Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory reconceives the self as internally divided and governed by unconscious processes, structured through concepts such as the id/ego/superego, repression, and the drives of eros and thanatos, and reinterprets literature as a symbolic site where these psychic conflicts are staged. Later theorists—Lacan (language and the mirror/imaginary/symbolic/real registers), Klein (early infantile splitting and part-objects), Kristeva (abjection and the semiotic), and critics applying transference and repetition-compulsion to narrative (Brooks)—extend this framework into structural linguistics, object-relations theory, and literary criticism, situating psychoanalytic criticism within the broader discipline of literary theory.
Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory reconceives the self as internally divided and governed by unconscious processes, structured through concepts such as the id/ego/superego, repression,…