Psychoanalytical Criticism Essay -- Psychology, Freud, Lacan

Psychoanalytical criticism is a form of literary critique, which uses roughly of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature. Lacanian critics examine psychoanalytic phases such as the typic and apply this phase while translation literary texts. Lacanian critics to a fault associate the literary works content to broader Lacanian conceptions, such as the Phallic and the Other. The focus of this essay is to apply these psychoanalytical techniques while interpreting Lady Macbeths character in William Shakespeares play Macbeth. However, forwards I begin my argument, I feel that Lacans concepts of psychoanalytical hypothesis 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 mind or Reason since Freud as a starting point to exempt some of his concepts of psychoanalytical thought. First of all, Lacan created leash different categories to explain the showcases transformation from infant to adulthood, namely need, demand, and desire and labeled these three psychoanalytic ensnares, as the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. Lacan claims that during the Symbolic stage the child is initiated to language, and the unconscious and repression appear in the psyche. The child now learns that words symbolize objects, and he must use language and non images in order to fetch what he desires (Richter1021). Within the Symbolic, there is metonymy which is a mode of symbolization in which one word or phrase is signified by some other 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 adhere to the Lacanian concept of having the Phallus, her dialogue and actions are based on her abandoning her own desires to ensure that Macbeths desires are fulfilled. In t his light, Shakespeare exposes the complex dynamics of gender and power through representation of a ruthless female character who reproduces the violent practices of masculinist order through the Other. Therefore, Lady Macbeths encouragement of Macbeth to commit regicide corresponds to the violent construction 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 both the monarchal and gender construction of power already in place quite a than in the primitive and naturalized axiom of female good versus evil.