This paper proposes that a particular logic underlies how the field of psychoanalytic literary criticism defines itself, a logic that must be confronted and addressed if the field of psychoanalytic literary criticism is to understand the rationale that defines its relationship to literature. The author argues that in defining what makes a work of literary criticism psychoanalytic, one also defines what is meant by psychoanalysis itself; in this respect, psychoanalytic literary criticism is at every moment exploring what is unique and essential to psychoanalysis. Viewed in this way, psychoanalytic literary criticism defines psychoanalysis in a predictable and inflexible way, reducing psychoanalysis to a litany of technical concepts and applications. In bringing psychoanalysis to bear upon literature in this rigid way, the full complexity of both psychoanalysis and literature go largely untapped. The author, a literary scholar, demonstrates how psychoanalysis can redefine itself in relation to literature so that it no longer reduces literary complexity to psychoanalytic dogma. The author elucidates the inner-workings of literary aesthetics through a discussion of anamorphic art, and describes a new way of bringing these fields in parallel to one another, drawing upon the technology of the stereoscope to illustrate a new form of interdisciplinary work.