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Sigmund Freud's Theory Of Psychoanalysis

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This passage from “Psycho-analysis,” Sigmund Freud’s essay detailing the origins, methods, and applications of his theory of psychoanalysis, reveals the utility of his approach in understanding what lies beneath the surface through the interpretation of dreams, which later psychoanalytic critics related to the interpretation of literature. Freud’s description of his psychoanalytic theory considers it an approach to unlocking knowledge that is impossible to discover through prior methods of psychology and that is applicable across all areas of the sciences and humanities. Here, students of Freud’s theory can find correlations between psychoanalysis to both structuralism and deconstruction through his method of interpreting dreams, which …show more content…

In this way, psychoanalysis is a “hermeneutics of suspicion” as the analyst must delve beyond the conscious and superficial qualities of the mind and tap into the unresolved, repressed, and often unknown process of the unconscious mind. This phrase, coined by Paul Ricouer, displays the use of theories as a means to interpret not the normalities but the abnormalities within both life and literature. In explaining psychoanalysis, Parker describes Freud’s idea of the unconscious as “something more radical, something not just underneath awareness but utterly without awareness” (114). For most people, as they find their place within their society, they suppress the unconscious underneath cultural expectations of normal human behavior. However, the unconscious desires and motivations of the human mind continue to affect behavior in ways that are often unrealized and uncontrollable. What other people see on the surface are these neuroses or symptoms that cannot be fully controlled and, according to Freud, “are significant substitutes for other mental acts which have been omitted” (184). Through sessions with a patient, the analyst discovers a common source deep within the unconscious that explains the analysand’s neuroses. Neuroses, affecting both normal and abnormal minds, are the symptoms of the unconscious which breaks through the defenses of the conscious mind. For some, these symptoms are common parapraxes in

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