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<blockquote>I am of opinion that all the aesthetic [[pleasure ]] we gain from the works of imaginative writers is of the same type as the "fore-pleasure," and that the [[true ]] [[enjoyment ]] of literature proceeds from the release of tensions in our minds.<ref>{{RPDD}}</ref></blockquote>

the primary [[place ]] that [[Freud ]] assigned to literature in the [[formation ]] of the [[psychoanalyst ]] - an [[insistence ]] that is overlooked by many [[present]]-day [[analysts]]. Yet how can they fail to recognize its importance when their "[[whole ]] [[experience ]] must find in [[speech ]] alone its [[instrument]], its [[content]], its [[material]], and even the background noise of its uncertainties" (1977, p. 147/494)? Since the origins of [[psychoanalysis]], the field has displayed a powerful set of connections to literature, one that might even be called a mutual [[fascination]]. [[Literary ]] criticism, primarily in its academic [[form]], has been the major mediator between the two disciplines. The [[three ]] domains of psychoanalysis, literature, and [[literary criticism ]] (or literary [[theory]]) intertwine and seek to use each [[other ]] in distinctive ways. Psychoanalysis has occasionally sought to explain literature but far more often uses literature as a source or exemplar for [[psychoanalytic ]] conceptions themselves. Literary criticism has sought to use [[psychoanalytic theory ]] to explain literature, and even literature itself has sometimes sought to exploit psychoanalysis for creative purposes.

The relation of these three domains manifests [[particular ]] predilections. For example, the fascination of literary critics with psychoanalytic theory from [[Sigmund Freud ]] to Jacques [[Lacan ]] has been far greater than the interests of historians in the same conceptions despite the fact that such theories can be as easily applied to historical phenomena as to literary ones. The field of [[psycho]]-[[history ]] remains relatively marginal in American and European universities, while psychoanalytic [[concepts ]] permeate most branches of literary studies. Within literature departments, interest in psychoanalytic theory eclipses attention (when there is any at all) to other systems of [[psychology]], like behaviorism or neurological/biological approaches. Yet this does not echo the [[balance ]] of forces in the same universities' psychology departments, where the [[situation ]] is almost opposite.

Affinities between literature and psychoanalysis are both [[cultural ]] and [[structural]]. Culturally, it is not a coincidence that the two greatest literary dissections of the modern soul ([[James ]] [[Joyce]]'s [[Ulysses ]] and Marcel Proust's A la recherche du [[temps ]] perdu) appeared around the same [[time ]] as Freud's foundational [[Interpretation ]] of [[Dreams]]. This [[temporal ]] connection is less a question of influence than of [[participation ]] in a common [[culture]]. Structurally, psychoanalysis elicits and tells stories. Like most of literature, it is [[structured ]] around narratives. Talk [[therapy ]] is necessarily mediated by [[language]]. Psychoanalysis explores the complexities of the [[human ]] soul, long a major preoccupation of literature. Already true for Freud, this structural affinity was deepened by [[Jung]], whose [[system ]] of archetypes is linked both to the creative [[imagination ]] and to [[myths]], using the [[universality ]] of myths to demonstrate the collective [[unconscious]]. Lacan continues the trend with his [[notion ]] that the unconscious is organized on the principles of human language (as these were conceptualized by the structural [[linguistics ]] of Ferdinand de [[Saussure ]] and Roman [[Jakobson]]). Language is transformed by Lacan from a mediator between the unconscious and the therapeutic realm to something that defines the unconscious itself.

Freud turned to literature both for evidence of his mappings of the unconscious and to explain what he found there. The [[Oedipus ]] story, which reached Freud through the literary medium of [[Sophocles]]'s [[tragedy ]] to become the Oedipus [[complex]], is the best-known example of this phenomenon. Bruno Bettelheim's classic The Uses of Enchantment similarly exploited the [[world ]] of fairy tales to illuminate [[child ]] psychology, and vice versa. More recently, in the Jungian [[school]], Helen M. Luke in her Dark Wood to White Rose uses Dante's Divine [[Comedy ]] for evidentiary, explanatory, and psycho-therapeutic purposes. Lacan himself turned his attention to [[Shakespeare ]] and [[Edgar Allan Poe]]. A legion of writers from the therapeutic [[community ]] has explored the psychoanalytic bases of fairy tales, popular literature, and even the [[texts ]] of the Bible.

Such connections are possible because psychoanalytic theory has always seen literature and the [[arts ]] generally as owing much of their appeal to their ability to express unconscious content in masked form, as well as their ability to act as vehicles of [[fantasy]], and, in Freud's [[case ]] particularly, as socially acceptable sublimations of [[erotic ]] [[drive]].

The greatest influence of psychoanalysis on literary production has probably been to add legitimacy to the already-existing trends towards greater [[psychological ]] [[introspection ]] and towards more prominent and franker discussions of [[sexuality]]. Though Freud was never an exponent of [[sexual ]] [[freedom]], merely arguing that his own culture took sexual [[repression ]] too far, wider circles have treated him as a liberator of sexual expression, whether to blame him or to laud him for this. (Would we have had Henry [[Miller ]] without Freud?)

Between the world wars in the twentieth century, the politico-artistic school of [[surrealism ]] championed psychoanalysis as an overture to new aesthetic domains. This impact has probably been clearest and longest in [[surrealist ]] [[visual ]] arts. But the surrealist literary school developed the [[practice ]] of automatic [[writing ]] as a way of tapping into the unconscious, all this under the influence of the [[Freudian ]] [[revolution ]] in psychology.

The closest connection between literature and psychoanalysis has always been articulated by the academic field of literary criticism or [[literary theory]]. In the [[United States]], where the acceptance of Freud was earlier and greater than in [[Europe]], Frederic C. Crews, Norman Holland, and Harold Bloom were among the most [[visible ]] members of a large school of literary criticism that sought to apply Freudian concepts to the explication of literary texts. Crews and Holland later shifted positions. Crews to a more critical view of Freud, and Holland, more recently, to an interest in cognitive psychology and [[neurobiology]].

Following the fashion for [[French ]] theory, [[Jacques Lacan ]] became increasingly prominent, contributing, for example, to a fascination with the [[idea ]] of [[desire ]] as fundamental to the [[nature ]] of literary texts. The Slovenian [[Slavoj Žižek]], who uses Lacan (along with [[Marxist ]] theory) in his literary and cultural [[analyses]], has become increasingly influential in Europe and America. While [[feminist ]] literary critics have challenged specific conclusions of [[psychoanalytical ]] [[schools ]] from Freud to Lacan, they have generally done so more in an attempt to redefine and recuperate the psychoanalytic [[universe ]] than to set it aside.

Perhaps most typical of the affinities between literature, literary criticism, and psychoanalysis has been the fact that some [[figures ]] have been able to [[master ]] all three. The protean writer [[Julia Kristeva]], for example, is at once a trained psychoanalyst, a well-known [[literary critic ]] (whose writings use both literature and psychoanalysis to deepen the [[understanding ]] of each), and a successful [[author ]] of imaginative [[fiction]]. Thus, while in the mass [[media ]] interest is increasingly turning to drug therapies and neurobiological explanations of [[behavior]], [[elite ]] culture manifests a continuing interpenetration of the worlds of psychoanalysis and literature. The case of Norman Holland, though it may portend [[future ]] trends, remains atypical.

See also: [[Applied psychoanalysis and the interaction of psychoanalysis]]; Autobiography; [[Literary and artistic creation]]; [[Shakespeare and psychoanalysis]].[[Bibliography]]