Since 1897, Freud based his psychoanalytic theoretical research on the reading of literary works, especially King Oedipus and Hamlet, and linked it with the patient and himself. After discovering the Oedipus plot, psychoanalytic literary criticism method appeared. Up to now, this literary criticism method has also experienced nearly a hundred years. It At the same time, we can't deny the biggest contribution of psychoanalysis-unconsciousness. However, in order to recognize the contribution of psychoanalysis, we must consider its involvement in the field of literary criticism and even art.

However, Freud's practice in literary texts also shows us that it is very difficult to use a simple outline of "practical psychoanalysis": on the one hand, psychoanalysis is established in the field of psychopathology and is only related to clinical symptoms; On the other hand, we must use psychoanalytic scientific experience to criticize in a completely unfamiliar field of cultural products.

In fact, after reading Freud's books, we found that the practice of psychoanalysis is actually an experiment of speech and discourse. Literature is also the practice of language, which can create a special space that is not restricted by common communication. Psychoanalysis and literature are actually two forms of intersubjectivity based on language and imagination. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss the contribution of psychoanalysis to literary criticism, rather than simply treating psychoanalysis as a collection of explanatory points.

Gilbert Lascault puts forward two tendencies of analysts: the first is to look for simple explanations of their topics in literary works, and the other is that literary criticism looks for ready-made theories in psychoanalysis to reveal the "truth" of the text. He believes that "real reading", that is, real psychoanalytic criticism, must find the unconsciousness aroused by the text in the reader's mind and explain it at the same time.

1. Basis of critical method

Can psychoanalysis be used in another field, that is, literary reading, and if so, under what conditions? In order to discuss this problem, we must first understand the principles of psychoanalytic practice.

"Basic Rule": Between the sofa and the chair

In 1892, Freud began to practice "talking cure", allowing patients to "tell what they want to say" as they wish, without the intervention of doctors. Freud discovered the medical efficacy of speech and wrote it in The Study of Hysteria.

-patients: the rule of free association

-doctors: the rule of erratic attention

-psychoanalysis is an experience that only exists in language

This kind of psychoanalysis has the nature of inter-subjectivity, even if the patient can't see the analyst, even if the analyst doesn't speak: "There is no unanswered speech, even if it meets with silence, but the speech has listeners ..." The analyst is a double other, who is not only the witness of the speaker's speech, but also the object of speech. The latter can be said to be just the place where the patient's speech is projected, that is, the place where people call "empathy".

Unconsciousness

Unconsciousness is not the opposite of simple consciousness, but refers to most people's thinking activities that cannot reach consciousness through pre-consciousness, and these thinking activities can only be reflected in consciousness indirectly through special methods. It can be said that unconsciousness is the basic concept of psychoanalysis and the most important contribution to contemporary thought. In his first extension (dividing spiritual space into three systems: unconsciousness, pre-consciousness and consciousness), Freud defined "another logic" that constitutes the unconscious process. He studied the unconscious dynamics related to "desire" and "inhibition" and distinguished the weight of unconsciousness in spiritual products. Related works include Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology in Daily Life, Jokes and Their Unconscious Relationships.

another logic

Freud found the road to unconsciousness when he systematically analyzed dreams. He compared the "obvious content" (explicit meaning) and "potential content" (implicit meaning) of dreams, and with the help of the analysis of free association, he focused on the "dream work" of making dreams. In the "dream work", there are four factors to construct dreams:

-condensation: condensation is a factor in the associative chain of dreams related to potential content, which can be a person, a picture and a word. This factor is determined by multiple causes.

-déplacement: injecting visual intensity and amazing emotional impact into the seemingly meaningless reappearance. Emotion is separated from the original representation and replaced with another representation, making it incomprehensible. "In the formation of dreams, these basic elements, which seem to have the strongest interest, have little value, and their dream positions are replaced by other elements, which have little value in dreams." Freud believes that association leads to the confrontation of desire and the childhood memories of lust.

-figurability

-secondary processing (retouching, labor secondaires)

-the curtain of aesthetics or rationality covers up the unconscious naked truth.

—"Explicit text" is similar to the "explicit meaning" of dreams, and its symbolism is closely related to the unconscious "implicit meaning".

desire and inhibition

Freud put forward the theory of unconscious dynamics, because he regarded dreams as the spiritual liberation of desire in the state of inhibition, but this is just the realization of disguise. Because the unconscious desire to seek satisfaction conflicts with the repression of consciousness and even pre-consciousness. In this way, all spiritual products are the result of compromise between desire and inhibition of consciousness. The concept of "psychological conflict" refers to the conflict between desire and taboo, between unconscious desire and conscious desire, and between unconscious desire and unconscious desire.

Freud believed that in all mental changes, there are the same processes and conflicts: dreams, slips of the tongue, out-of-control behaviors, symptoms, artistic creation, etc. Although they are obviously different, they have the same structure, "illusion": in this imaginary plot, the subject is present and deformed in a way that is more or less due to the defense process.

explanation

the explanation link is to reveal the potential meaning of the material, clarify the way of defensive conflict, and strive to find the desire expressed by all unconscious products. Here are four key points:

-For the analyst, every discourse is a mystery, because discourse is connected with the process and meaning of the unconscious and conscious.

—Psychoanalysis is very similar to detective's job, which is to collect unknown clues, classify them and find out the relationship between clues. An action, a word, a tone, a coincidence and so on can all be clues. Both of these jobs need to reconstruct the story, and the goal is to seek the uncertain truth.

-the solution to the problem intensifies our desire to know: our interpretation constantly changes the interpretation of others. In psychoanalytic texts, a case can be interpreted in dozens of different versions, and we will constantly change our interpretation. Because the possibility of explaining the meaning of words, experiences and concrete imagination is infinite.

—Carlo Ginzburg put psychoanalysis in the semiotic system of knowledge, based on the interpretation of "symbols" (or "signs" and "traces"). This kind of research is different from quantitative science, but is related to "indirect, indicative and speculative knowledge" Carlo Ginzburg emphasized the dilemma of humanities: "Either weak scientific laws are used to obtain important results, or strong scientific laws are used to obtain unimportant results"

Psychoanalysts hesitate between these two positions. And we choose to elaborate the concepts of conjecture and operability, so that this subject becomes a technology and a brand-new theory of interpretation.

psychoanalytic reading

-the literary criticism of psychoanalysis is an explanatory criticism

Psychoanalysis is the analysis of psychology, and we can see that there are many new words that mark the particularity of this method: psychoanalysis, sémanalyse, textanalyse, psychoanalysis and so on.

-psychoanalytic criticism is a special interpretation practice

Compared with other critical methods, psychoanalytic criticism has its limitations, so it is necessary to point out its choice, purpose and method every time.

-analytical criticism is the practice of change

This "change" has nothing to do with the author and the work, but with the "read work". Criticism should be drawn from the subject of discourse to be interpreted and the subject to be interpreted, that is, between the author and the reader who criticizes the article.

We can compare the differences between the scenes of psychoanalysis and reading: private speech/public writing; Disordered speech/construction or even thoughtful writing; Physical proximity/distance, even historical distance; The presence/absence of free association as the object of interpretation. In addition, the author's demand for imaginary or real readers is not the demand of the analyst, nor is the expectation of the reader the expectation of the psychoanalyst. Finally, as Lacan said, psychoanalysts are "practitioners of symbolic domain", but writers are not.

2. The need of psychoanalysis for literature

Literary texts play the role of media between medical clinic and theory: condense the generated speculations, prove them, and finally find the universality of special discoveries in the medical field. Freud found a recurring motivation by linking the patient's association, his own association, Oedipus and Hamlet: love and hostility to his parents.

Freud read King Oedipus

a. From the story of Oedipus, Freud discovered the "impersonal or plural expression" of personal desires. Although Freud's discovery was put into our modern cultural background, it is a new network formed by Freud's analysis of patients, dreams, diseases and speech, so its universal applicability is guaranteed.

B. The protagonist of the tragedy has become a symbol of children's desire.

C. The tragic protagonist has a dual identity: he is both the subject and the object of the investigation. Thus, Freud integrated himself with Oedipus, equating psychoanalysis with the painful blind search for the truth, and met the unknown other in his search.

Freud read Hamlet

In King Oedipus, children realized their fantasies, while in Hamlet, their fantasies were all suppressed, and they were only known when the neurosis of the characters broke out. The drama is based on Hamlet's hesitation. He is afraid that he can't complete the task entrusted to him by his father's dead. He wants to take revenge on someone who has fulfilled his childhood wish, that is, to kill the king and marry him. This is his suppressed desire as a child. Hamlet's delusions and hatred of sex are all his unconsciousness. Subsequently, Freud analyzed Hamlet's unconscious origin from Shakespeare's personality.

Nowadays, people criticize "practical psychoanalysis", which studies the psychology of characters, makes judgments with clinical medical knowledge, interprets works without careful reading, and discusses writers and characters as similar, but the accuracy of psychoanalysis has not been questioned. In fact, Hamlet is not only Freud's delusional patient, but also tortured by himself. It can be said that the analysis of Hamlet is closely related to his self-analysis: Shakespeare wrote Hamlet after his father died, while Freud read Hamlet and read it by himself, and it was also a year after his own father died. Freud's interpretation includes himself, which enriches psychoanalytic reading. In this way, literary works are neither symptoms nor analyzed words, but provide us with a symbolic form of looking at problems from the perspective of unconscious psychology.

Lacan and Poe's Stolen Letters

Lacan's collected works began with the study of Poe's Stolen Letters. Lacan tried to construct a brand-new theory of unconsciousness and the rules of the relationship between subjects, seeking the relationship between unconsciousness, intersubjectivity and truth. His analysis of the Stolen Letter is to show that the novel has its own set of rules, just like the symbolic world that makes consciousness order. He combined Freud's theoretical text with Poe's novel type text to get the "truth".

-intersubjective drama

There are two scenes in the novel, one is that the minister stole the queen's letter in front of the king, and the other is that the private detective DuPont diverted the minister's attention, stole the letter in a cardboard folder in a conspicuous place in the minister's room and replaced it with a fake letter. Lacan put aside the psychological research of the characters and carried out structural reading. In his view, the second scene is a repetition of the first one. The queen, minister and DuPont are linked by the same incident, that is, stealing letters, and it is the same letter. So he focused on the logic.

-the relational logic of truth

Lacan thinks this is a game of regard. Here, seeing is equal to knowing (voir=savoir). Novel 1 * * * includes three lines of sight: the first is the line of sight of the king and the police, but it is omnipotent but sees nothing. This is the same as the line of sight of the delusional self who is confused by its own mirror image and taken away by it and becomes blind. The second is the sight of the queen and the minister. They saw that the former saw nothing and tried to hide the letter and eliminate its hidden traces, but they could not act under the first sight. The third is the sight of the minister and DuPont, seeing the former's intention to hide the letter and stealing it.

-the logic of intersubjectivity

The key is that the letter in Stolen Letter is a material property, that is, something stolen from the beginning. The game is manipulated by three symbolic positions centered on the letter. The transfer of the letter manipulates people and determines their subjectivity. Those who have the letter have the advantage, and each subject obeys the "symbolic order", regardless of the social status, gender personality or talent of the subject.

Lacan established the universal law of intersubjectivity around phallus: the king holds the power given by phallus, while the queen has no power, only the right to transfer power. She must be loyal to the king. She is the "sujette" of the king. It can be seen that unconsciously, this law is in harmony with the law of patriarchal society. Lacan's reading of the story turned Oedipus into the universal logic of the subject in the homologous order.

Through the analysis of The Stolen Letter, Lacan reveals the deep structure of the novel: the automaticity of repetition. Freud's theory emphasizes sex, while Lacan also emphasizes phallu.