Psychological Resistance In A. S. Byatt's Possession

The character Mary Katherine Blackwood from Shirley Jackson’s book We Have Always Lived In The Castle has quite a few of the same issues going on in her life as the problems presented in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”. Three of the most prominent issues that are shared between these two individuals are the feeling of mistreatment by parental figures, the almost vampiric draining of the life out of the individual by an authority figure, and the draining ability the authority figure has on the community around them. This kind of individual is referred to as a life draining vampire in Plath’s poem.

When individuals have previously experienced a saddening, painful past, their desire to retain these past memories allows them to temporarily stay away from the hurtful reality. Their preservation of former events deludes their consciousness as they are unwilling to confront reality and wish to permanently live in a seemingly happy, satisfying illusion. In The Underpainter, Jane Urquhart suggests that when individuals are unwilling to move on from the past, their desire to maintain their past memories causes them to create a long-term irrational illusion since the reality they are currently living strongly contravenes with their illusion. As a result of their unwillingness to embrace with reality, others who unexpectedly are able to perceive

It is easy to get caught up in one’s own world when life picks up the pace and everything seems hectic; along the way decisions are made unconsciously to let go of people who were once held dear. It is easy to be torn between what appears to be important and what is trivial. Amidst the mess that is life, various things contend for one’s attention, and what really matters might not be so clear. In “The Last Rung on the Ladder” the guilt that consumes the narrator over his sister’s suicide becomes an essential part of his identity even as he tries to adjust to her loss. In “Sanctuary” Jim Hammer is in the very first stages of realizing he is guilty of his friend’s death, and the responsibility has not yet taken its toll on him. The history and experiences of one’s identity affect the way an individual reacts to guilt, if one has never understood the impact that relationships have upon past and present selves then it is difficult to fully digest the impact of his/her actions.

Abuse can have a large psychological effect on an individual. Both Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson and The Death of Jayson Porter by Jaime Adoff demonstrate that abuse leads to mental instability within the characters. This is evident through the literary criticism of the psychological lens shown in the behaviour of the characters in relation to many of Freud’s theories. Some of these theories included the Oedipus complex, the interpretation of dreams and the unconscious mind (Britannica Encyclopedia, 2014). Both authors demonstrate this through three types of abuse; substance abuse, verbal abuse and neglect.

According to Elizabeth Lowell, “Some of us aren't meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.” Sometimes what every situation needs is an outsider to flip the script and create a new outlook on everything. In Shirley Jackson’s novel, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” the speaker, Merricat, is an outsider of society on many levels, such as mental health, gender, and that she is an upper class citizen in a poor area. Although Merricat is mentally unstable, her outsider’s perspective criticizes the social standard for women in the 1960s, indicating that social roles, marriage, and the patriarchy are not necessary aspects in life such as it is not necessary to have the same outlook on life as others.

From a brief reading of “Under the Influence”, by Scott Russell Sanders, one can understand being shamed and being condemned for actions that is not their own fault, but instead brought upon themselves as a consequence of others. Son of an alcoholic, Sanders was a deprived man, who believes himself--a criminal. However, the crime, which he has set in stone is a debt that can truly never be fulfilled, because the victim is already dead. To exact life into the meaning over Sander’s adversity is to invade within the depths of the man’s skeleton closet; by understanding the meaning behind inner privacy between father and son. The bond between father and son can be said as the man’s greatest fortunate or self-inflicted trauma, in Sander’s reality it proves to be the latter, as it latches itself on to his son. The series of misfortune events continues delegate, not only in Sander’s past reality, but also in his present. Writing as a memoir to dead father, writing as a note to his son, and writing as an outlet of relief can all be explained as the purposes of the narrative. However, this offsets who it is actually to—himself, as a reminder to not become his father.

Shirley Jackson writes about this social conduct in order to reflect her childhood trauma of being bullied by other kids, leading to her depression in school (Kellman 1213). Conveying the selfishness of man through her writings, Shirley Jackson displays her consciousness within “The Lottery” and shows how society can influence the conscious at developmental stages and leading examples through psychoanalytic lens.

Beginning with the late 1960’s counterculture in San Francisco, music and drugs will forever be inter-linked. Hippie bands such as the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and Phish are associated with marijuana, mushrooms, and LSD. Modern electronic “rave” , or club music is associated with MDMA or Ecstasy. When one thinks of rock and roll, sex and drugs immediately come to mind. While the use of drugs is not essential for the creation or performance of all new music, it was certainly in important factor for the counterculture music of the late 1960’s. While some of the most important and influential music was made with the help of psychoactive drugs, it was often to the detriment of the artist. Janis

A Psychologist’s Persuasion: Tim Leary’s Captivation of the Counterculture Movement As a strong promoter of psychedelics and a fanatic of conventional psychotherapy, Tim Leary has elicited many emotions during a major turning point in history--the Counterculture Movement. The Counterculture Movement served as one of the most rebellious points in history marked the beginning of society’s rapid change. Although his works stirred controversy, Tim Leary’s forthright criticism and outspokenness helped shape the Counterculture Movement’s aspirations. Prior going towards to what it desired, Leary’s influence drew unity from his audience, regardless of morals.

” Williams’ theory therefore suggests that the terms must necessarily co-exist in order to define each other. The “pervasiveness of consent ” therefore characterises the fifties, against which these Beat texts can be contrasted. Theodore Roszak’s 1969 article ‘The Making of a Counterculture,’ helps define beat ideology as “heightened self-expression and often a rejection of political and authoritative institutions… a negative spirit of the times coupled with a specific lifestyle .” Both On the Road and Howl and their author’s lifestyles of their writers reflect this criterion, in idiomatic and contextual terms, lending to the notion that they are, by the overall nature of their existence, countercultural texts. Roszak’s adolescent counterculture often seems the embodiment of Dean and Sal’s ‘beatitude’ in On the Road “when they pulse to music…value what is raunchy… flare against authority, seek new experience, ” but it is similarly descriptive of the naked, sometime vulgar language Ginsberg employs in Howl “who bit detectives in the neck… let themselves be fucked in the ass.” (13) The Beats admire the vibrancy naturally present among youth, and although this is a style for which their writing has been criticised, it is a move away from the traditionally

Repression of memories is a psychological concept that has haunted modern psychology for years. Repression of memories also known as “rememory” defined by the mind pushing away traumatic or shocking experiences into a dark corner of a person’s unconscious. As this idea developed and began to be studied more thoroughly, slavery became an institution in which researchers saw promise in drawing conclusions about the dangers of repressing memories. In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, the character narratives of Paul D and Sethe exemplify the dangers of repressing memories. Both disconnect from and push away unwanted emotional traumas or experiences from their past. However, this effort doesn’t pay off and their repression of memories is not successful. Through the use of symbols such as Paul D’s tobacco tin and Sethe’s scars and lost child, Morrison demonstrates how repression of the past isn’t effective and how it always comes back to haunt a person who doesn’t correctly cope with their trauma. Paul D and Sethe live unfulfilled lives as a result of repressed memories.

World famous poet, Edgar Allan Poe, once wrote in one of his poems, “From childhood’s hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.” In those lines, Poe demonstrates his love for being alone because his childhood was full of isolation, meaning that the writer grew used to the feeling. Since boyhood throughout his adult life, Edgar Allan Poe endured through a series of unfortunate events. From his parents dying, his animosity with his foster father, his consecutive poverty, to facing rejection from the public, the man’s life was as ominous as his fiction. This essay will discuss the reason behind the writing of one of Edgar Allan

The author is a young man who obliviously is not self-effacing about his own usage and enjoyment of drugs. He used LSD, which in the fall of 2001 he realized that he had not seen the drug in ages and it was nowhere to be found; not for others or even for himself and statistics showed the decrease of the acid and its usage also. Dissatisfied with the situation He went to see his friend, Professor Peter Reuter who is a

Byatt identifies an inspiratory moment for Possession as the time she saw a well- known Coleridge scholar working in the British library and “mused that much of what she {Byatt} knew of Coleridge had been filtered through that individual … ‘I though, it’s almost like a case of demonic possession, and I wondered, has she eaten up hers?’” Byatt thought of writing a novel based on the Browning’s but conclude that she couldn’t do it “because, (A) the Browning scholars might sue for libel, and (B) that left me no room for invention.” She adds that she wanted to portray Browning “with the kind of warmth of a Shakespearean comedy.” She also says Possession: A Romance was “partly provoked” by John Fowle’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

Everyone has a novel within them -- or at least thinks they do. Unfortunately, few manage to get that novel out of their heads and into print. In Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, Margaret Fuller Slack is certain that she would have been a famous novelist, except obligations to her family got in the way of actually writing a book. She is unendingly bitter about how her life turned out. Margaret urges readers to ignore the pull of outside forces and to specifically ignore the pull of sex, which she claims ruined her life. However, between the lines Masters cleverly shows that the blame for dreams unrealized lie with Margaret herself. Through Margaret’s story, Masters studies how a person can cause their own unsuccess and still genuinely blame everyone but herself.