Defending Freud, and a Look at Freudian Literary Criticism

So far, the arguments I’ve seen against Freudian theory have amounted to: “Freud talks about sex, thus he is a fraud.” I don’t necessarily hold that argument against anyone personally, especially considering that in my Psychology experience during my undergrad time, it seems as though the accepted pedagogical approach to Freud is, “His theory is a crock, so we’re not going to really cover him with any depth.” There are a few inconsistencies with the Freud-bashing that I’d like to address. First, to dismiss Sigmund Freud as a fraud is ignorant on two counts: Freud’s theory does not “boil down to sex,” and his theory undeniably altered the approach to psychology, if not the way the entire world thinks about human mind. Furthermore, to use an analysis of a story through a Freudian lit. theory perspective written by a third party as proof that Freud is a fraud is an assumption that Sigmund Freud himself tailor-made his theory for a literary approach.

To say that Freud’s literary theory boils down to sex is to ignore both the primary emphasis and the final goal of his research. If anything, Freud’s research boils down to a “battle,” if you will, between natural human urges and subconscious thought, the result of which constitutes one’s personality and ability to live within society. We begin with the “id,” the natural desires which include but are not limited to sexual desires that are by their nature incompatible with social living. In other words, if our natural urges were to reign uncontrolled, killing everybody we disagree with and having sex in the streets would not be considered wrong. If the id had its way, all of that oedipal desire to kill dad and mate with mom would be a-okay. The subconscious “Super-ego,” which represents morals, justice, and all other socially acceptable ideals, fights to repress all of those nasty id ideas. Stuck in the middle of the battle is the “ego,” which is basically our conscious awareness. When the super-ego is, for one reason or another, overwhelmed by the id, that failure is manifested in our conscious behavior, in what we call neuroses and psychoses (conditions as simple as anxiety and as complicated as schizophrenia). Freud’s theory addresses the balance between base urges and social order, and the problems that arise between the two, and he formed it on the basis that an individual’s certain physical or social problems could be attributed to a problem within the mind other than something that “made sense” back in the day, like witchcraft or evil spirits. (Source) Granted this is just a nutshell version of Freud’s theories, which are far denser, but it goes to show that his ideas can’t be dismissed as a bunch of rambling about penises and vaginas.

Of course anyone could still call Freud an insignificant crackpot, had his ideas not revolutionized psychology. The fact that I’m even discussing the notion of a human subconscious and a human personality can be attributed to Freud. Right or wrong, Freud opened the door to the study of the human mind, along with psychiatry as a practice. The theories of his successors, even those who completely disagreed with him, have been sparked by his work’s relevance, and continue to shape psychiatry today. To put this in perspective, the National Institute of Mental Health reports that over 26% of Americans over the age of 18 suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder, which is about 58 million people (Source). That means that if you know anybody who suffers from anything from claustrophobia to schizophrenia, their condition may not even have been recognized had it not been for that “fraud” taking the first step into acknowledging the subconscious.

Thanks, fraud.

As far as literary theory is concerned, using a critics choice of the Freudian lens as proof that Freud himself is a fraud is ludicrous, considering that Freud himself has nothing to do with literary interpretation. Freudian literary criticism, like any other critical formula, is simply a set of ideas transposed onto fiction. This doesn’t guarantee that the critical formula will accurately fit the story. Furthermore, the interpretation does not depend on the set of ideas that the story is measured against, it depends on the way that the critic uses the ideas to view the story. Since it is dinnertime, I will use a food metaphor. Using critical literary theory is like going to a buffet. You pick and choose things on the buffet, and what you put together you call a meal. The way you put things together might be different from the way the guy behind you puts them together. The point is, if there is anybody to be blamed for a lousy critique, it is the critic, not lens.

In addition to this, an interpretation of the losing-eye-horror from other critical lenses could seem just as ridiculous. In fact, a feminist critic might propose that losing the eyes can be interpreted as a fear of emasculation, because without eyes with which to see, man can no longer be the dominant sex. This isn’t very far from a Freudian interpretation, yet if the feminist lens was used to depict a situation of fear over emasculation, I doubt that there would be accusations of fraudulent thought against feminists.

The word “fraud” seems like one of those weighty words like “hate,” that shouldn’t get used very often because they are pretty strong. Yeah, I know Freud’s name is only one letter away from it, and I have my own problems with the foundations of Freud’s theories, but I can’t deny that his theories had an impact; a big impact, on modern thought, and he’s about as far from a fraud as it gets. If we dismissed every idea that had novel yet somewhat disturbing conclusions, we would still be afraid to fall off of the flat edge of the earth, and we’d still be letting sick people bleed out in order to get rid of the bad spirits in their blood.