From Breakdown To Unity

The winner of Nobel Prize for Literature of 2007 Doris Lessing (Doris Lessing,1919—) is one of the most famous writers in contemporary English literature and is regarded as the greatest writer after Virginia Woof. In 1962, Lessing's masterpiece The Golden Notebook was published. Because of its successful reflection of people's ethical and spiritual states in the 1950s'British society, the novel is considered as a masterpiece in contemporary English literature and settled Lessing's important status in contemporary English literature world. The Golden Notebook is composed of one traditional novel and five notebooks which separately record the protagonist Anna's different profiles. Four split notebooks—the black notebook, the red notebook, the yellow notebook and the blue notebook separately narrate Anna's splitting selves while the last golden notebook narrates Anna's integration. The thesis tries to use Freudian theory of personality structure and dream interpretation and Jungian concept of animus to analyze the protagonist Anna's psycho process from breakdown to unity of personality.The thesis is composed of an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion. The introduction summarizes Doris Lessing's life, her literary achievement and gives a brief account of a survey of the criticism home and abroad. Besides, it also states the objective and significance of this study.Chapter One is an overview of the development and influence of Freudian and Jungian psychological literary criticism.By using Freudian theory of personality structure, Chapter Two analyzes in detail Anna's id, ego and superego presented in the four split notebooks. The id is the reservoir of the instinctive impulses seeking satisfaction in accordance with the pleasure principle, regardless of time, morality, and outside forces, etc. The Black notebook records Anna's id. The ego, which is the portion of human personality modified by the influences of the external world, tries to reconcile the claims and demands of the three tyrants—the external world, the superego, and the id. The ego endeavors to substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle. Anna's yellow notebook is actually a novel in which she creates her alter ego in order to recognize her split selves while in the Blue notebook she records her true self. The superego retains the character of the father and cruelly and severely exercises moral censorship in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt. In the red notebook Anna records the struggle of her ego and superego.Chapter Three analyzes Anna's dreams in the light of Freudian theory of dream. Dreams play very significant roles in the process of Anna's spiritual breakdown and unity. Her dreams can be classified into anxiety dreams, fear dreams and self-salvation dreams through which her spiritual status can be shown. Dreams symbolize Anna's spiritual status so that Anna's psycho process from breakdown to unity can be clearly seen by analyzing Anna's dreams.Chapter Four analyzes the crucial person Saul in the process of Anna's ultimate spiritual unity by using Jungian animus—the"soul-image"archetype. Saul is Anna's animus. Anna sees herself from Saul. With the guidance of Saul, Anna gradually gets rid of her writing block and gets out from the feeling of depression and despair. She begins to perceive the world with an optimistic view and in her unconscious she gradually accepts the idea that although there is despair of destruction existing in the world the hope of new birth also exists.In a word, the thesis tries to explain The Golden Notebook by the aid of Freudian and Jungian theory. Through expatiating in detail Anna's split personality, dreams and Saul, the thesis discusses how to maintain psychological unity and how to understand the problem between individual essence and living significance in a disordered world.