The psychoanalytic movement introduced the study of unconscious processes that influence human activity. The movement was fully consistent with the German model of mental activity, going back to the writings of Leibniz and Kant. Although act psychology and the Gestalt movement were also modern expressions of the German model, psychoanalysis emphasized the goal of a homeostatic balance of unconscious energies within personality. Its founder, Sigmund Freud, used his keen powers of observation to devise much-needed therapeutic approaches, and later expanded his formulations to a psychodynamic theory of personality growth dependent on tension reduction. Other theorists modified Freud’s model to include cultural influences (Jung) and social needs (Adler and Horney). In addition, scholars have integrated the psychoanalytic model with a field approach (Sullivan) and existential assumptions (Fromm). As a contemporary movement, psychoanalysis still exerts considerable influence in psychiatry and clinical psychology, although the movement is fragmented owing to a lack of methodological agreement. In addition, Freud’s statements on the unconscious have led to new interpretations of artistic expression. However, as a viable model for psychology, psychoanalysis has departed from the empirical foundations of psychology and shares little with other systems of psychology that rely on that methodological approach.

Since the 1980s, the theories of subjectivity that have most influenced literary studies have shared an antihumanist perspective, one that posits that both human selfhood and the experience of authentic contact with another are merely illusions born of a modern Western ideology. Along with other subfields, the domain of literature and psychoanalysis has been affected by this bias toward antihumanist theories of subjectivity. But it is not because these represent the most sophisticated, best validated theories available to us. As I here argue, practicing psychoanalysts have taken a very different conceptual path, grounded in their own clinical findings and in recent experimental work in psychiatry. In fact the most influential current psychoanalytic theories support the idea that some form of self-integration is valuable. Ironically, then, scholars working in literature and psychoanalysis adhere to our profession’s default antihumanism at the expense of hiding out from the most important conversations in psychoanalysis today. What keeps this system in place is a widespread form of intellectual intimidation, which in fact depends conceptual trickery. In explaining the trickery, I hope to help to clear the way for a more capacious theoretical conversation within this subfield.