Sigmund Freud and His Studies Applied on Literature

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Clinciu Andreea-Diana 1st Year, Group 1 Concepts of Contemporary Literary Criticism 23rd of April 2013 Sigmund Freud and his studies applied on literature I think we can all agree on the fact that, as human beings, we have a natural desire of understanding things that are presented to us by various means, even if it is out of professional research or mere curiosity. One of these means of passing on information is, of course, literature. One surely knows that there are countless interpretations to a piece of writing, but this does not mean that some of them are wrong. No. They are just different. And they serve a purpose in activating our brains. One person who had an important role in this matter and triggered a specific type of analysis of literary texts was Sigmund Freud. Freud was an Austrian neurologist who got his qualification as a Doctor of Medicine at the University of Vienna, in 1881. Further on, he led more profound researches and was a University lecturer and, later on, a professor. What Sigmund did was create the type of analysis that we know today under the name of ‘psychoanalysis’. It is very easy to understand this term, once you divide it into its two components: ‘psycho’ and ‘analysis’. Surely, everyone can define the word ‘psycho’, which is derived from the word ‘psyche’ which, in psychology, means, basically, ‘the totality of the human mind, conscious and unconscious’. ‘Analysis’ is the term on which we will focus more in this essay. I am sure, again, that every one of us can attempt, and probably succeed, to define it. Nevertheless, ‘analysis’ is ‘the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it’. This is exactly what Freud did in his work as a psychoanalyst, he analysed his patients’ psyches, by having
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