（英语语言文学专业论文）从霍妮的动机理论解读约翰·霍克斯作品中的心理危机与冲突.pdf

acknowledgements i wish to extend my deepest thanks to my supervisor professor liu yuhong first, who helps a lot in academic field. she read the whole manuscript and gave me a good deal of useful advice, which made this thesis completed after several times revision. i am extremely grateful for her patience and guidance throughout the writing of this thesis. during my postgraduate study at the foreign languages school, professor liu enlightened me on american literature, especially on the postmodernism and taught me many useful methods of study, which gave me much light. i am deeply moved by her profound knowledge and industrious work and i have learnt a lot from her. i believe it is great useful for me to do the research work in the future. i am also greatly indebt to professor zhang shuning who helped me solve many problems of english and american literature and professor xu jiwang who often gave me a lot of advice on the way of research. i am also indebt to all the teachers at the foreign language school: professor wei han and professor lu xiaohong who have instructed me and helped me a lot in the past three years. finally, i give my warmest thanks to my wife ai qiaoxia and daughter gu yingyu and other friends, for instance, song zenan who offered me loving care and sincere help during the years of studying and writing. 2 从霍妮的动机理论解读约翰霍克斯作品中人物的心理危机与冲突从霍妮的动机理论解读约翰霍克斯作品中人物的心理危机与冲突 2004 级英语语言文学专业：谷拥军 研究方向：英美文学 导师：刘玉红 教授 内内 容容 摘摘 要要 约翰霍克斯是美国当代著名的先锋派作家， 第二层皮和情欲艺术家是他重 要的代表作。 第二层皮中卡桑德拉的死和情欲艺术家沃斯特的死在评论界引起了 许多争论，本文将以美国著名心理学家卡伦霍妮的动机理论为基础，分析作品中人物以 及人物之间的关系，以此来剖析主人公卡桑德拉和沃斯特的死因及其共同意义。霍妮动机 理论最显著的特点就是它在分析人物和人物之间相互关系时强调人物复杂经历的重要性， 它主张从环境、文化对人物影响的社会学的角度入手，用人物当前的心理结构来解释人物 及其之间的复杂关系。 以霍妮的动机理论来考察第二层皮和情欲艺术家中的卡桑德拉和沃斯特，笔 者发现第二层皮中斯基波的形象并没有像其他评论所赞扬的那样高尚，米兰达看上去 也不是一个谋杀者，卡桑德拉是两个性质相冲突的防御策略谦卑型防御策略和进攻型 或报复型防御策略斗争的牺牲品； 情欲艺术家中的沃斯特之所以厌恶女人，疯狂 地报复女人，这只是源于他童年时代所遭受的心理创伤，而加隆枪杀沃斯特，这是因为他 意识到自己的超然防御策略无用，而被进攻型防御策略有效性所强烈吸引的结果。 霍妮的动机理论还彰显了作者在作品中立场的矛盾性：他赞扬某个防御策略的同时又 强调其毁灭性。无意识地，作者对于与自己相近的防御策略持肯定态度，而对于与自己相 悖的策略则持消极态度。本文把霍克斯在第二层皮中所宣扬的防御策略和他在情欲 艺术家中所认可的防御策略进行了比较，发现霍克斯的内心冲突只是在小说中表达了出 来而没有最终找到解决方法。作者似乎有意隐瞒他的真正立场。不过，作者用这种方式来 处理自己的内心冲突不仅可以增加作品内容的丰富性、复杂性、而且也可使作品本身更加 不确定，从而使作品更具有解读空间。 关键词：关键词：霍妮；动机理论；谦卑型防御策略；进攻型防御策略；超然型防御策略 3 an interpretation of the psychological crisis and conflict in john hawkes works from a horneyan approach abstract john hawkes （1925-1998） is commonly recognized as an avant-garde writer in the contemporary american literature. second skin (1964) and the passion artist (1979) are his representative works. the causes of cassandras and vosts death have aroused a lot of arguments and discussions. adopting the motivational theory of karen horney american famous psychologist, the thesis tries to analyze the characters and their inter-relationships. the most significant characteristic of horneys theory is that it insists on the importance of a persons complicated evolutionary history. it explains human beings and their relationships in terms of its functions within the present structure of the psyche. a horneyan reading of the main characters and their relationships in these two novels leads to my argument that skippers image in second skin is not as lofty as commonly expected. also miranda is not a murderer as she appears to be. cassandras death is a direct outcome of the conflict between two opposite defensive strategiesself-effacement and aggression. in the passion artist vosts aggressive behavior in his dealing with women is a strong manifestation of his childhood traumas. gagnon kills vost because he finds that his detachment-defense strategy does not work. furthermore, the psychological analysis of the characters proves helpful for us to understand the authors psychological conflicts in his writing of the two works. on one hand, he allows the reader to see the destructiveness of certain defense strategy while he seems to approve of it. unconsciously, the author tends to validate characters whose defensive strategies are similar to his own, and to satirize those who resort to different solutions. through a rough comparison between the self-effacing defensive strategy in second skin and the aggressive solution in the passion artist, the thesis argues that hawkes inner conflicts are expressed but not resolved in the novels. purposely, hawkes would not like to want reader to know where he stands. it is his unique way of handling his inner conflicts that does much to produce the works richness, complexity and elusiveness, which turn out to be its lasting charm. key words: horney; motivational theory; self-effacing defensive strategy; aggressive defensive strategy; detachment 4 introduction being commonly recognized as a famous avant-garde writer in the contemporary american literature, john hawkes (1925-1998) is also a figure in a postmodern pantheon of experimental novelists including john barth, william gass, and william gaddis. born in stamford, connecticut on august 17, 1925, and reared in new york city and in juneau, alaska, hawkes, toward the end of word world which interrupted his higher education in harvard, became an ambulance driver of the american field service in italy and germany. he said he began life in the late summer or early fall of 1947 when he married sophie, went back to harvard, met albert guerard and began to write. in 1949, with publication of the novella charivari, hawkes started his literary career. after his second skin (1964), he won a high praise. “second skin,” observes thomas leclair, “is his most widely known book and is, in my opinion, one of the best american novels of the last 30 years.” (1979: 27) it was so popular that it became a runner-up for national book award. the novel helped him establish his status as a major contemporary american author. hawkes is a prolific author. during his writing career of more than 40 years, he has produced totally 18 novels and novellas, 4 plays and a volume of poetry. among them there are the beetle leg (1951), the lime twig (1961), the blood oranges (1971), death, sleep secondly, use of landscape projected out of first-person perspective; thirdly, use of landscape totally contained by psyches; and fourthly, the returnwith a differenceof the visionary historical landscape found in phase one (maccurdy 1986:319). the diversity of hawkes fictional landscape indicates his continual development as an author, and besides, it gives the reader a chance to get a clear idea on his evolving worldview. thematically, hawkes exposes the dark side of human beings, which astonishes the reader greatly. “what is real in hawkes novels,” observes hoffman daniel, “is terror as nightmare, hallucination, and emptiness” (1979:276). it seems that his characters are navigating the minefield and that there is no hope for his characters in many stories. however, in his most stories, he endows his stories with wish and also expresses his yearning for a better life by creating a utopia. they challenge the reader “to sift through elements embedded in the past, with the ghosts of regret death existing side by side with hope for the future” (hamstra 1985). on the one hand, hawkes shows nightmares in the stories; on the other hand, he offers dreams by which he imagines a solution to the ugly world. he presents us with a superb panorama of human 5 beings psychological state. the structure of his novels shows his departure from the conventional. he said that he “began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting, and theme” (hawkes 1965:144). this radical statement foregrounds his determination to liberate both author and reader by means of revitalizing the genre of the novel. he does not mean that his works lack plot, character, setting, and theme. what he insists on is that plots need not follow the traditional and chronological format of beginning, middle, and end, that characters need not be totally knowable, that themes need not be packaged for the readers benefit or resolved at that conclusion (greiner 1985:20). once he has freed his writing from familiar ways, he offers the reader the imaginative vision. he unifies his works and advances the story by “recurring image and recurring action” (hawkes 1965:149). it seems that hawkes is “closest to the spirit of the grotesque painters” (dillon 1967: 310). once, a painter friend of earl ganz advised that to “think of brueghel” was a good way for him to understand hawkes. (dillon 1967: 310) in brueghels paintings, there is a beauty in the terrible world, a beauty he expresses in color. for instance, the color imagery (green, yellow, white, and black) in second skin is established with such conviction in the first chapter that the reader learns to look for the recurrence of the colors as clues to tone and character. so they will find hawkes fiction readily accessible in spite of the surface difficulties. after having a brief introduction to john hawkes and his writing characteristics, next, i will give a brief introduction to second skin and the passion artist. in second skin, skipperthe narrator, the protagonist, survives and escapes from a world of impotence. he narrates his story around the death, from the death of his parents, his wife, his son-in-law fernandez, and to the death of his daughter cassandra. being haunted by the death images, he has been searching for a way to deal with those death-powers in his life. sometimes, he engages himself in the memorization of his past life in the “gentle island.” sometimes, he imagines himself living in the “wandering island” where he has been entitled to great power to inseminate cows. in this nowhere place he feels the existence of himself symbolically at last. fifteen years later, hawkes returns, in his the passion artist, to the barren, desolate landscape of his earliest work. konrad vost, the protagonist exists in a death-ridden, incarceration, misogynistic world in which he attempts to exercise a rigid control over himself and others and to articulate the relationship of his desires, both conscious and unconscious, to external reality. early in the story, vost allows himself to be seduced by a girl, and instead of enjoying the experience, he uses it to ferret out his daughters prostitution and then reports her to the police. soon after the female inmates of la violaine rebel, vost answers the call for volunteers to quell them. soon he wanders in the outskirts wasteland of town that reflects his 6 own mindscape. after he discovers and turns in a female escapee to the police, the tables are turned on him and he finds himself imprisoned by women. he undergoes several disorienting therapeutic sessions in a barn, where he recalls all of the oppressive and sadistic things that has happened to him as a child. vosts long journey ends when he becomes the passion artist by discovering the saving potential in sex with one of the female prisoners. shortly after this moment of bliss, he is shot by gagnon as he appears at the gate of the prison. about the character of skipper in second skin, greiner agrees that skipper is a savior, and he argues that skipper has failed to prevent the suicide of his adult daughter cassandra, whose death he has “fought against the hardest” (1985: 93). on the character of vost in the passion artist, hawkes points out that he has tried to create “the worst possible protagonist he could think ofa sort of malvolio who is crazed by his ignorance of women” (1984: 139). and miranda is “the spirit of death that is the ages, the worlds” (bush 1973: 115). but when they are examined from the horney s motivational theory, it is found that skipper is not so lofty as he appears and vost is not the worst person hawkes creates, and also, miranda is an energetic woman who loves life very much. karen horney (1885-1952), american, has been widely recognized as the first great psychoanalytic feminist. her motivational theory replaces biology with culture and accounts for human relationships and their behavior in terms of currently existing constellations of defenses and inner conflicts. according to horney, trying to overcome feelings of being unsafe, unloved, and unvalued in a potentially hostile world, compulsive people are driven to move toward, against, or away from other people. these moves give rise to the neurotic solutions of compliance or self-effacement, aggression or vindictiveness, and detachment or resignation. for instance, skipper in second skin and konrad vost in the passion artist both develop all three of horneys interpersonal strategies of defense. thus, it is necessary to give a brief introduction to each defensive strategy. self-effacing/compliant people often grow up under the shadow of somebody. they seek love and protection through a self-subordinating devotion. their bargain is that if they are generous, loving people, they will be well treated by fate and other people. if their bargain is not honored, they may recourse to belief that could bring him what they long for. for example, skipper in second skin, his defense is self-effacing when he deals with his relationship between miranda and the reds. usually vindictive/ aggressive people have had a particularly hash childhood. their desire for love is replaced by ambition and a drive toward “vindictive triumph” (horney 1945:194). they appreciate mastery, abhor helplessness, and are ashamed of suffering. they need to achieve success, prestige, or recognition and are often sadistic. they fear the emergence of compliant trends because, they believe, this will make them vulnerable in the evil 7 world and would threaten their bargain. miranda and grown-up konrad vost in the passion artist belong to this type. the resigned/detached person could not rebel openly against “cramping influences” (horney 1950: 275). the detached people handle this situation by withdrawal. they worship freedom, which is a freedom from what they feel as coercion rather than a freedom to fulfill themselves, and independence. their bargain is that if they ask nothing of others, they will not be bothered; if they try for nothing, they will not fail; and if they expect little of life, they will not be disappointed. it includes young konrad vost and gagnon. each defensive move is overemphasized. when one of the feelings is involved in basic anxiety, it will repress other impulses to make its solution work. other trends continue to exist but operate unconsciously and manifest themselves in disguised and devious ways. when the character finds it does not work, the repressed tendencies will come to the surface and will become the major solution of their inner conflicts. roughly, the thesis proceeds in the following way: the on-going chapter examines characters and relationships in second skin, and tries to demonstrate that cassandra does not kill herself but is forced to die. chapter ii will continue to study characters and relationships in the passion artist, and points out the reason of vosts death. in chapter iii, the last chapter, too, i shall compare the conflicting philosophies embodied in these two novels in terms of defensive strategies and to get some sense of where john hawkes stands in relation to the characters and their values. 8 chapter i second skin: self-effacing characters and cassandras death the first person to look at literature from a horneyan perspective is karen horney herself. with regard to the gender of defensive strategies, she argues that the greater incidence of self-effacement in women and aggression in men is a product of culture. she feels that defensive strategies may be both employed by members of sexes. indeed, there are many aggressive women and self-effacing men in literature. her view is also applicable to hawkes works. in second skin, miranda rebels against male-oriented world and asserts her claim bravely. also cassandra is evidently compliant while at last she fights against skipper her father for her own freedom and happiness. one of the major details of second skin is the death of cassandra. indeed, it is a bit difficult to decide whether she kills herself or she is forced to die by her father, or miranda, or both. to solve the problem, we should not ignore three relationships between skipper and cassandra, between miranda and skipper, and between cassandra and miranda. if we understand their defensive strategies and the nature of cassandras relationship with her father and with miranda, the reason of her death will be intelligible. 1.1 the relationship between skipper and cassandra 1.1.1 the forming of skippers morbid dependence on cassandra skipper, the narrator of the story, has lost his providers of love and happiness and protectors of safety. when he is very young, and it is high time that he turned to his parents for love and protection. however, he has lived through suicides of his parents. he tells the reader that he is a son of a mortician. he remembers his crouching in front of the locked bathroom door and desperately screeching out brahms on a cello in an attempt to prevent his father from putting a bullet through his head. and before long, he also fails to stop the death of his mother. i knew at once what had happened, i was alone, i could do nothing but alternate my days between the lavatory and the back of the hearse where i instinctively stretched out to await my final vision of that experience denied me in space. (second skin in the following it will be shortened as ss.7) it seems that he has been abandoned by his family, and pitilessly has been devoid of safety, love and belonging. he is left nothing but “the seed of death” (ss12). as a result, he develops all three 9 kinds of horneys inte