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First introduced to literary studies in the 1920s and 1940s, Freud's psychoanalytic criticism still survives today. Psychoanalytic criticism provides a stimulating approach to literary analysis that holds that we humans are complex yet somewhat understandable creatures who often fail to note the influence of the unconscious on our motivations and our everyday actions. While Freud was working with patients whom he diagnosed as hysterics, he theorized that the root of their problems was psychological, not …

…the Real. While we are passing through the Imaginary Order, one great consuming passion dominates our existence. Lacan contends that in the Symbolic Order we learn to differentiate between male and female. This process of learning gender identity is based on difference and loss. The Real Order consists of the physical world, including the material universe and everything in it. On the other hand, the Real Order also symbolizes all that a person is not.