The Five Layer Structure of Sublimation and Literary Analysis

One of the reasons that psychoanalytical interpretations of literature meet with resistance and incredulity is that the reader has arrived at his particular meaning for the work as a result of the operation of his individual set of psychic defenses. His meaning is therefore tailor made to fit his own peculiar circumstances. He may be aware of the general truth that words and symbols have a wide range of meanings which when combined make for great complexity rather than simplicity. Yet he usually feels there is a dogmatic clarity about his interpretation of a work of art which makes it unnecessary and, indeed, malicious to suggest any other interpretation. He is particularly infuriated by the interpretation of “symbols”, as Freud pointed out in his second series of Introductory Lectures (Chap. 6) where he insists on the importance of such symbols for real analytical understanding. But though unconscious meanings tend to be rejected at first they are usually indispensable if the unreflective judgments are to be squared with the more rational requirements of analytical thought.

If, however, the more complex aspects of meaning are subject to this type of selective interpretation, there are other simpler details which, though meaningful, the average reader tends to disregard. Since he is not as sensitive to the full range of meaning which the creator of the work has unconsciously put into the poem as the artist himself, he usually constructs his conscious interpretation without reference to some details which the artist, consciously or unconsciously, may pay considerable attention to. An examination of these seemingly insignificant details, therefore, might prove to be more convincing, because less involved in the