Reading Literature through Freud and Lacan

I don’t know enough to say anything about Lacan’s purpose for creating the idea of “ The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytical Experience” but I do know a little about Freud who was the founder of psychoanalysis. He used ideas on human personalities, at the time and combined tem with his own to produce a major theory of psychology and a new approach to the understanding of human personality. From his experiments, he applied these ideas to the psycho-therapy treatment of mental ill patients. His observations were based on his understanding of unconscious thought processes and their relationship to the symptoms. Reading literature may have a link to this theory.
Within the piece we can identify two parts of a dream, the symbolic representation and the plastic representation. The symbolic representation being what the dream means or was interpreted to mean, and the plastic representation being what the dream simply appears to be without interpretation. The study of dreams and it interpretations consists of condensation, displacement, and visualization. By discussing the representation of symbols in dreams and the fact that behind the dream itself, we might find a deeper meaning.
Symbols are found in both novels and dream. This might by a way of understanding how reading literature is linked to the psychoanalytical theory. Symbols, in most novels are present to be interpreted and to discover the deeper meaning. Freud says that when we dream, we are putting pictures to our thoughts. "It consists in transforming thoughts into visual images." Books also accomplish this is some way. When we read and interpret books, we take the thoughts of the writer or narrator, as well as out own thoughts about the novel, and form pictures in our heads. This process leads us to get a better understanding of the literature and also be able to remember it, like the baby learns and remembers his reflection in Lacan’s piece.