The Schizoid Good Girl

Doris Lessing, a prolific British female writer, had attracted wide academic attention. However, the domestic researches mainly focus on some earlier masterpieces, and her later work The Good Terrorist receives much less attention. Lessing returns to realistic theme with this novel after a handful of mildly successful attempt on science fictions. This thesis explores the heroine Alice’s mental status and its influence on her tragic fate drawing on R.D. Laing’s theory on existential psychiatry, and offers an interpretation of Alice, the good girl’s degeneration into a terrorist from a new perspective.The introduction briefly introduces Lessing’s life and works, explains R.D. Laing’s theory, and presents the central argument and structural design. The body explores Alice’s ontological insecurity, divided self, and final degeneration. Chapter one describes Alice’s ontological insecurity, which is the reason of her divided self and comes from four aspects. Chapter two elaborates Alice’s divided self. Her inner self is trapped in phantasy and futility. To conform to others and gain the meaning of existence, she uses her false self to communicate with others and performs as a good daughter, a tender mother, an abiding citizen and a radical revolutionary. Chapter three analyzes the disastrous effect of the divided self, which is the root cause of her degeneration. The conclusion summarizes the main ideas and arguments. Even though Laing’s theory first appears in medical domain, it can be used as a powerful critical method to analyze the literary character’s inner world as well. Just medical advances in technology and instrument cannot cure all schizophrenia, and the simple use of military forces cannot suppress all terrorism. Only by properly handling the problems of an individual’s inner world, can we get the key to solve these social problems.