Humanistic Psychoanalysis On Colonel In One Hundred Years Of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude, a renowned work of magic realism by theColumbian writer Garcia Marquez, has been receiving continuous attention since itspublication. The solitary atmosphere has been studied in many aspects by lots ofresearchers, but about the analysis of the figure’s solitary mind from a psychologicalperspective is quite few. For this reason, this paper tries to read lifetime solitude ofthe hero Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who is also the most solitary and pathetic manin the novel in the view of Erich Fromm’s psychoanalysis.This thesis concludes that there are three reasons for Colonel Aureliano’ssolitude. The first is Colonel’s destructiveness on life: Colonel’s incapability of lovemakes him hard to create in life, and the war further turns his weak creativeness intodestructiveness, which causes him to destroy life to answer the transcendence need.The second is Colonel’s submission and conformity to others: the inherent solitudeand premonition estrange him from family and world. His whole life is alienatedfrom others. Distant Colonel cannot avoid to be related under the urge of the needfor relatedness, but he has to submit to the strong external power to answer it. Thisirrational submission is the expression of his masochistic strivings. On the otherhand, Colonel’s failure of sensing self makes him to conform to others to experienceit, but this self is a pseudo self, which cannot make him satisfied in answering theneed for identity. The last is Colonel’s incest problem: Colonel is not capable offinding his new roots by himself. He is unable to get rid of the incestuous desire onmother, which means that he cannot break away from the constraint of natural rootsand fails to answer the need of rootedness.This thesis has pointed out main hero’s crux of solitude in the aid of Fromm’shumanistic psychoanalysis and Marquez’s writing intention of ending solitude.Destructiveness, submission, conformity and incest are Colonel’s negativesatisfactions of psychological needs. This satisfaction is insufficient and impotent tomake him truly escape from aloneness and insecurity, which determines his life-longsolitude. This thesis is accomplished under the wish to enlighten the people who livein the blundering world to get rid of solitude.