, not its satisfaction, that defines the human condition. Literature is a profound record of this endless pursuit.

• Jouissance

Ø A term notoriously difficult to translate, often rendered as "enjoyment" but meaning something far more intense and paradoxical. It is a form of extreme pleasure that is so intense it tips over into pain. It is the forbidden enjoyment that exists beyond the pleasure principle, linked to the Real. Society, through the Symbolic Order, limits jouissance for its own stability. The pursuit of jouissance is often associated with self-destructive behaviour and forms of "madness" that defy social logic.

Writing the Fractured Self: Literature and Identity Formation

For Lacan, there is no essential, core self waiting to be expressed. The self is a fiction constructed in the Imaginary and structured by the Symbolic Order of language. Therefore, the act of writing is not an expression of a pre-formed identity but an attempt to constitute one through the signifier.

The author does not master language; language speaks through the author. The text, therefore, is riddled with the traces of the unconscious—not the author’s personal history per se, but the slips, gaps, and contradictions inherent in language itself. A Lacanian critic does not ask, "What does the author mean?" but rather, "How does the text function? Where does meaning break down? What is being repressed by the text’s narrative?"

The Discourse of Insanity: A Linguistic Construction

Lacan’s work forces us to question what we call "madness." If our sanity is predicated on our successful insertion into the Symbolic Order (accepting its laws, its language, its norms), then insanity can be seen as a different relationship to this order.

• Social & Historical Construction: What a society defines as "mad" is what falls outside its dominant symbolic framework. The hysteric’s symptoms, for instance, are a language of the body (corporalised speech) that emerges when direct speech is impossible within the constraints of their social (e.g., patriarchal) Symbolic Order.
• Medical Construction: Lacan was fiercely critical of a medical model that sought to quickly "cure" symptoms without listening to their truth. The symptom is a message from the unconscious; it is a formation of desire. To simply suppress it pharmacologically is to ignore the subject’s truth. The analyst’s role is to help the subject traverse the fantasy structuring their desire, not to impose a normative idea of "health."

Gender, Language, and the Madness of the Feminine

Lacan’s work on gender is among his most controversial and searched-for topics. He stated, "The Woman does not exist" (La femme n'existe pas). This is not a misogynistic dismissal but a radical claim about identity and the Symbolic Order.

He argued that while sexual difference is a fundamental symbolic opposition (having/being the phallus as a signifier of lack), the category "Woman" is not a fixed essence. It is an unattainable ideal, a fantasy constructed within a phallocentric Symbolic Order that defines woman as man’s negative other. Therefore, female identity is even more profoundly constituted by lack and otherness than male identity.

This has dire consequences. If a woman’s desire and jouissance have no adequate representation in the dominant Symbolic Order, her expression may be forced into the realm of the symptom. The "madness" of literary heroines—from Ophelia to Bertha Mason—can be read not as a biological flaw but as the only available language to express a desire that has no other sanctioned means of articulation. Their "hysteria" is a silent protest against a symbolic order that offers them no valid subject position. Writing, therefore, becomes a critical act of forging a new language, of finding a voice from within the gaps of the existing Symbolic Order.

Case Study: Lacan Reads Poe's "The Purloined Letter"

Lacan’s famous seminar on this story is a masterclass in his method. The plot involves a stolen letter whose contents are never revealed, yet it exerts immense power over all who possess it.

• The Letter as Signifier: For Lacan, the letter’s content is irrelevant. What matters is its position within a symbolic circuit. The letter is a pure signifier—its meaning is entirely determined by its place in a triadic structure of looks (the king who doesn’t see, the queen who tries to hide, the minister who sees her hiding).
• The Subject is Determined by the Signifier: Each character who possesses the letter (the Queen, the Minister, Dupin) has their identity and actions dictated by their position relative to this signifier. They do not control the letter; it controls them.
• The Unconscious is the Discourse of the Other: The letter represents the unconscious itself—its content is hidden, but its effects are visible everywhere in the behaviour it generates. We can never "open" the unconscious to see its secrets, just as we never learn the letter’s contents. We can only interpret its effects. This mirrors how we must read a text: not for a hidden meaning, but for how its signifiers structure its narrative and its characters.

Conclusion: 

Lacan provides a sophisticated toolkit for moving beyond simplistic psycho-biographical readings. He teaches us to see the literary text as a dynamic field where the structures of the human psyche—desire, lack, misrecognition, and the relentless pursuit of the unattainable—play out in the medium of language itself.

Further Reading 

• Lacan, J. Écrits (1966) - The key primary text.

• Lacan, J. The Seminar, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis.

• Lacan mirror stage explained

• Lacan real symbolic imaginary

• Lacan desire and lack

• Lacan femme n'existe pas

• Lacan purloined letter summary

• Fink, B. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (1995) - An excellent guide.

• Evans, D. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (1996) - Invaluable.

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Psychoanalytical Criticism - Sigmund Freud

It is with considerable intellectual excitement that we inaugurate this publication, dedicated to the intricate and often unsettling dialogue between the literary arts and the profound depths of the human psyche. Our guiding spirit in this endeavour is none other than Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the Viennese neurologist whose theorie for better or worse, irrevocably altered the landscape of how we understand ourselves, our societies, and the stories we tell.

The newsletter Psychoanalytical Criticism - Sigmund Freud seeks to illuminate the complex interconnections between literature and the discourses of insanity. We shall examine the potent relationship between writing and the formation of identity, and scrutinise the interwoven threads of social, medical, and historical constructions of madness. Our investigation will lead us into the labyrinth of selfhood, asking how it is shaped by language, distorted by gender expectations, and articulated—or shattered—by madness.

Introduction 

To the uninitiated, the application of psychoanalytic theory to a sonnet or a novel might seem an eccentric, even reductive, exercise. However, Freud himself understood that the pathways of the unconscious mind are not dissimilar to the structures of a story. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism is not merely about diagnosing fictional characters; it is a form of criticism that uses the techniques and theories of psychoanalysis as a lens to interpret literature. It proceeds from the foundational premise that the human mind, with its conflicts, desires, and fears, is the primary source of creative expression.

Literature, in this view, becomes a controlled space where the chaotic contents of the unconscious can be safely explored, disguised, and enacted. The writer’s creativity is a form of dreaming while awake, and the literary work itself is a manifestation of deep psychological processes.

Key Concepts:

To navigate this terrain, one must be equipped with the fundamental vocabulary of Freudian thought. Below is a detailed glossary of essential terms.

• The Unconscious

Ø 

Explanation: This is the cornerstone of Freud’s entire edifice. The unconscious is a vast, dynamic region of the psyche lying beneath the conscious mind. It is a repository for thoughts, memories, desires, and fears that are too threatening, painful, or socially unacceptable to be admitted into conscious awareness. It is not passive; it exerts a constant and powerful influence on our conscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. In literary terms, a character’s overt motives (conscious) may be driven by hidden, repressed forces (unconscious), creating depth, tension, and tragedy.

• Repression

Ø  Explanation: This is the primary defence mechanism of the psyche. It is the process of actively forgetting, ignoring, or pushing unresolved conflicts, unadmitted desires, or traumatic past events out of conscious awareness and into the dungeon of the unconscious. The underlying assumption is that when a wish, fear, or memory is too difficult to face, we repress it. However, this does not eliminate it. The repressed material remains alive and active, perpetually seeking a return, often in disguised forms—through dreams, slips of the tongue (parapraxes, or "Freudian slips"), and, crucially, through creative writing and artistic expression.

• The Oedipus Complex

Ø  Explanation: Perhaps Freud's most (in)famous concept, and one central to understanding identity formation. Freud proposed that during the phallic stage of development (around ages 3-5), a male child conceives a deep-seated sexual desire for his mother and a concomitant wish to eliminate his father, who is seen as a rival. This creates immense psychic conflict, fuelled by love for the father and fear of his retaliation (castration anxiety). The complex is eventually resolved when the child identifies with the father and internalises societal norms. Freudian critics, like Ernest Jones, have used this to interpret literary works, most famously Hamlet, arguing that Hamlet’s paralysis stems from his unconscious identification with his uncle Claudius, who has actually done what Hamlet himself (burdened by an Oedipus complex) had secretly desired: killed the father and possessed the mother.

• Libido, Eros, and Thanatos

Ø  Explanation: The libido is the psychic energy associated with the sexual drive, the force behind our desires. Freud later expanded this into a more generalised concept of life instincts, which he termed Eros (from the Greek god of love). Eros represents the drive toward life, creation, propagation, and unity. Its opposite is Thanatos (from the Greek personification of death), the death instinct. Thanatos is the drive towards aggression, destruction, and a return to an inorganic state. This fundamental tension between creation and destruction, love and aggression, is a powerful engine for drama and conflict in literature.

• The Psychic Apparatus: Id, Ego, Superego

Ø  Explanation: Freud later proposed a tripartite model of the psyche:

§  The Id: The completely unconscious, primitive part of the mind. It is the seat of our basic biological drives and instincts (sex, hunger, aggression). It operates on the pleasure principle—it seeks immediate gratification without any regard for reality, consequences, or morality. A character wholly consumed by the id would be a monstrous, impulsive creature.

§  The Ego: The largely conscious part that mediates between the demands of the id, the constraints of the real world, and the morals of the superego. It operates on the reality principle, employing reason and strategy to satisfy the id's desires in socially acceptable ways. The ego is the hero navigating a difficult world.

§  The Superego: The internalised representative of societal and parental values, our conscience. It strives for perfection, judges our actions, and produces feelings of pride or, more often, guilt. A character dominated by a harsh superego might be crippled by anxiety or act with rigid, unforgiving morality.

• Dream Work: Condensation and Displacement

Ø  Explanation: Freud called dreams the "royal road to the unconscious." However, the unconscious wish cannot appear directly; it is censored by the ego. Therefore, it undergoes a process of transformation called dream work.

§  Condensation: Multiple dream thoughts, figures, or anxieties are combined and compressed into a single dream image. For example, a dream character might have the face of a teacher, the job of your father, and the voice of a film star, representing a composite of authority figures.

§  Displacement: The psychic intensity or importance of a subject is detached from its real object and transferred onto a seemingly unimportant one. A deep anxiety about one’s career might be displaced into a dream about misplacing your car keys. In literature, this operates through symbolism and metaphor.

Writing the Self: Literature, Madness, and Identity Formation

The act of writing is, in itself, a profound engagement with identity. One constructs a self on the page, a process that can either shore up a fragile ego or expose its fractures. Freudian theory provides a framework for understanding this process.

The Author's Unconscious: A traditional Freudian approach might treat the literary text as a symptom of the author’s own psychology. The work becomes a playground for the author’s repressed desires and unresolved conflicts. The famous application of this is Freud’s own reading of Hamlet, which he linked to Shakespeare’s own experience of grieving his father and the death of his son, Hamnet. The play, in this view, is a disguised working-through of the author’s Oedipal anxieties.

The Character's Psyche: More commonly, the critic analyses the fictional characters as if they were real patients, mapping their motivations and conflicts onto Freudian models. Why does a character self-sabotage? It may be a superego punishing an ego that has entertained an id-driven desire. Why the obsession with a particular object? It may be a symbolically displaced desire. This reading excavates the hidden psychological depths beneath the plot.

The Discourses of Insanity: Social, Medical, and Historical Constructions

Madness is never just a medical condition. It is a cultural construct, its definition shifting across history and society. Literature both reflects and shapes these discourses.

• Social Construction: Societies define madness by what they deem irrational, immoral, or disruptive. The "mad" individual is often the one who violates social norms—particularly around gender, as we shall see. Literature can reinforce these constructions (the raving, dangerous lunatic) or challenge them, presenting the "mad" character as a truth-teller whose vision sees through the hypocrisy of society (e.g., the Fool in King Lear).
• Medical Construction: The 19th century, Freud’s formative period, saw madness increasingly medicalised, moved from the realm of morality or superstition to that of science and pathology. Freud was a product of this, yet his "talking cure" also represented a move away from purely biological explanations, focusing instead on life history and repressed trauma. Literature of the period, from Charlotte Gilman’s "The Yellow Wallpaper" to the works of Dostoevsky, engages directly with the medical treatment of "hysteria" and "nervous disorders," often criticising its oppressive practices.
• Historical Construction: What was considered melancholia in the Renaissance is not identical to modern depression. The hysterical woman of the Victorian era is a specific historical figure. Psychoanalytic criticism must be historically aware, understanding that the forms madness takes are contingent on the time and place of their emergence.

The Gendered Self: Language, Hysteria, and the Female Voice

Nowhere is the interconnection between writing, identity, and madness more stark than in the context of gender. Freud’s theories, often criticised as deeply masculinist, were developed primarily through the study of female patients diagnosed with "hysteria"—a catch-all term for a suite of symptoms (anxiety, paralysis, hallucinations) that had no apparent physical cause.

Sigmund Freud listened to these women and concluded that their symptoms were not lies or biological flaws but the body’s language for expressing a psychic trauma that could not be spoken directly—a classic case of conversion, where a repressed psychological conflict is converted into a physical symptom. The hysteric’s body writes her distress where her voice cannot speak it.

For the female writer, then, writing could become a means to reclaim this voice. To write was to translate the silent, somatic language of hysteria into a shared, public discourse. It was a way to forge an identity against social and medical definitions that sought to silence her. Writers like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf (who was intimately familiar with the medical discourse of her own "madness") explore this territory relentlessly. Their work demonstrates the struggle to articulate a self within a language and a society that often pathologises female passion, intelligence, and ambition as forms of insanity.

Beyond Freud - Jung and Lacan

While Freud is our focus, any student must be aware of the theorists who built upon and diverged from his work.

• Carl Jung: Freud’s protégé, Jung, broke away to develop Archetypal Criticism. He moved the focus from the personal unconscious to the collective unconscious—a psychic inheritance of universal, primordial patterns and images called archetypes (e.g., The Hero, The Mother, The Trickster). For Jung, literature is not a personal wish-fulfilment but a tapping into these shared archetypes, which evoke a powerful, universal response.
• Jacques Lacan: The most influential post-Freudian for literary theory, Lacan famously declared that "the unconscious is structured like a language." He fused psychoanalysis with linguistics. Key concepts include:

Ø  The Symbolic Order: The realm of language, law, and social structure, associated with the Name-of-the-Father.

Ø  The Imaginary: The pre-linguistic stage of identification with the mother, a realm of illusion and dyadic unity.

Ø  The Mirror Stage: The moment a child recognises its own image and begins to form an ego, though this ego is based on a misrecognition—an ideal-I that is forever alienated from the fragmented self within.

Ø  For Lacan, we are born into lack and desire, which language perpetually attempts to fill. Meaning is always deferred; the signifier (the word) never perfectly captures the signified (the concept). A Lacanian critic would thus look at a text not for hidden authorial desires, but for its gaps, slips, and contradictions—the points where language fails and the unconscious speaks. Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Purloined Letter" is a classic Lacanian text, where the letter itself becomes an unknowable signifier whose content is less important than the position it holds for each character, dictating their actions and desires.

Conclusion

The Freudian exploration of literature reveals it to be far more than mere entertainment. It is a crucial arena where the most fundamental struggles of the human condition are staged: the conflict between desire and prohibition, the construction of a self from the raw material of biology and society, and the constant, fraught negotiation between our conscious lives and the unseen depths of the unconscious. By examining the inter-relationships between writing, identity, and the historically constructed discourse of madness, we learn not only how to read texts more deeply, but also how to read the most complex text of all: ourselves.