Freudian Literary Criticism Like Marx, Freud's theories provided literary critics with an interpretive framework with a level of meaning and meaning left unexpressed or undeveloped by Freud himself. Freud used theoretical language for a quantifiable therapeutic goal: a rational understanding of the mind. Art was nothing more than a sublimated form of the infantile desire to play. “Couldn't you say that every child who plays is behaving like a creative writer?” (Freud 651). Rather than grounding its ideas on the assumption that all art is escapist and unhealthy, and that all artists are essentially neurotic, Freudian literary criticism is devoted to examining the theoretical language it applies to the human mind. In defining the aspects of the unconscious mind, the pleasure principle, the repetition compulsion, Freud suggests that the mind is a machine that creates metaphors. “Freud discovered in the very organization of the mind those mechanisms through which art produces its effects… which makes poetry indigenous to the very constitution of the mind” (Trilling 17). By examining literature within these parameters, Freudian critics hope to better understand and explain the fundamental connection between personal consciousness and art. Works Cited Freud, Sigmund. "Creative writers and daydreams" The critical tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. Trilling, Lionel. "Freud and Literature" The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society. New York: Viking Press, 1968.