From Rationalism To Irrationalism

This thesis applies Freudian psychoanalytic theory to the analysis of Lessing’s construction of the complex and intricate dream images in her two novels, The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, and one short story,"To Room Nineteen". Through comparing the different arrangements for the dreams and hallucinations in her works at different period, the thesis aims at an elucidation of Lessing’s chronological shift in her philosophy from rationalism to irrationalism.The thesis consists of five sections:the introduction, three chapters of argumentation, and the conclusion.The introduction includes a brief introduction to the writer and the writer’s works concerned, the literary review of academic research at home and abroad, the main theory applied in this thesis, and an explanation to the thesis’s content, structure and significance. The three chapters of argument consists of1) an analysis of the coincidental consistency of Lessing’s dream construction with Freudian theory;2) a comparison between the hallucinations in "To Room Nineteen" and the dream images in The Golden Notebook, and an analysis to the distinction between Lessing’s and Freud’s understandings on the mechanism of displacement and condensation, on id and superego, and on trauma; and3) Lessing’s transcendence over psychoanalytic concerns. The last section is brief conclusion of the whole thesis. It restates Lessing’s metamorphosis from rationalism to irrationalism.To conclude, the coincidence of Lessing’s construction of dreams in her earlier realistic works and the Freudian psychoanalytic theories has led to her later conscious consistency with the psychoanalytic theories in her construction of dream images in her psychological fictions. Meanwhile, Lessing’s probing into Unconscious enables her to gradually transcend the rationalistic traditional psychoanalysis, and turns to irrationalistic Sufism in her construction of dreams.