How do I apply Psychoanalysis to literature?

A Psychoanalytic reading aims to better understand the inner workings of human behaviour by conceptualising meaning from everyday human experiences such as anxieties, trauma, sexuality, repression of the unconscious and dream meanings, as well as the meaning of death. The principles you will apply in your analysis to the set texts are based on the concepts established by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). In literature, we may examine a character's relationship with their parent, sibling or significant other as a result of an oedipal complex, or certain symbols and themes attached to their behaviour that might give insight into their psychological experience as having a fear of abandonment, intimacy or risk for example. Because a text can only achieve so much in developing its characters, we may apply psychoanalysis to literature in order to create another means of understanding the text which allows us to become more nuanced and sophisticated readers. A psychoanalytic reading of Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' for example, might examine the ways in which Willy Loman's flashbacks to the past are really regressive episodes brought on by his present psychological trauma: his own and his sons' lack of success in the business world, success Willy needed in order to assuage the massive insecurity he's suffered since his abandonment in childhood by his father and older brother.