Jungian literary criticism jungians do not see art structured along sexual lines but in archetypes which may be those of the collective or personal unconscious the poem has some obvious imagery of the collective unconscious sea land interior exterior etc but more useful is an analysis in terms of animus anima archetypes and of the mechanisms of repression and transference. Psychoanalytic criticism emphasizes the values of symbols and language that often unconsciously explain meanings or unconscious intention handbook to literature carl jung carl jung was one of the creators of modern depth psychology which seeks to facilitate a conversation with the unconscious energies which move through each of us. Jungian criticism is a type of literary criticism based on the theories of carl jung a psychiatrist who was a disciple of sigmund freud jung later developed his own theory of analytical psychology a theory that differs markedly from the psychoanalytic theory of freud