A Study Of Strickland From The Perspective Of Analytical Psychology

The Moon and Sixpence is one of the most famous novels of the English novelist William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). From the perspective of analytical psychology, this paper probes into the psychology of Strickland who is the hero of the novel. The important components of analytical psychology are applied to the analysis of Strickland, including three structures of personality, individuation, archetypes and mode of artistic creation. They are also the main contents of Jungian psychology.The author analyzes Strickland’s psychological journey from the perspective of three structures of personality and individuation in analytical psychology, namely in Jungian psychology, and finds that the genius painter Strickland’s life is the individuation of pursuing self-realization. His life consists of three steps, which are self-consciousness, self-searching and self-realization. Self-consciousness refers to the consciousness of one’s self. Since Strickland is a child, the desire of painting has been rejected and allowed by ego repeatedly. Strickland attains self-consciousness of being a painter in his middle age. Self-searching is to search the way of pursuing one’s self. Driven by autonomous complex, Strickland abandons everything to be a painter in Paris. He realizes that he has to go to an island and paint the primordial image in his mind. Self-realization is the goal of individuation, which refers that a person feels in harmony with himself and with the world. Strickland regresses himself in Tahiti and lives in a primitive way, and he finally approaches his self-realization by painting on the walls of his house.Then the archetypes embodied in Strickland are analyzed on the basis of the theory of archetype in analytical psychology to explain Strickland’s attitude and behavior to other characters in the novel, and the archetype is the key concept of Jungian psychology. The author finds that archetypes which contain persona, shadow and anima respectively affect Strickland’s attitude and behavior to his own family, two families and the three women in his life. Because of his persona, Strickland can hide himself from his family and be sociable with the others in the society. With the influence of shadow, Strickland hurts his own family and the Stroeves who have helped him. Anima affects Strickland to have relationship with the three women and to choose Ata in the end.At last the relation between Maugham’s creation of Strickland and analytical psychology is analyzed. By exploring the original source of Strickland and Maugham’s creation of Strickland, the author finds that Maugham’s creation of Strickland fits the psychological mode of artistic creation in analytical psychology.