Psychoanalytic Criticism

To define it in simple terms, Psychoanalytic Criticism  is a form of literary critisism which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of the iterature. This form of literary criticism is derived from a psychological theray practice known as Psychoanalysis which 'investigates the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind".

Sigund Freud was the pioneer of Psychoanalysis and based it upon specific theoris of how mind , the instincts and sexuality work. He highlighted the influence of our unconscious upon our actions.The unconscious mind , an area separable from workings of conscious mind, plays an important role as the largest, completely 'unknown' and inaccessible yet the most influential part of our mind. Processes such as Repression and Sublimation allow conflicting information, especially unresolved conflicts, desires and traumatic past experiences to move from conscious to unconscious and visa versa. Later Freud came up with a threetier model of psyche , dividing it into id, ego and superego which can be corresponded to the conscious, subconscious and unconscious  'levels' of personality.

Freud's ideas mainly focussed on the aspects of sexuality.Infant sexuality is the notion that sexuality does not begin at puberty rather it is developed in the infancy itself through his relationship with his mother.Oedipus complex is a connected concept where a child concieves the desire too eliminate the father and become sexual partner of the mother.

Another key idea is of that of energy drive associated with sexual desire called libido .Initially Freud assigned it three stages of focus---- the oral, the phallic and the anal. Later he found that it was a part of a more generalised drive called Eros or 'Life instict'.

Frued said that to avoid, resolve or redired conflicted amotions ,we employ Defense mechanisms; mental processes initiated unconsciously to avoid experiencing conflict or anxiety. For instance, Tranference is a phenomenon whereby a patient under analysis redirects the emotions recalled in analysis toward the psychoanalyst .

Dream analysis is another concept by Freud which explains the process by which real events or desires are transformed into dream images. These include processes like Displacement, where a person or an event is represented by another which is associated with it and condensation --- number of people, events or meanings are combined and represented by a single image in the dream---by the use of which the dreamwork of abstract ideas or feelings are compiled into concrete images.

Freudian Interpretation in literature is thought to be a matter of attributing sexual connotations to objects to be seen as phallic symbols nut in reality it is highly ingenious than being simplistic. For example, to imagine a dream featuring a Roman soldier would be connecting him with a real subject of the dream by a chain of associations.Assuming that the dreamer is a young adult, still under the thumb of an authoritarian father but wanting  to breakaway from his influence, the Roman soldier would represent the father by the pross of association hence being his symbollic representation. But  the dreamer, who is tempted to rebel against his father by entering a sexual liason of which his father would certinly disapprove, might represent the lover.Thus both the feared father and desired lover are condensed into the single dream of the  Roman soldier.

The two-fold purpose of devices like Displacement and Condensation is firstly to disguise the repreesented fears and wishes contained in the dreams so that it gets past the censor which  prevents their surfacing into the conscious mind and secondly to fashion the information into images, symbols and metaphors. Since dreams prefer 'showing'things over  'saying' them which is akin to literature, Freudian methods of interpretation has attracted the  interest of literary critics.

Peter Barry takes up an example from Freud's book called The Psychopathology of Everyday Life to explain the plausibility of a Freudian interpretation.The example taken is from Freud's own experience and attributes significance to the forgetting of a word from a quotation.

Freud explains that while on a holiday with his family, he met an academic young man, who like Freud was a Jewish and they discussed the anti-semitism, which might hinder their careers. To express  his strong feelings on the matter, the young man made a point with his quotation from latin poet Vigil, using words spoken by Dido, Queen of Carthage; 'Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor' meaning 'May someone arise from our bones as an avenger'. But the young man accidently leaves out theword 'aliquis' from the line. Freud corrects the quotation and the young man challenges him to explain the significance of this simple act of forgetting. Freud accepts the challenge and asked the young man to say whatever comes to his mind by directing his attention to the forgotten word without a specific aim. 

Out of his sequel of responses, Freud points of the two saints ,Januarius and Augustine, whose names link them closely wit the calender. Thus Freud concludes that the young man has been uneasy about a cetrain event and if he had said the word 'aliquis', it would have reminded him of  this anxiety . So the unconsious protects him from deleting the word from his conscious memory. 

The young man breaks off  and  says in some embarrasement 'I've suddenly thought of a young lady from whom I might  easily hear a piece of news that would be very awkward for both of us', to which Freud questions him back asking if  her periods have stopped thus explaining the repression of his conflicted thoughts regarding 'the woman' skipping her periods (or getting pregnant).

"The Laugh Of Medusa" by Helene Cixous

Helene Cixous through her essay  “The Laugh of Medusa”, gave an abominable dimension to what was mainly understood as “ Feminism “ under women’s movement in 1975 France. Advocating new ways of thinking and writing about women and literature, it blatantly critiques patriarchal policies and now has become a staple piece of feminist criticism.

Cixous introduces the concept of ‘ecriture feminine’ or feminine writing which according to her, is a path that every woman should follow in order to liberate themselves from the clutches of the patriarchal bondage. Thus forming her central argument of the article on the power of 'written word' , she believes that women will set themselves free and will gain their long lost sense of identity.

She uses the myth of Medusa in the title of her essay and substantiaes it with the psychoanalytical theory to highlight women subjugation in her times. In the Greek myth, Medusa, the snake headed woman is killed by Perseus is paralled with a man's attempt to silence the voice of a woman by cutting off her sense of expression and anger thus deconstructing Freud's theory of "castration complex" in men .

Though a feminist writing in its totality, following arguements form the crux of Cixous's arguement.

1.Women have been repressed throughout the history.Helene explains with a beautiful example teling how a woman who let lose of her desires for once traps them back as she scolds herself and a feeling of guilt takes over her; " Time and again I felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst.......I said to myself: You are mad! what is the meaning of these waves?..."

2. "Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it.......Write. let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you..." Thus urging them to take up writing as their voices."To write. An act which will not only "relise" the decensored relation of woman to her sexuality, to her womanly being, giving her access to her native strength..."." To write and thus to forge herself an antilogos weapon".

3.No writing that "inscribes feminity" except for her own , which unfortunately is under cover . It is afraid of ridicule to the extent that it almost cease to exist.

3."Woman for Woman", a heading under which author describes the woman as the creator and nourisher . A  hereditery relationship is drawn out as ,"There is hidden and always ready  in woman the source; the locus of the other. the mother too is a metaphor".

4. "It is impossible to define a feminine piece of writing but it will surpass the discourse that regulates phallocentric system and will be concieved only by subjects who are breakers of automatisms".

5."The Dark continent i neither dark nor unexplorable . It is still unexplored only because we've been made to believe that it was too dark to be explorable." Females were turned away from their bodies, shamefully taught to ignore them, to strike them witht that  stupid sexual modesty.

6. Flying is a woman's gesture as women have flied over and under"narrow passways" and "hidden cross overs".

7. Feminine text cannot fail to be more than subversive as it is volcanic and "leaves behind a blazing trail....because she is a giver......her capacity to depropriate unselfishely and her libido is cosmic". " Her Language does not contain, it carries" thus she is unafraid, adventurous and all encompassing and so is her language. " She is dispersible, prodigious, desirous and capable of others"." In one another we will never be lacking" thus putting forth the final idea that women's unity inspite of their different experiences, is their biggest strength.

An Introduction to Helene Cixous

Hélène Cixous born on 5 June 1937 is a professor, Algerian/French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. She  is known for her participation in the feminist movement of France. Always interested in teaching, she got her teaching degree in English literature, and has worked for several prestigious universities in France. This accomplished writer’s works show heavy influences of the ideas and works of Irish-English author James Joyce, world-renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and her mentor Jacques Derrida. Initially, more general in style, this author’s writings became increasingly feminist towards the end of the 1960s. She got actively involved with the students’ revolution in France, and founded a university called ‘Paris VIII’. At the same university, this visionary writer introduced the first ever women’s studies PhD programme in the history of Europe. This writer has authored more than six collections of essays, twenty-three books of poetry, and several acclaimed articles and plays. Cixous is best known for her article ''The Laugh of the Medusa'', which established her as one of the mothers of poststructuralist feminist theory The French writer has won innumerable accolades including the French order of merit, ‘Légion d’Honneur’, and the Brazilian award of the ‘Southern Cross’. Famous institutions across the world, such as ‘Georgetown University’ and ‘University of Wisconsin’, amongst several others, have conferred honorary doctorates upon this remarkable author.

Childhood & Early Life:

•           Hélène Cixous was born on June 5, 1937, to French physician Georges Cixous and his Austro-German wife Eve, in Oran, a city in the French colony of Algeria.

•           When Hélène was just eleven years old, Georges died of tuberculosis, which was ironically his topic of research. To fend for the family, which consisted of the little girl and her brother Pierre, Eve started working as a midwife in Algeria.

•           In 1955, she joined the ‘Lycée Lakanal’, a school in Paris, to prepare for her university entrance examinations. The next year, the young woman started preparing for her ‘agrégation’, which is a teacher’s eligibility examination in France.

Career:

Cixous began teaching at a school in the French town of Arcachon, in 1959. The following year, she met Jean-Jacques Mayoux who helped the writer with her thesis on English writer James Joyce.

Two years later, in 1962, this talented author started working at the ‘University of Bordeaux’ as an assistant teacher. The same year, she made acquaintance with Jacques Derrida, a philosopher who too helped her learn more about writer Joyce.

Cixous travelled to the US in 1963, where she studied Joyce’s manuscripts, working along with psychoanalytical theoretician, Jacques Lacan. After two years of research on Joyce, she returned to France and was appointed as an assistant teacher at the ‘University of Sorbonne’.

In 1967, ‘Le Prénom du Dieu’ (‘God’s First Name’), Hélène’s first fictional work, was published. After the book’s success, this exceptional writer was appointed as a professor, without a PhD, at the ‘University of Nanterre’.

Edgar Faure, the Minister of Education in France, gave her the responsibility of starting ‘Paris VIII’, in 1968. This experimental university teaches unusual subjects like urban planning, psychoanalysis, geopolitics, and gender studies.

The same year, she started a journal titled ‘Poétique’, with the help of French scholars Tzvetan Todorov and Gérard Genette. She also released her thesis titled ‘L'Exil de James Joyce ou l'Art du remplacement’ (‘The Exile of James Joyce, or the Art of Displacement’) in 1968.

In 1969, she published her second book of fiction, ‘Dedans’ (‘Inside’), based on the death of her father.

The feminist author published a collection of essays called ‘Prénoms de personne’, in 1974. The book features works on famous psychoanalysts and writers like Sigmund Freud, Edgar Allan Poe and James Joyce.

In 1975, this brilliant writer authored the book ‘Portrait de Dora’ which received critical acclaim. Meant for the theatre, it was enacted successfully at the ‘Théâtre d’Orsay’, for almost a year.

During the same time, her writings became more and more feminist in their style, and ‘Le Rire de la Méduse’ (‘The Laugh of the Medusa’) was published.

During 1976-1979, she published works like ‘La Jeune Née’, ‘La Venue à l'écriture’, ‘Révolutions pour plus d'un Faust’, ‘Ananké’, and ‘Le Nom d'Oedipe. Chant du corps interdi’.

During the 1980s, the prolific writer wrote popular books like ‘With ou l'Art de l'innocence’, ‘Le Livre de Promethea’, ‘La Prise de l'école de Madhubaï’, and ‘L'Heure de Clarice Lispector’.

In the next decade, from 1990-1999, this amazing feminist published works like ‘Jours de l'an’, ‘Beethoven à jamais’, ‘ou l'éxistence de Dieu’, ‘Osnabrück’, ‘L'Histoire (qu'on ne connaîtra jamais’, ‘On ne part pas, on ne revient pas’, and ‘Photos de racines’.

In the 2000s, Hélène wrote books like ‘Tours promises', 'Double Oubli de l'Orang-Outang', 'Cigüe', 'Les Naufragés du Fol Espoi', and 'Le Voisin de zéro : Sam Beckett'. She also wrote the famous 'Portrait de Jacques Derrida en Jeune Saint Juif', which focuses on the works of her mentor, Jacques Derrida.

Influences on Cixous' writing

Some of the most notable influences on her writings have been Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Arthur Rimbaud

Sigmund Freud :Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud established the initial theories which would serve as a basis for some of Cixous' arguments in developmental psychology. Freud's analysis of gender roles and sexual identity concluded with separate paths for boys and girls through the Oedipus complex, theories of which Cixous was particularly critical.

Jacques Derrida: Contemporaries, lifelong friends, and intellectuals, Jacques Derrida and Cixous both grew up as French Jews in Algeria and share a "belonging constituted of exclusion and nonbelonging"—not Algerian, rejected by France, their Jewishness concealed or acculturated. In Derrida's family "one never said 'circumcision' but 'baptism,' not 'Bar Mitzvah' but 'communion.'" Judaism cloaked in Catholicism is one example of the undecidability of identity that influenced the thinker whom Cixous calls a "Jewish Saint." Her book Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint addresses these matters.

Through deconstruction, Derrida employed the term logocentrism (which was not his coinage). This is the concept that explains how language relies on a hierarchical system that values the spoken word over the written word in Western culture. The idea of binary opposition is essential to Cixous' position on language.

Cixous and Luce Irigaray combined Derrida's logocentric idea and Lacan's symbol for desire, creating the term phallogocentrism. This term focuses on Derrida's social structure of speech and binary opposition as the center of reference for language, with the phallic being privileged and how women are only defined by what they lack; not A vs. B, but, rather A vs. ¬A (not-A).

In a dialogue between Derrida and Cixous, Derrida said about Cixous: "Helene's texts are translated across the world, but they remain untranslatable. We are two French writers who cultivate a strange relationship, or a strangely familiar relationship with the French language -- at once more translated and more untranslatable than many a French author. We are more rooted in the French language than those with ancestral roots in this culture and this land."

Major Works

Of all her feminism-centric works of fiction, theatre and essays, Hélène Cixous is most known for her book ‘Le Rire de la Méduse’, written in 1975. The book was translated from French to English the next year, by writers Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen for ‘Signs’, an American journal that focuses on feminism. The book employs the rhetoric of allusions to talk about feminism and the acceptance of bisexuality.

Awards and Achievements

Cixous was felicitated with the French literary award ‘Prix Médicis’, for her fictional work, ‘Dedans’, in 1969.

In 1989 Hélène was honoured with the ‘Southern Cross of Brazil’ for her extensive studies on the Russian-Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, and her works.

She was awarded the ‘Légion d’Honneur’, one of the highest French orders, in 1994, by the 21st President of France, François Mitterrand.

She has also been presented honorary doctorates by several esteemed institutions like ‘Queen’s University’, ‘Georgetown University’ in Washington D.C., ‘University of Wisconsin’ and ‘Northwestern University’, Chicago.

Personal Life & Legacy

In 1955, the Hélène got married to Guy Berger, who was a teacher of philosophy.

The couple had a daughter, Anne-Emmanuelle, in 1957, and a son, Stéphane, three years later. Stéphane died as an infant and the next year, another son, Pierre-François, was born.

The writer and her husband got divorced in 1964, after nine years of marriage.

In 2000, this writer gave away all her works to the 'Bibliothèque nationale de France', and this French library dedicated a section to her collection of manuscripts. The following year, the same collection of books was displayed at the 'Brouillons d'écrivains', a literary exhibition held at the library.

Trivia

This prolific writer, along with French modern thinkers, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, is known as one of the mothers of the famous ‘poststructuralist feminist theory.