Psychoanalytical Criticism Essay -- Psychology, Freud, Lacan

Psychoanalytical criticism is a form of literary critique, which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature. Lacanian critics examine psychoanalytic phases much(prenominal) as the Symbolic and apply this phase charm interpreting literary texts. Lacanian critics also associate the literary works content to broader Lacanian concepts, such(prenominal) as the Phallic and the opposite. The focus of this essay is to apply these psychoanalytical techniques while interpreting noblewoman Macbeths character in William Shakespeares meet Macbeth. However, before I begin my argument, I feel that Lacans concepts of psychoanalytical theory need some introduction.One of the more prevalent psychoanalytical theorists since Freud was Jacques Lacan and I will use Lacans The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud as a starting blot to formulate some of his concepts of psychoanalytical thought. First of all, Lacan created three different categories to explain the subjects transformation from infant to adulthood, namely need, demand, and desire and labeled these three psychoanalytic collections, as the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. Lacan claims that during the Symbolic stage the pincer is initiated to language, and the unconscious and repression appear in the psyche. The child now learns that words map objects, and he must use language and not images in order to acquire what he desires (Richter1021). Within the Symbolic, there is metonymy which is a mode of symbolic representation in which one word or phrase is signified by another that is associated with the overall meaning (Richter 1046). A secondary element in Symbolic is the discourse Other (with a capital O). The concept of Other is not clear or simple sinc... ...ole. Because Lady Macbeth must dumbfound to the Lacanian concept of having the Phallus, her dialogue and actions are based on her abandoning her own desires to experience that Macbeths desires are fulfilled. In this light, Shakespeare exposes the complex dynamics of gender and force play through representation of a ruthless female character who reproduces the lurid practices of masculinist order through the Other. Therefore, Lady Macbeths encouragement of Macbeth to commit regicide corresponds to the hazardous structure of the period. Although critics have labeled Lady Macbeths character as a source of evil within the play, I have shown that Lady Macbeths dialogue and actions find their brutal source in two the monarchical and gender construction of power already in emerge rather than in the primitive and naturalized axiom of female sincere versus evil.