Literature and psychology were connected before psychology became a science. Sexuality, according to Freud, is at the heart of most human behavior, whether the individual is conscious or unconscious of this motivation. The ego, the conscious part of the mind, communicates in language. The subconscious mind, the superego and the id, communicates only in symbols. Freudian psychoanalysis puts important emphasis on the symbols of dreams as clues to an individual's psychology.
Many psychoanalytic critics apply Freudian theory to literary works.
Looking for a work's repressed sexual content, for example, such critics consider telephone poles, steeples, rifles, pencils, cigars, and zeppelins to be symbols for the penis, and dark, damp caves, forests, interiors of houses, unknown locations on a map, and the unknown in general to be symbols of the vagina. Issues of Psychoanalytic Criticism Part of the critic's job is to reconcile sexual symbols with the theme of the work. A central concern is to find signs of restricted emotional development. A close reading takes special interest in recurrent sexual symbols, dreams, and evidence of repressed feelings directing the action of characters or the author. Casual accidents, such as mistakes in language, therefore take on important significance.