An Enlightenment Of Modern Western Depression Theory To Contemporary Chinese Literature Criticism

The thesis is going to discuss the depression theory of 20 century in modern western from different angles, summarizing the origin and development history and discriminating deeply a variety of relevant elements in order to draw a profound enlightenment to Chinese literature criticism. The depression theory was put forward and promoted by Freud, who was the originator of classical psychoanalysis. As a result, what the first chapter discusses is how Freud come up with the depression theory and applied it to the therapy of psychopaths. During the improvement process, Freud enlarged the research scope, applying the depression theory to analyze human civilization, and then concluded that this theory is indispensible in human’s development. Marcuse, as one representative of Marxism, not only inherit the essence of Freud’s depression theory, but also anew defined the effect of depression theory during the social progress in line with the sociological theory of Marxism. At last, he drew an opposite conclusion with Freud’s, building a new world widely different from capitalist industrial civilization.The second chapter is the contrast of the different viewpoints of Freud and Marcuse, especially the idea that they proposed to apply the depression theory into literary activities. However, because of their different era and knowledge, their depression theories are contrary. In accordance with the research about the individual mentality of western world in early stage of the 20th century, Freud set up the depression theory which has become the foundation of civilization and literary activities. Because Marcuse lived in the developed industrial civilization era, he afresh expounded the performance of depression theory in society and classified Freud’s theory. At last, Marcuse put forward the concepts of basic depression and surplus depression. In addition, he thought that the imaginative literary activities would be the efficient resolution of decomposing depression with the progress of social material civilization and technique. Marcuse endowed literary activities with political function and took advantage of it in social revolution.The main purpose of this thesis is to solve the problems and difficulties faced by the local literature and art, based on the ideas and methods of western literary theory. So, after combing two western scholars’repression theory, chapter three mainly discusses the current Chinese literature and art. As the socialist market economy was established during 1980s to 1990s, the economic system has brought profound changes to China’s social life, while the combination of capital and technology promotes the development of mass media as well as the diversification of entertainment. People’s living standard was improved by accumulating material wealth, but they haven’t got a sense of happiness and joy, though in high level of living. In facing the sharp lifestyle changes, fast life pace and rapid social rhythm, individuals suffered psychological shock, spirit depression and mind emptiness, which become new social reality. This kind of social phenomenon is similar with western countries’in the 20th century. On the contrary, tradition, as imaginative literature against the depressing reality, hasn’t played its role in the contemporary society but combined with social reality, which causing a biggest difficulty faced by the current literary practice. This chapter tries to point out the suppression of literary practice, in order to provide the basis for the transcendence of literary practice of real difference and development.