Psychoanalysis of literature: methodological foundations and theoretical criteria

Abstract

The connection between literature and psychology is inevitable and profound. First, literature originates from the human spirit, while psychology studies the human spirit. Human imagination, thought, feeling, in general, all mental issues are common topics of both literature and psychology. Psychology studies human behavior and its causes, while literature describes human behavior through fiction. Any literary text is an expression and product of a certain psychological state. Because, if we leave aside the natural life, the physical phenomena of nature, everything else is a part of human culture, an expression of the human soul, a creative act of homo-sapiens. Secondly, literary studies uses the conclusions of psychological science during the study of artistic and aesthetic issues and problems. Also, literature is used in the interpretation of psychological problems in the science of psychology. Thus, the connection between literature and psychology is usually established by formally using psychology (through psychological analysis) to analyze texts, to understand the essence of the creative process itself. Psychological science, in turn, can turn literature into the subject of its analysis. In the presented article, a brief overview of the history of the relationship between literature and psychology is given, and the aspects that lay the groundwork for the psychoanalytic analysis of literature are reviewed. The inevitability of the relationship between literature and psychology is emphasized.