Psychological And Social Aspects Of Psychological Criticism

Freud is widely known for his exposure of the Oedipus complex. He said, “we do things… really weird and silly things sometimes, for reasons that are to some degree hidden, inaccessible, beyond our direct control or awareness” (White 199). Freud’s theories of social thought and motivations have been challenged by modern psychologists and psychiatrists. His beliefs about human motivations can be applied to examining authors and characters in literature. “The foundation of his contribution to psychology is the emphasis on the unconscious parts of the human psyche” (Guerin 21). Freud changed our ideas of human behavior by discovering new or controversial areas such as wish fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression. Freud believed that sexual taboos repress human desires. The repression of desires causes the unconscious to what human wants. He “examined symbol, to a study in which way the unconscious awareness expressed itself in the coded system to avoid restriction of the conscious awareness” (Kennedy136). Freud specified the state of mental controls in three types. First, there is the id, which is the inherited natural impulses of the individual, the founding part of the unconscious. Then there is the ego, which refers to that part of the human mind which is conscious of self. Through the work of Freud, this part, acted upon by the id and the super-ego, intermediates with the environment that it is affected by. The super-ego has adopted both