What is psychoanalytic criticism and how can it be justified as a type of criticism in its own right? In this revised edition, Elizabeth Wright provides an answer to this question and a wide-ranging introduction to psychoanalytic criticism from Freud to the present day. Adopting a critical perspective, she focuses on major figures and texts in psychoanalysis and in literary and art criticism: classical psychoanalysis; Jungian analytic psychology; object-relations theory; French psychoanalysis; French anti-psychoanalysis; and feminist psychoanalytic criticism.

What is psychoanalytic criticism and how can it be justified as a type of criticism in its own right? In this new and thoroughly revised edition of her classic textbook, Elizabeth Wright provides a cogent answer to this question and a wide-ranging introduction to psychoanalytic criticism from Freud to the present day.


Since each school of psychoanalysis has its own theory of the aesthetic process, the field is complex. Adopting a critical perspective, Elizabeth Wright focuses on major figures and texts in psychoanalysis and in literary and art criticism: classical...