In a paper employing psychological criticism, what might be a good poem or novel to deal with?

One literary work that would lend itself well to a psychological
approach might be Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Among the reasons that this
book would be especially open to a psychoanalytic reading are the
following:

• The book is relatively short and relatively
  easy to read. At the same time, the book is obviously brimming with psychological
  complexity.


• The book presents a variety of characters, each
  susceptible to psychological analysis.


• In Edna, the book presents
  a heroine who is obviously conflicted psychologically.


• Edna’s
  relations with her husband, her beloved, her lover, her children, and her father would all be
  grist for the psychoanalytical mill.


• Edna’s predicament can
  obviously be analyzed in terms of the classic psychoanalytic divisions of id, ego, and
  superego.


• Edna’s problems would also lend themselves to analysis
  in terms of more recent psychoanalytic fixations, such as The Gaze and The Mirror
  Stage.


• Robert’s conflicts would also interest a psychoanalytic
  critic.


• There are actual cigars (and cigarettes) in this story; in
  this work, cigars really do seem to be something more than cigars.
  :-)

Robert
rolled a cigarette. He smoked cigarettes because he could not afford cigars, he said. He had a
cigar in his pocket which Mr. Pontellier had presented him with, and he was saving it for his
after-dinner smoke.

• There
  actually are sexual tensions in this story, and some of them do seem rooted in Edna’s
  childhood.

In short, this work presents a gold mine for
psychoanalytic critics.