Freudian Psychoanalysis and Maslovian Humanistic Psychology
1. Human Psyche, Society and Literature:
As far as reciprocal soundness in human behavior towards society was concerned, psychologists felt a drastic urge in order to primarily determine and recognize shades of untouched sanity and insanity, compromised sense of selfhood, maintained identity throughout one’s life span and indeed its effects on societal values. Through War period Psychologists mostly were tempted to do such an inspection by probing the appalling psychological aftermath of World Wars and imposed effects upon individuals. One of the most reflecting elements through which individual and/or societal deformation could be inherently investigated was Literature.
There came diverse and deviant presentations of psychology each of which were inclined and prone to reveal and investigate a particular aspect, e.g., from sexual to social to individual and eventually to psychic elements.
One of the most remarkable figures whose efforts are considered way beyond simple contributions towards a new science was doubtlessly Sigmund Freud. His later students and followers, however, found minor issues and incongruities within body of his theories. As a result of such non-unanimity in his postulations, handful of his students and colleagues set to present their diverse concepts as unusual perspectives and afresh horizons in science of human psyche; for instance, Archetypal/Mythological, Psychosocial, Behavioristic and Humanistic approach.
2. Freudian Reach to Psychology: Freudian Psychoanalysis
2.1. History and Formation of the Theory
Originally, as Freud himself put in A Autobiographical Study, psychoanalysis should be considered as an in-depth investigative effort in understanding what really “the theory of repression is? ” and, relatively, presenting it in a way which indicates that such theory would be “nothing other than the theoretical expression of an experience which can be repeated at pleasure whenever one analyzes a neurotic patient without the encourage of hypnosis” (21).
What psychoanalysis will exert to do, Freud explained, is simply explaining how transference and ‘resistance’ might work accordingly when a repressed memory is involved; let it be either in social activities or literary works of art. What Freud really meant, which turned into a fortified body of theory by resistance,’ perhaps can be thought of as his recognition of mental “defenses” (Bressler 155); or “processes by which the contents of our unconscious are kept in the unconscious” (Tyson 17).
Psychoanalytic criticism, Freud argued, initially was based upon three different classifications of human psyche. It starts with Oedipus Rex to whom Freud applied the thought of oedipal conflict; relatively, moves towards the audiences’ mind which responded to specific case of Oedipus, and thereafter shifts towards the character of Hamlet. Hamlet’s inability to act, Freud eventuates, reaffirms the presence of oedipal guilt in the life of William Shakespeare (Letters 39). Apparently such a reference would reveal an ongoing correlation amongst psyche of the author, the audience and some characters represented within the text. Since Freud’s speculation regarding the presence of such linkage, by and large, it has lasted its continuum of bondage with cast of references within literary text.
What might have differentiated between a psychoanalytic investigation of a work of art and other schools of literary criticism, could be what Carlyle had came up with as a demand to such an endeavor. Carlyle noted that, “with the best of our own critics at present” a question remains, “mainly of a psychological sort, to be answered by discovering and delineating the irregular nature of the poet from his poetry”(Abrams 256). This would, yet, reveal how the psyche of the author might have had a major influence on his works. However, such an approach which is referred to — by what Freud later called — as “classical psychoanalytic criticism” is now more prone to be rejected by other literary schools, i.e., formalistic, new criticism, structural and deconstructional theories of reading literary texts, and had left a marred image of psychology which deals with literature (Introduction 20).
Later on, Freudian Psychoanalysis directed its attention and focus towards the early stages of life of individuals as well. Freud noted that, heedless psychoanalytic inspection of individuals’ minds were only bound to defensive elements, e.g., ‘resistance’ and ‘repression’ and their presentation in an author’s adulthood and in literary works. It, however, occurred to him and other psychoanalytic exponentials that such an impression of motives should have remarkable deeper roots within one’s childhood and infantile sexual impressions and expressions.
Following Charcot’s model of hysteria, Freud followed to reveal what might have been hidden within one’s childhood repressed sexual model drive and how such a drive will externalize itself as “to tarry in the period of puberty.” Freud, thereafter, proposed that, arts inclusive of literature are “like dreams and neurotic symptoms, consist of the imagined, or fantasized, fulfillment of wishes,” therefore it would implicatively suggest that such wishes are either denied by reality or are prohibited by the social standards of morality and propriety (Introduction 92). These repressed sexual wishes and rejected sensual dreams form the material that establishes the paradigm of literary text and are all fed by a main source, ‘Libido.’ They shape sensible physical references within literary works, namely, symbols.
In psychoanalysis, relatively, symbols themselves fall into categorization of masculine and feminine. In other words, all symbols and images implicated within body of literary woks which resemble a standing and upright figures are considered as “phallic” or a male symbol, and concave images and references would suggest a “yonic” or female symbol (Bressler 158). By identifying the symbolic representation of these symbols and amalgam of other images within a text, then, critics would be able to inspect and determine how such symbols are set to show readers the fragmentary nature of human self, for those symbols are fragmented representations of wider range of objects.
2.2. Psychoanalysis and Literature: What lies Beneath
In order to further comprehend what made such psychological aspect of analysis relevant to literary texts, basic relations and definition of terms should be analyzed. Basically, psychoanalysis can be accounted as whatever means Freud thought as crucial and apropos for an in-depth opinion of human psyche; means that affect humans’ interactions and correlation towards society and other individuals. Whereas, literary criticism, as the name suggests, has analytical strength to deal with implied notions that books beget within, and need to be meticulously extracted. Thus said, a psychoanalytic critic might be able to expound what minds hold, and to what extent such knowledge or information is relevant and linkable to what books have to offer.
Psychoanalysis, often, was thought of as un-resolving and non-pragmatic body of analysis by other scholars when it came to definition and providing treatments for mental issues and disorders such as schizophrenia, autism, depression and anorexia, which by large have previously been thought as mental disorders. All aforementioned mental issues – which all are much visible within literary texts masked by characterization, narration, setting, etc – had another form of explanation in Freud’s perspective. For instance, Freud postulated that Schizophrenia is nothing but “a disturbance in the unconscious caused by unresolved feelings of homosexuality,” and also can be traced back to narcissistic disorders (Civilization 37); or autism mostly occurs as a result of mothering problems within childhood period of individuals. Therefore, the former disorder has roots with malfunctioned sex desire, and the latter could have been prevented if the individual had an unperturbed childhood.
In literature samilar therapeutic patterns were considered as the best solution when hidden layers of work were under inspection. For instance, in 1948 the term “Schizophrenogenic mother” was introduced by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann through which he explained how characters and characterization with sensible schizophrenic peculiarity – who seek seclusion against society – might all be unconscious representation of a “smothered mother figure” of either character or author’s (Dolnick 94). It was introduced that there might be no righteous treatment for such issues but “talk therapy” (Heinz 136).
As in literature stance, the ‘talk therapy’ can be found within monologues, dialogues and narration of the work. Such monologues can be found within monologic narrations such as soliloquies, introspective narratives which all will externalize mental perplexities, therefore unconsciously brings relief and mental sedation to the narrator and her/his narration.
Another major concept upon which psychoanalysis is founded was Freud’s notion of ‘Unconscious.’ It has been defined as the irrational fraction of the psyche unavailable to a person’s consciousness except through dissociated acts or dreams; in other words, it is “the storehouse of those painful experiences and emotions, those wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts we do not want to know about because we feel we will be overwhelmed by them” (Tyson 15).
More often than not, the unconscious is considered as the reservoir of wild whims and wishes which have been turned down due to social constraints. If those wishes and whims come out of their dream-like realm and acquire a physical design for which the individual would mentally get enticed to get hold of whatever which may bring that goal closer or at least shorten the way towards that farfetched wish, then it is not under influence of ‘unconscious’ but ‘Id’. In literature, such whimsicality and irrational craziness have been presented as a conquest for a lover who may sell her hair to buy a gift for her beloved; or, a young protagonist in search of a Treasure Island, or an estranged Stranger who kills Arabs when asked to do so, or sleeps with women just for the sake of the pleasure.
This rippling ocean of wildest possible wishes and unquenchable desires – not ignoring the elemental ‘fears’ some wishes cause automatically – is hushed up by an almost successful psychic agent which seeks cultural and societal peace and congruity, the ‘Superego.’
Superego is mostly thought of as the conscience or a sensor which censors everything that may stand against the moral, social, religious codes. When within a record readers feel the presence of a hidden omniscient narrator speaking, advising and directing the characters unconsciously into a way much safer in nature, it can be taken as the omnipresent superego within the storyline.
Sometimes those wild wishes and dreams present themselves as mental uneasiness which haunt individuals in their night dreams. Such nightmarish dreams, Freud explained, has only to do with repressed memories which now are available to the unconscious to reveal them in the uttermost horrific way through dreams.
Buy Conrad’s Lord Jim and his perpetual symbolic instance of shame and frustration which appear to Jim through his nightmares that are caused by the notorious ‘jump’ decision he already made, when aboard his ship.
The Freudian ego psychology developed even further, by which psychoanalysis acquired its complex theory of ‘defenses’, and relatively allowed literary critics to became able in the 1960s and ’70s to trace ‘defenses’ as well as fantasies in literary texts. Again, psychoanalytic critics often read both the defenses and the fantasies back to the authors, and the result formed a new psychological concern known “Psychobiographers” (Kris 92).
Moreover, critics could sight that literary forms psychologically behave akin to various types of defense mechanism, namely, form works as a defense, both at the level of particular wordings and in larger structures. The parallel plots of a novel or a Shakespearean play, for instance, would act in both reader’s and author’s mind as psychological ’splitting;’ a shift of sensory modality in a poem serves as ‘isolation,’ and of course, omission functions like ‘repression’ or ‘denial’ (Holland 57).
Stated Thus, man’s mind in literary works and in reality is quite active and potent with myriad of mental defenses such as: “selective perception”, “selective memory”, “denial”, “avoidance”, “displacement” and indeed “projection”(Tyson 19). In Morrison’s Paradise all above mentioned mental defenses are perfectly applicable in a particular individual’s case, namely, Deacon. His memory of an affair had turned into a suffocating bitter pain which eventually leads him toward a defense of total ‘denial’ of it in form of erasing the whole quandary by murdering the woman in cold blood.
The same defense of ‘denial’ and ’selective perception’ can be sensed when in Nietzsche’s “Parable of the Madman” in The Gay Science, the leading character who sought god finds out that ‘god is dead’ and in fact god has been killed by him and other commoners of that city. Firstly, it comes the ‘denial’ and then the ’selective memory’ and ’selective perception’ since the man’s long sought after wish is now listless. The parable however philosophical in nature follows the same pattern of psychic defenses as to protect the character from insanity or at least sudden plunge into such a state.
John Keble explained that, “Poetry [or other forms of expressed art] is the indirect expression [...] of some overpowering emotion, or ruling taste, or feeling, the direct indulgence whereof is somehow repressed.” The upheaval of emotions within a poet or individual, which probably could include myriad of personal revealing features of past memories and present states, have been previously repressed with respect to social and cultural limitations. Henceforth, there comes a melancholic urge to express all which may bring “healing relief to secret mental emotion, yet without detriment to modest reserve,” therefore such expression of emotions would behave as “a safety valve, preserving men from madness,” as Keble added (On Healing Power of Poetry chap. 6).
Regression is also another defense mechanism deployable by psyche, despite the fact that in some rare cases the situation is a win-win one which refers to pleasant state of the character in story or an individual within reality. No one loses anything and quite on the contrary a chaos will be settled for a peaceful condition. Freud considered such a retrospection as a ‘defense’ since “the state, although sweet or painful – as regression, genuinely would mean a journey into wherever the character had left off – actually diverts and subverts our thoughts from current realistic hardships”(Beyond Pleasure 99). For instance, in Morrison’s Paradise, there are several moments when characters’ unconscious despair which is presented through an “introspective narration”(Cohn 203) would voice how desperate characters are eager to return to their childhood or at least their previous unperturbed stats of life.
In 1920 Freud opened Beyond the Pleasure Principle with a comparative discussion of the behavior of soldiers suffering from traumatic war neuroses – what would later be called “post-traumatic stress disorder” – and a child’s game (18). In each of these situations, Freud observed behavior, such as the dreams of soldiers that compulsively reprised the occasion of their injury, or an infant’s repetitive tossing away and retrieval of an object in symbolic enactment of her parent’s departure, which seemed to contradict the impulse to satisfy and reduce tension.
From these observations of the workings of the repetition compulsion, Freud adduced the existence of a force in human nature that operated against the pleasure principle and its imperatives of human self-preservation and gratification. Freud called this counterforce the “Thanatos,” or the death drive (Beyond 31). He also postulated that ‘Thanatos’ might be the answer to chaotic nature of human beings who consider war and annihilation an appropriate response than a possible ‘talk therapy;’ a response which he view was, too, an apparent theme within literature as presented through instances of national conquest in which a ruler decides to expand his kingdom by annihilating other people which can be seen in C.S Lewis’ Chronicle of Narnia. In Lewis’ Narnia, the White Witch tends to bring all other characters under her ideology and code of life even if takes to slaughter handful of other individuals.
Freud’s personal image as the founder of such notion is delineated when he was much entrapped within the melancholic rage raised by genocides and man slaughters carried out as normal war consequences; thus, submerged him even further into his concept of death as something innately desired by men up to a degree where he concludes “Thanatos rules, not Eros” (Beyond 64).
As it was relatively witnessed through foregoing words, “Psychodynamics” – as the science systematically studies the relation of psychological forces within human psyche, a conflictive interplay of conscious and unconscious and their output of human behavior and externalization into art forms, i.e. literature – had much to do with human psyche and its effects on social interactions. Psychoanalytic theory drew a line around whatever reflective activities individuals might have to share with their society; activities which are charged with subjective desires and sexually driven impulses.
3. Maslovian Approach to Psychology: (Existential) Humanistic Psychology
3.1. History of the Theory
Society of 1940s-50s carried minor resembling elements to that of late Victorian era with minute shades of difference. For instance, a gradually fading faith system which was caused distinguished by ravaging effects of war, emotional impacts of loss and negligence – that which, however, in Victorian case war was not an elemental subject, hectic time of economy and eventually emergence of new and derivative perspective towards how life should have been considered.
Existentialism, strenuous in its gradually maturing nature, was being discussed as an apropos perspective through which life’s prism could be perceived. Melting religious notions of survival – spiritual salvation – and mental sovereignty were no more noted as the quick panacea of human kind. On the contrary, people started to live their life to the full taking advantage of available opportunities given through their existence and, namely, learned the intention of ‘anything goes.’ Generally, people who were quite much under depressive moments of war and its suffocating aftermath, and who were truly drowned in the engulfing potion of oblivion of life and meaninglessness, sought refuge in novels, novellas, letter-writing habits in which they could let themselves and wearied minds loose for microscopic but graspable moments. Such a practice dates assist to 1930 “when librarians began compiling lists of written material that helped individuals modify their thoughts, feelings, or behaviors for therapeutic purposes; “counselors worked in conjunction with librarians to ‘prescribe’ selected literature for clients experiencing problems,” which later turned to be known as “Bibliotherapy.” [1]
This method was also surfaced as a form of identity seeking procedure through which people tried to have their mind, which for long was boggled with their loss of self – comprising their esteem and nobleness of character, sedated if not thoroughly healed.
Stated thus, ‘Bibliotherapy’ and other methods which generally dealt with literary texts required profuse mental and psychic awareness and dedication. This, thoroughly mental entanglement of reader and texts, drew forth many literary schools of criticism in order for a sheer perception of the text. How authors’ minds as source would get potentially involved with the process of writing, and how that process would affect readers’ mind in a determined aspect?
Handful of exponentially dominant psychologists and scholars, including Freud, had their doctrines and theories powerful expanded and thus proliferated in such a blueprint that it wrapped almost all debatable aspects of literary works: style, textual and correlatively contextual meanings hidden in and out of the texts, setting and milieu.
As through the previous chapter it was explained that Freudian design of reading texts and literary works acted in the plot that it almost based everything and anything readable quite related and correlated to the psyche of the author, reader and characterization. In other words, Freudian psychoanalysis almost revolved around the mental conditions of individuals, sexual drives, repressed dream-like notions and a ‘centered’ concept of death as another enticing impulse.
Herewith, subliminal studies which originally were founded upon Freud’s theories of mind and its utmost corroborative bondage with author’s suppressed conundrums seemed attractive enough for almost everyone keen in literature. It was by analytical power of theory that people could take advantage of psychology as a device by which revealing nature one could seek information from author’s mind. However, by applying psychoanalytical aspect of psychology on literary texts, other major and prominent notions of one’s existence – both authors and his sense of characterization – could be significantly overshadowed and/or ignored by manifold of drives and profusion of whims. For instance, one’s efforts to attain social advancement and significance, which could be gained through constant comparison of her/his achievements to others’ with same social condition, would be completely overshadowed. Relatively, the process of ‘maturity’ or as Humanistic theory had recognized “Actualization” – a process through which individuals would be able to culminate their previously learnt ‘life skills’ and put them into a fruitful practice and use – would be completely neglected (Toward a Psychology 143).
In other words, an individual would be deprived of a social and not physical maturity, when all one’s life skills, experiences and their protrusions would be summed up into reality only through a narrowed keyhole: subjective mental images, unconscious projections of visions and dreams, stereotypical sexual desires and seeking victory and conquest only through a drive which would result privation and death.
It was around and through the post-war period when a new ‘human centered’ world view towards life and existence was introduced. A doctrine which was matured by philosophers, scholars and most notably literary figures and mass of common people: Existentialism. Sartre, Kierkegaard, Camus and in the clearest fact as sort of a progenitor Nietzsche, were amongst the handful of influential scholars who gravely contributed to such perspective. It was their thoughts and ideologies that ignited and expanded the notion which emphasized the understanding that “people with unwanted/un-asked births who were born into a degraded world, must own a life which at least bears accurately targeted points of/in existence” (Sartre 3). The theory connoted that individuals ought to be as responsible for their life and upcoming unmade choices, while they contradictorily were irresponsible for their birth. Weaknesses in one’s life – either congenital or points unconsciously considered as such – should be determined, acknowledged and clear for possible enhancements as strengths of that specific individual.
3.2. Formation of the Theory
Literary critics of post-war period who formerly were most vehemently busy with deciphering whatever given and implied within literary texts in a subjectively psychoanalytical way, stumbled upon another psychological approach by which practicum lost notions of individual’s social progress, identity and most notably ’selfhood,’ would come clearer.
Previous followers and practitioners of psychodynamics started to ponder upon the mere fact that the farther pursuit of such subjective literary near might not be as suitably practical as it used to be. Critics heavily started questioning Psychoanalysis main bottleneck: being inefficient and debilitated in addressing lost identities, ‘lack of selfhood’ and wide spread “individual anonymity,” as well as wholeness of humans and their linked existence. [2] Firstly, most notable deficiency in psychoanalysis come was argued; that psychodynamics reach towards literature, renders humans existence, if any, solely upon their mentality and psyche. While on the contrary, critics suggested, it would take plenty of other elements in order to have such presence fairly labeled as ‘human existence,’ i.e., social growth, progressive life skills and a conclusive end point in one’s determination of goals.
It was originally such neglected notions in literature and daily life of authors and readers that started to form and serve as the cornerstones of a newly conjectured psycho-philosophical doctrine, the ‘Existential-Humanistic’ reach. Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Clark Moustakas were amongst the major founders of Humanistic approach towards whom the earliest efforts refer.
3.3. Humanistic Approach and Literature
Initially, texts started to be looked upon from a much diversified and flexible theory in human beings’ case; however, it also was struggling to shed some light on previously vague and cloudy concepts of love, creativity, hope, loneliness, self-reverence, health, nature and noticeably ‘being’ in its sheer untouched meaning.
In 1943, Abraham Maslow chose a contradictory way of observation through which he not only eliminated the presence of invalids – either mentally or physically – as the sole source of his investigation, but more exerted to inquire of figures who were epitomization of maintained selfhood, prosperity and social achievement such as scholars and globally recognized figures; for instance Roosevelt and Einstein. As a result of such findings, he presented his “Hierarchy of Human needs: Humanistic Model;” a model which illustrated how amalgam of deviatory phases of success and existence might affect one’s pattern of life (Toward a Psychology of Being 49). By having leading features of both politics and literature observed, he depicted how an urge for meaningful existence in one’s life can be presented into reality; for instance, a literary work of art, a successful career, aimed educational efforts, etc.
Such preliminary concepts can simply be touched and relatively acknowledged through characterization in works of literary giants, i.e., those of Beckett, Morrison, Joyce, Hemingway, Conrad and so forth. In works of all previously mentioned authors’, one can conspicuously spot out how a desire for meaning and identity had turned into a pursued main goal of their characters. Take Beckett’s Trilogy: The Unnamable, Joyce’s Portrait of an artist as a young man, Morrison’s compound of projected anti-racist criterion for African-Americans in most of her novels say, Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992) and indeed Paradise (1999), and Hemingway’s clichéd The man and the sea,all can be taken as seriously earnest witnesses.
Maslow condemned Freud’s works as well, although he approved the existence of an unconscious part within humans’ psyche. In fact, he refuted Freud’s idea that the bulk of our being is hidden far from our consciousness. Maslow purported that humanity is aware of motivation and drives on the whole. Without life’s obstacles, all of humanity would become psychologically healthy, attaining a deep self-understanding and acceptance of society and the surrounding world. He, additionally, directed his energy towards realizing the sure aspects of mankind, while Freud saw mostly negativity, repressed society, sexually abusive drives and death driven world which sounded more like Schopenhauer’s pessimism.
One would summarize the distinction between humanism and psychoanalytic theory in such a way that, Psychoanalysis is founded upon “acceptance of determinism, or acceptance of aspects of our lives outside of control mostly in form of unconscious impulses,” irrationally motivated whims and wishes by a sex led engine, and pervasiveness of human psyche (Goble 165); whereas humanistic thought bases itself on the concept of “free will, a psyche structured for social progression and hierarchically linked and re-linked motives and desires towards acknowledgment of progress”(Goble 172).
Giving Maslow’s ‘humanistic model’ a practical significance, it would seem proper enough if only one gets to know deeper layers of its eminence and importance, let it be of daily life instances or literariness of a work.
His model locates physiological needs or most preliminary needs at the first phase of progress/advancement while connoting distinctively that “if these fundamental needs are not satisfied then one will surely be motivated to satisfy them. Higher needs such as social needs and esteem are not recognized until one satisfies the basic needs of existence” (Toward a Psychology 139).
The second stage inevitably belongs to the ‘Safety Needs;’ as Maslow reportedly has suggested that,
Once physiological needs are met, one’s attention turns to safety and security in order to be free from the threat of physical and emotional harm. Accordingly, if a person feels threatened, needs further up in the pyramid will not receive attention until that need has been resolved (Toward a Psychology 139-40).
Such needs might be fulfilled by:
• Living in a safe area
• Medical insurance
• Job security
• Financial reserves
The third element is ‘Social needs,’ which interchangeably had been used as ‘Love and belonging.’ The fourth phase is labeled as ‘Esteem Needs,’ and eventually the most dominant one would be what Maslow thought of as the pinnacle of achievement through which one may be fully recognized not only for his presence and existence but for the pragmatic efforts which had turned into something utilizing such as either a product of mind or industry, or both: “Self-Actualization” (Motivation 50).
Maslow’s theory of ‘Self-Actualization’ could be found in an individual’s yearning for a meaningful existence. In literature, such desire can be seen when a character – or a mass – unconsciously advances towards betterment; or given the situation of a chaotic or perhaps war-involved setting, characters in general would clamber for a defensive fortification of their values. Such mental upheavals which have been grand do into dramatic practice – finding one’s lost identity after a period of colonization or war or both – can be considered as pure exemplum of what Maslow presented as ‘Self-Actualization.’ It, however, should be noted that such yearning for improvement would be something insatiably unquenchable and quite moody since the meaning of betterment and enhancement might differ having settings and milieu considered:
Self-actualization is the summit of Maslow’s motivation theory. It is about the quest of reaching one’s fleshy potential as a person. Unlike lower level needs, this need is never fully satisfied; as one grows psychologically there are always new opportunities to continue to grow (Goble 174).
And relatively, “Self-actualized individuals have frequent occurrences of peak experiences, which are energized moments of profound happiness and harmony.” According to Maslow, only a small percentage of the population reaches the level of self-actualization” (Goble 175).
The aspect which actually made Humanistic psychology a practical and approachable theory was its total presence within every bit of characterization and social ‘points;’ in other words, characters simply could tie their interaction towards other individuals within a story. Such points vary from a shared passion or love between a lover and a beloved, a shared feeling or ‘need’ to be amongst other individuals, an innate need to comprehend what all your life is all about, to be fully responsible for your life and considering all your choices to come, and to death and its conclusive role.
All concepts above said, are quite touchable and sensible within almost all literary works regardless of a specific time period to which it may belong; take Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winner novel, Beloved (1987). Throughout the new there is a steep tendency of development of female sense of self, or as Maslow had achieve ’selfhood.’ Within the original, however, there are other elements which sometimes further try to assert this rising sense of selfhood into a whole new horizon by putting the development into racist pitfalls. Morrison constantly explores how the girl child must battle the effects of racism and the brutal history of slavery that have had such a negative impact on the family that originally nurtured the budding notion of self. Despite the psychological damage caused by slavery and omnipresent racism, each female character carefully traces the psychological strengths that have ensured the African-American survival.
Throughout the novel, Sethe – the leading character with strong will to improve and absorb her selfhood – models a many-faceted process of restoring the various losses she had sustained throughout her life. The scheme she heals her fragmented sense of self closely mirrors self-psychological aspect of Maslovian fourth phase, ‘Esteem needs.’
Firstly, through her ‘re-memories,’ Sethe carefully rebuilds her sense of self as a caring, passionate, powerful female. Maslow emphasizes the importance of this return to the early incidents of childhood in order to reclaim her past strengths, confront the losses, and locate her own ’self’ on a historical continuum, as a way of moving into the future (Kohut 184).
Secondly, Morrison presents us with countless moments of empathic connection that help Sethe heal, illustrating the basic therapeutic process – the empathic connection between patient and therapist that enables the recreation of a more cohesive sense of self. Empathy serves as a cornerstone for the Maslovian theories of self betterment through social interconnection and receiving a relative feedback from counter individuals. The emphatic-therapeutic connection that Sethe makes with other characters, charges her arsenal of recreation to re-establish her lost sense of self. Such a healing connection can be made with myriad of individuals – and not limited to medical therapists as the name suggests – who are tranquil untouched by the harsh stimulus of racism.
Morrison’s Beloved describes the labyrinth of feelings and events that shaped African-American female selfhood in slavery – and, subsequently in freedom – and expresses an extensive range of intimate feelings about Sethe and her life. In essence, she stands for every slave woman’s experience, representing the female self as it is raped, beaten, humiliated, threatened, abandoned, orphaned, but surviving through time. Through her eyes, her ears, her body and her story, the reader will see, hear and feel the anguish of being an owned woman; yet a woman with same feelings and desires as one who is free.
This can be interpreted as a single dimensional Feministic tonal speak of a speaker explaining possible hardships in a specific point of time; however, deeper examination of the feministic slave tonal voice would reveal something noteworthy anticipated than a simplistic cry for equality between men and women. It would be something which liberates the character’s voice from racism, slavery and social anonymity by looking for her lost element of being: her sense of ’selfhood.’
4. The Maslovian and Freudian Approach: a Comparison
Within a contrastive analysis of both theories, it came quite clear that the most distinctive point that state each theory aside from one another would be the amount of emphasis put upon human psyche and the subjective analysis it might bring forth when considered as the basis of a theory.
In Freudian psychoanalytic misfortune, it is how items and their positions (upwards or concave), individuals and their involvement in a specific setting, etc, would almost generally set the paradigm of the critical theory. While on the contrary, in Maslovian framework a relative attention can be sensed that has been paid towards individual’s psyche and mentality, however, in its most constructive manner; this means that the psyche and mind is thought to be the source of advancement on social, individual and knowledge basis.
In both theories, however, the individual is set as center. In one theory, the individual serves as a cornerstone whose social or individual efforts would bring enhancement to the plot/story or society while personally finds ways through which s/he would be able to achieve a lost identity, fixate her/his place within society, satisfy the basic needs, and indeed maintain previously passive potential into active performance of being. While in the other, the same centered individual can be a milestone whose frenzied acts of egocentrism and arrogance, in fortifying his farfetched wishes and sexually driven desires, would wage war on other individuals, countries and/or nations. Such mentality would urge individuals to seek for instances of social acknowledgement and approvedness, especially when it comes to moments when they repeatedly need to suppress opposing minds and thoughts. Sophocles’ Antigone represents how Antigone’s defiance of king’s rules and orders brought her perish and immurement – or relatively anyone who dares to stand against such egotistic individuals would receive similar imposed fate.
5. Application of Freudian and Maslovian Psychology in Toni Morrison’s Paradise (1999)
Paradise seems to deeply investigate its characters’ traumatic psyche, their lives, and subtly show how they make early emotional contacts and relationship – regardless of being primarily sexual or not – which later turns into a blood-bath scene. How their exasperated minds get settled when a constant-paced advancement towards hierarchal ‘model of human needs’ receives its early initiative. From their basic needs to intimation and sense of security, to a growth in reciprocal dependency towards each other – the Convent women – and eventually a vigorous innate force to be widely expressed and concordantly acknowledged upon their cultivated skills and potential, which each gained through life in ‘Ruby.’
The first shocking pages amplify and point out characters’ troublesome psyche by depicting the mess they caused. It is to be revealed later through modern that the murders in opening pages were considered as the best possible solution by characters to clean their previous unethical sexual relationship. A cleansing reply resembling a sort of Freudian approach to what life had placed before one’s path, namely, ‘active reversal.’ The ‘active reversal’ male characters of Ruby tended to undergo was to re-live their past lives correcting their faults through washing the sins with blood of those who they idea were the source of all this hardship. Such decision seems to have embodied Freudian ‘projection’ as well.
Through next chapters, where our first mentally fragile character, Mavis, is introduced, it slowly starts to occur to reader that most – if not all – of the characters which have lately been introduced, suffer from a chronic Freudian ‘anxiety’ or ‘fear,’ or something which even its simplest sense of ‘return’ – as Freud had labeled it ‘return of repressed’ – would further traumatize their being and mind all together. In Mavis stance, such ‘trauma’ is fed by her inability and/or disability to have her most basic thoughts and potentials expressed and externalized.
“Would it be quick like most always? Or long, wandering, collapsing in wordless fatigue? ” she wonders, while awaiting her husband in bed, which later she learns that “It was neither. He didn’t penetrate”(26). This would suggest a complete patriarchal relationship in which she suffers from crucial marital-sex-relationships with her husband, and it is not she who can even ask for sex or anything. She should keep her sexual fantasies ‘repressed’ for later proper time set with her husband.
Mavis’ foremost horror is her alienated sense of being a mother. She is quite paralyzed by the idea that her children especially her two sons along with their dad would end her, as she explains to her mother when she left her home, “I’m saying they are going to kill me;” she continues, “all of them. The kids too” (31). Here, ‘fear of death’ casts a fearsome spell upon her mind, therefore, pushes her further forward to think that staying in her home would mean nothing but accelerating her demise.
Relatively, Mavis, who is a traumatized character whose “sexless” (171) life – as other characters often refer to her past married life – had impaired her mentality towards her senseless identity, runs away and leaves her home in form of a mental ‘defense,’ a physical attempt, but unconsciously charged by her fright of ‘return of repressed,’ as the Freudian term suggests (Tyson 17). A repressed concept or memory which had haunted Mavis ever since her children grew older and strengthened their relationship with their father, therefore, emotionally seemed to have neglected their mother.
Later, when she sees other mentally suppressed women at the Convent – after she leaves her home in hope of leaving her repressed memories behind as well, she gains her confidence back as though it seemed to her that such repressiveness of society was not dominant in her case only, but quite a pandemic opposition.
With respect to the Maslovian ‘Model of human needs,’ Mavis’ self-esteem / self-confidence, which previously had passed physiological/basic needs, starts to grow and improve; such improvement is quite visible in myriad of instances, e.g., when her cooking, conversational and interaction skills with her reality tend to return to her. Previously Mavis was someone who couldn’t even face her children in order to have her maternal voice heard, and now, when it comes to matter of self-defense and protection of beliefs and ideas, she even fights for them:
Not the fight. That wasn’t important. In fact she had enjoyed it. [...] it was more proof that the old Mavis was tedious. The one who couldn’t defend herself from an eleven-year-old girl, let alone her husband. The one who couldn’t figure out or manage a simple meal, who relied on delis and drive-throughs, now created crepe-like delicacies without shopping every day (171).
The realization of ’selfhood’ and progress towards ’self actualization,’ through which she could take full advantage of her skills and mental abilities, comes forth when she finds solace and peace staying in the Convent. This mental sedation is again by spending time especially along with Connie, who cares for all previously despaired women while she herself suffers from memories of a bittersweet taste.
Mavis establishes mental stability and security in the Convent – a place where no one further can bother her or harass her mind, then, she moves towards next phase of improvement. She starts to seek lost concept of maternal love and passion, which in her case is illustrated as a trip back to the school where her children study, honest to see them chatter with each other:
Sally (Mavis’ daughter). did you never think about us?
Mavis. all the time. And I sneaked back to get a peep at you all.
Sally. No shit? Where?
Mavis. At the school, mostly. I was too scared to go by the house. (314)
Finally, having her identity maintained, Mavis heads towards city in order to further expand her actualization and potential in form of social interaction and harmonious presence amongst other individuals; an instance which previously she least was willing to do: sharing time with people.
Mavis seems to have transcended her Humanistic model as she clearly can care for herself as well as others in respect of her basic needs. She can enjoy emotional moments in the best possible way; for instance, when she faces her daughter who used to physically and mentally torment her, she extends her love and peace. Consequently, she turns to be able to effect respect and reverence from society by stepping into it and showing a fully responsible character who can help others. This can be considered as full presence and complete projection of Maslovian advance towards ‘humanistic model of needs.’
Connie would be another character along whom others – Mavis, Gigi and other Covent women – felt quite internally peaceful and progressive, while she herself starts to transcend the Humanistic model as she began to acquire rid of her previous repressive mental state, if not illness. The most notable pain she bore within her unconscious would be her completely failed relationship with a young whimsical man, Deacon.
Their emotional relationship, consequently, winds up into a complete sex-driven desire. Later when Deacon marries another woman than Connie, previous sexual joy forms a sort of irreparable Freudian ‘guilt,’ and relatively metamorphoses into an inexorable ‘fear;’ a horror which if revealed would endanger both his name in public plan and his relationship with his wife.
In response to such a threatening psychological fear, Deacon, unconsciously, deploys ‘denial,’ by which he could completely reject any prospective threat. Yet, his fear further pushes him to submerge in ‘displacement’ and ‘projection.’ The mental ‘displacement’ he took, changes him into a man of no acceptable social manner who rejects anyone and mentally embarrasses everyone, especially his wife who serves him as a person toward whom he may deplete his anger, fear and frustration.
Eventually, the Convent for Deacon, inclusive of all its women, would support as the cornerstone of ‘projection,’ “willing to pass [...] earlier ‘mistake’ off on the Convent women” (278). Deacon takes all those women – and not someone specific as he fears his secret turns publically exposed – responsible for the deteriorating position of Ruby, their city. Women who unconsciously in Deacon’s mind trigger a mental defense of ‘regression’ in which he recalls “the women in the Convent [...] a flaunting parody of the nineteen Negro ladies of his and his brother’s youthful memory” (279).
It is the same ‘fear’ shared with other men that eventuate a horrific result: to “erase both the shame and the kind of woman” (279) who had caused all this trauma. ‘Thanatos’ would be a complete reply to all this mental chaos, a ‘defense’ to its full potential: putting the life of those who oppose to an end.
In Connie’s case the same dread forms another mental defense that she pursues till the end of the novel, ‘avoidance.’ By residing and hiding in the Convent she tries to hide herself from the townspeople. A form of seclusion she deems appropriate for her to be far from her repressed memories and/or people who may bring them back. However, such elusion turns into an ‘active reversal,’ thanks to a mere self-confidence she gained through interaction and convergence with other Convent women, especially Mavis.
Such reciprocity of behavior amongst women of the Covent, eventually, results in Connie’s appreciation of life in a much brighter way than her quite gloomy and cynical perspective she used to have. As she previously had resolved her physiological needs of food and a place to live, she moves towards the second, third and fourth phase of identifying her goal to live with respect to Maslovian Hierarchy of Needs. Within the second stage she grows her feeling of ’security’ and stability of her life which is seen as when she sets the Convert a resting set for anyone despaired. Therefore, she, relatively, tries to provide others a sharable sense of security. She shares her mere security with other desperate women in return of their bilateral passion and livelihood that they might gain by fulfilling their needs per se.
Consequently, as she passes the third stage of ‘love and social interaction,’ she moves towards the fourth phase of ‘esteem’ and ’self-respect.’ Previously Connie was a character who was quite unsure “whether to live or die after Mary Magnus passes away” (97), but gradually she loses her cynical look upon life which is presented by a symbolic change in her appearance as she stops putting dark sunglasses on – which she didn’t use to do so even in the darkest rooms of the Convent. Her self-respect comes into a more apparent presentation when she re-starts her cooking habit for herself and other guests as well, which she previously stale to on quite special occasions.
Her fully self-actualized portrait can be sensed in the final chapter of the current, however, sadly before she dies; that is when she loses her dismay and seclusion and faces the source of her ‘pain’, ‘fear’ and horrendous ‘memories.’ Connie does so by seeing Deacon face to face: She “narrows her gaze against the sun,” then says “you’re back” (289). This confrontal can be considered as both Freudian ‘active reversal’ and indeed Maslovian “actualization.”[3] ‘Active reversal’ as when she acknowledged the predicament and starts to re-live the moment and ’self-actualization,’ when she presents her potential of identity, life appreciation, acknowledgement of the issue and final pursuit of a meaningful and fully-aware life. She underwent a complete transcendence of Maslovian paradigm by facing the possibility of being disclosed to a grave risk and grief, which was her death.
Works cited:
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[1] Abdullah, Mardziah H. What is Bibliotherapy. Eric Digest. Jan. 2005.
[2] “The less we know about something/one, the more we invent them according to our fantasies, especially our fears.” Abraham Meerloo. Delusion and Mass Delusion I; 18.
[3] See Maslow, Dominance, self-esteem, self-actualization: germinal papers of A. H. Maslow, 1973, Brooks, 91-92.
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