Thesis Statement Five Examples

Dunn's poem, and its underlying tones of guilt and the perverse sense of pleasure that it engenders in both the author as creator and author as subject, demonstrates how a psychoanalytic critique of a text can both enhance the reading (through an almost 'new historic' examination of external influences and energies interacting with the reader/author dynamic) as well as detract from a search for conclusive meaning as seen in Dunn's remarks about the limitations, or better yet, the lack of limitation in the assigning of guilt in the author/subject duality.—Clayn

In Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, the ego plays the role of censor that resists the entry of unconscious material into consciousness; “censor” of the literary text is a more complex phenomenon that is created under the influence of multiple factors, the ego of the author, literary characters, conventions of the current literary standard, social and political norms, etc.—Iana

Sigmund Freud, "On Narcissism"
A sort of self-fixation begins when, after childhood, our consciousness divides (and becomes a third party "watchman") around two collaborative units: the first part being what remains of the actual ego from childhood; the second being the narcissistic "idealized" ego, powered by the re-directed, or sublimated (as opposed to repressed; a psychical dead-end) sexual energies of the unconscious/libido and shaped by parental and social factors into a distinct lens by which we measure ourselves and regulate our behavior, assuming the collaboration holds.—Mike

The interpretation of dreams is very subjective and personal, revealing a great weakness in that the meager amount of material in a dream can be construed into endless amounts of interpretation, indicating that it is impossible to completely interpret a dream.—Jerry

Nathaniel's fear of losing one's eyes in "The Sand-Man" is not merely related to the fear of castration, but to the fear of losing the most direct means of relating to the external world, the basis for the ego's existence; it can be argued that all "uncanniness" relates to the fear that an experience or series of experiences might not be able to be incorporated into one's current view of self and the world, but would shatter it.—JiM

Psychoanalytic criticism is a valuable tool/lens because it allows the literary analyst to look beyond the surface of the text into layers of meaning that the author might not even have been consciously aware of; in this way, P.C. can "grasp" as concepts, reasons, explanations, etc. of characters, places, descriptions, word choice, and story structure in a way that opens it further than many other types of criticism the danger exists here, as well, in that P.C. can go too far, to the point of being ridiculous, speculative, and subjective, and must therefore be tempered by being used in conjunction with other lenses/criticisms.—Melissa

Freud writes that "literature displaces unconscious desires, drives, and motives into imagery that might bear no resemblance to its origin but that nonetheless permits it to achieve release or expression" in a manner that questions whether the emphasis on the metaphorical subject, over the literal subject might in fact take away from the direct meaning intended when the example or instance is written about in the first place--resulting in the example not even relating to what it was intended to inform the reader about.—Molly

Knowing what to do with Freud's "The Uncanny" is "difficult": while the discussion of the uncanny proves insightful, Freud's Sandman "associations" reveal the violence/impositions of his system.--Sean