Psychoanalytical Literary Criticism is a form of evaluating a piece of literature as a psychologist would a patient, searching for the hidden meaning of a work based on a psychological viewpoint and examining the latent motives of the author or characters.

There are many ways to critique a piece of literature. The first is the Freudian method. Developed by Sigmund Freud, it deals with analyzing the author or the character through his or her unconscious motives and feelings.

Another way is to follow the method of Jacques Lacan. Lacan was a french neo-Freudian who based his theories on Freud, but because he was a structuralist and believer in the idea that language is the structure of the mind, his views were much different then Freud's.

A third way to analyze is the Archetypal Criticism. Developed by Carl Jung, this type of criticism focused on archetypes- universal symbols that appear in dreams and waking moments. Northrop Frye, who expanded on Jung's philosophies, said that present day literature is made up of rewritten stories from the past.