Abstract: It is well established that a vital characteristic of psychoanalysis is that it is not only an important means to curing a string of psychological diseases and disorders, but also a synthesizing theory in interpreting human being′s motives and behavior. However, if we put psychoanalysis under the context of overall thought development in the 20th century, it is not hard to detect that psychoanalysis seems to be the combination of scientific importance on one hand—being an instrument of scientific exploration of mindand humanistic value on the other—offering a profound theory of interpretation. The theory of humanistic interpretation is closely related to symptomatic reading in literary criticism, which helps reveal the “unconsciousness” in texts.

Key words:  psychoanalysis, scientific exploration, humanistic interpretation, symptomatic reading