Psychoanalysis and American Literary Culture

Prescott, Conrad Aiken, and Lorine Pruette published pioneering studies of literature from the Freudian perspective which the Master outlined in his epoch-making lectures at Clark University in 1909.2 During the intervening decades, the influence of psychoanalysis upon American literature, as upon the rest of our culture, has been pervasive, varied, and problematical. Despite the persistence of Freudian orthodoxy, no single school of criticism has come to dominate the American university or medical profession. But a number of influential American critics have embraced psychoanalysis as the most appropriate theory and methodology for the deep study of works of art. Many others have employed Freudian or neo-Freudian concepts and techniques as occasional ways of describing particular literary works and their creation and consumption. Not surprisingly, some of the most influential of

Art · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · American and British Literature Analysis · History · Psychology