Using concepts from psychoanalytic theory to understand literature

Life is filled with emotional ups and downs, and our hard times as well as our happy times play an important role in our personal growth. As psychoanalytic theory tells us, we all encounter life events, as we grow up, that shape our psychological development, and these early experiences inevitably play out in our adult lives. Most of us experience, for example, recurring episodes of sibling rivalry or other kinds of jealousy, of self-doubt or insecurity, or of loneliness or isolation. In other words, we all experience some sorts of psychological problems over the course of our lives. We can see the signs of those problems from time to time in what psychoanalytic theory calls dysfunctional behavior—for example, all those little (or big) ways in which we put ourselves unnecessarily at risk, get ourselves into trouble, or hurt the ones we love. While psychological problems are a natural and unavoidable part of being human, it is important to try to identify and understand them because, according to psychoanalytic theory, that’s how we can begin to overcome those problems.