A Classic Psychoanalytic Reading Of Tender Is The Night

Francis Scott Fitzgerald is one of the most outstanding novelists of the 20th century, America. Although his short but legendary life -including his tempestuous romance with his wife and muse Zelda Fitzgerald—continues to overshadow his works, his poetry like prose, his theme about the Jazz Age, still make him one and only of all the great novelists of America. He is acknowledged as the spokesman of the Jazz Age. Most of his works reflect that people pursuit material comforts and indulge in pleasure while spirit world is emptiness under the background of US economic prosperity, "Jazz Age" period. His novel, Tender Is the Night, is still displayed on this theme:regardless of gender, age, educational level, even the psychiatrists himself can not escape distress from psychological problems. This dissertation is based on the classic Psychoanalysis theory, which is established by Freud, to analysis the psychological problems of the writer and each novel hero in order to unlock the reasons of the characters in the novel suffering from mental illness by using text reading approach.This dissertation consists of three parts:introduction, body and conclusion.Starting with the introduction of academics and research status of Fitzgerald’s domestic and foreign study in the introduction, this section describes the theoretical sources and innovative points of this dissertation.There are four chapters in the body. The first chapter makes a brief description of the classic Psychoanalysis theory and the acceptance of the United States in the 20th century, then discusses people’s spiritual emptiness of the Jazz Age, which is 1920s period of United States, and the whole society’s common status of mental illness. According to Freud’s theory, it further discusses the artist’s creations and its similar psychological mechanisms with Daydreams; this fiction’s hero is the author’s psychological projection.The second chapter gives a detailed analysis of psychological distress which the hero Dick Diver suffers. Some columns analyzed the Dick’s early family experience, his personality conflicts, and eventually found his hidden Oedipal Complex; by analysis contradictory personality of Dick, this dissertation found his guilty desire always caused by the superego and id could never met. All theses psychological problems make Dick from a motivated young man to a poor and lost person.The third chapter analyzes the heroine Nicole Warren’s psychological distress. It discusses her Oedipal Complex, incestuous relationship between her and her husband. Her marriage with Dick reveals a series of psychological core issues.The forth chapter analyzes the love relationship between the characters of the novel, finding that their love relationships are directed to a common psychological pattern—Fear of Intimacy.The conclusion section summarizes the classic psychoanalytic context Tender Is the Night. By this novel, we could not only see Fitzgerald’s sarcastic about the Jazz Age, but also his greatest sympathy.