Literary Work and the Mind: Approaching Psychoanalytical Theory

Abstract: Literary criticism is about literary creations or works of art and psychoanalysis is about minds. The only way by which one can know a work of art is through one’s own analytical mind, through some human process of perception, or through some other person's interpretation about it. This means that there is a psychological component to any understanding about the literary works. The present study analyzes that how a reader perceives the world of literary creations and the world around him/her and how he/she responds when entering the obsessional, the escapist, the oral or the autobiographical world with its overwhelming rage and desire, of any writer. The focus is also on a reader shaping and changing those worlds to fit in his/her own characteristic patterns of fantasy and defense. It is also analyzed that how the presence of an element of personality in a critic moulds his role in conveying meaning to the reader. Key Words: Literary work; the mind; psychoanalytic literary criticism. 1