Quest For Rapport Of The Psyche

Saul Bellow (1915-2005), as a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is one of the most influential novelists in contemporary American literature world. His heroes are usually intellectuals, often writers. They suffer from lack of self-knowledge and a variety of personal and social conflicts in an apathetic and mechanized urban world. Dangling Man is the first novel of Saul Bellow, which was published in 1944. It records the protagonist's life and reveals his mental experiences in a journal form. This thesis aims to trace Joseph's quest for rapport of the psyche from the perspective of Jungian analytical psychology, analyzing the incompleteness of his individuation. It consists of five chapters.Chapter One introduces the literary review at home and abroad of Dangling Man, dealing with evaluations of the novel that critics have made from different perspectives. It also analyzes the self theme in Bellow's novels and provides a brief survey of relevant conceptions of Jungian theory, which will be helpful in examining Joseph's process of individuation.Chapter Two examines the spiritual chaos of Joseph, which is mainly derived, from his self-imposed imprisonment, estrangement from others and his inner fear over death. These factors lead directly to Joseph's inner turbulence and are the main causes of his inner journey for self-realization.Chapter Three explores the process of Joseph's individuation by employing Jungian psychoanalytic theory. It is mainly devoted to the study of Joseph's descent-into the unconscious, including seeking for the meaning of freedom, his descent into the ego-inflation and differentiation from it, and his disregarding his social masks.Chapter Four focuses on Joseph's confrontation with the two main archetypes of the unconscious, namely, the shadow and the anima. He projects his shadow and anima mainly on the characters around him. Through the analysis of these two aspects it can be concluded that Joseph rejects them and does not integrate well the conscious and the unconscious. He fails in reaching wholeness of the personality.Chapter Five is the conclusion of the thesis. The author thinks that Joseph eventually fails on his way to self-realization because many unconscious contents still remain unexamined. Not sufficiently individual, he is unable to make peace with himself; neither can he make peace with the outer world.