Where Is Psychoanalytic Criticism Coming from?

First introduced to literary studies in the 1920s and 1940s, Freud's psychoanalytic criticism still survives today. Psychoanalytic criticism provides a stimulating approach to literary analysis that holds that we humans are complex yet somewhat understandable creatures who often fail to note the influence of the unconscious on our motivations and our everyday actions. While Freud was working with patients whom he diagnosed as hysterics, he theorized that the root of their problems was psychological, not physical. …