The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory, 2nd Edition

7PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

ROB LAPSLEY

 

 

 

 

Many people are afflicted by forms of psychological distress: anxiety, depression, phobias and other ailments. Psychoanalysis attempts to ease their pain through talking, hence its description as ‘the talking cure’. Patients are invited to free-associate: that is, to say whatever comes into their heads, however silly or embarrassing it may be. In so doing they relive the formative experiences of their lives and discover different and happier ways of dealing with them. It was initiated as a therapeutic technique by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) in Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century and was subsequently developed by a host of practitioners, most notably Jacques Lacan (1901–81). Since its inception ...