《金色筆記》中精神分裂之研究︰精神分裂為從施虐被虐關係中突破的過程

全文

(1)國立中山大學外國語文研究所碩士論文. 指導教授: 陳豔姜博士 Advisor: Dr. Yuan-Jung Cheng. 《金色筆記》中精神分裂之研究︰精神分裂為從施虐被虐關係中突破的過程 A Study of Schizophrenia in The Golden Notebook: Schizophrenia as a Process of Breakthrough from the Sado-Masochistic Relationships. 研究生: 黃慧寬 Student: Carol Hui-kuan Huang. 中華民國九十一年七月.

(2) A Thesis Submitted to The Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature National Sun Yat-Sen University. Advisor: Dr. Yuan-Jung Cheng. A Study of Schizophrenia in The Golden Notebook: Schizophrenia as a Process of Breakthrough from the Sado-Masochistic Relationships. Student: Carol Hui-Kuan Huang. July 2002.

(3) Acknowledgement I am greatly obliged to my advisor Professor Yuan-jung Chen for her incessant instruction and encouragement. Besides, I’d like to express much gratitude to Professor Shu-li Chang and Professor Shing-ya Huang for their careful inspection and insightful comments. To my friend Emily Hsiu, I am deeply grateful for her support. To Roy Chen, I owe much gratitude for his timely helping hand. To my friends, I always owe heartfelt gratitude for their unconditional love. Above all, to my beloved parents, I owe unbounded gratitude for their endless support and patience..

(4) i. Abstract. My thesis aims to explore how Anna successfully makes her breakthrough from her schizophrenia by emancipating herself from sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.. R. D. Laing redefines. schizophrenia as a process for individuals to cope with the modern world whose increasing division has caused the divorce between body and mind.. Laing points out. that individuals are confined in such social phantasy systems as political parties, family, and marriage.. Schizoid individuals suffer from the alienation between body. and mind in striving to extricate themselves from this confinement.. Moving a step. further than Laing, Lessing highlights that for schizoid individuals, sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships are, in fact, responsible for schizoid individuals’ breakdown.. In The Golden Notebook, Lessing demonstrates how Anna endeavors to. get rid of the entanglement from sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships as well as the confinement of the Communist Party, family, and marriage. In Chapter One, I delineate the background for the emergence of a new interpretation of schizophrenia under the influence of anti-psychiatry movement and the association between Lessing and one major proponent of the movement, Laing. Both Lessing and Laing emphasize using the perspective of existential psychoanalysis to analyze the relation between schizophrenia and interpersonal relationships.. In. Chapter Two, I focus on depicting how different victims, including Anna, are trapped in different social phantasy systems and in sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships.. Anna’s schizoid process starts with her recognition of phantasies. fabricated by different social systems, which leads to her attempt to extricate herself from such confinement as the Communist Party and marriage.. In Chapter Three, I. apply Laing’s theory of false self system to explore how conflicting social demands.

(5) ii. result in Anna’s multiple false selves.. These false selves lead to Anna’s. disintegrated life, which is the main cause of Anna’s writer’s block.. Therefore, in. Chapter Four, I depict Anna’s effort to reintegrate her life by experimenting with different representations of her self in novels and journals.. However, Anna realizes. that the difficulty in overcoming her writer’s block lies in the lack of an integrated Anna.. In Chapter Five, I discuss how Anna recognizes her schizoid condition from. observing Saul Green’s in her love affairs with him. She also realizes that her total breakdown is inevitable unless she can extricate herself from their sado-masochistic relationship. In addition, the revelation from her dreams also helps her to realize that the principle of joy-in-destruction plays an important role in subverting wrong divisions in society. In conclusion, I stress Anna’s emancipation from schizophrenia and Lessing’s new interpretation of representation in The Golden Notebook.. For Anna, she. successfully achieves her emancipation from total breakdown by elevating herself from sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships.. With the revelation from. Camus’s Sisyphus myth, she redefines herself as a boulder-pusher, discarding her role as a victim.. For Lessing, she offers a new interpretation of the gaps between reality. and art through the collage of different representations of Anna’s life..

(6) 論文名稱:《金色筆記》中精神分裂之研究: 精神分裂為從施虐被虐關係中突破的過程頁數: 九十三頁校所組別: 國立中山大學外國語文研究所畢業名稱及提要別: 九十學年度第二學期碩士學位論文題要研究生: 黃慧寬指導教授陳豔姜博士論文提要本文旨在探究朵樂絲．雷辛的《金色筆記》中安娜如何從施虐被虐的人際關係中解放並成功地突破精神分裂狀態，羅納．雷因重新定義精神分裂為個體在處理因世界不斷分裂所造成的身心分裂的一種過程，而精神分裂者在試圖從社會集體幻想體制中解放的過程中遭身心分裂之苦，雷辛比雷因更進一步地指出施虐被虐的人際關係才是真正造成精神分裂者崩潰的原因，在《金色筆記》中雷辛展示安娜如何試圖擺脫政黨婚姻的限制及施虐被虐人際關係的糾纏。第一章描繪在反心理運動影響下所衍生之新解精神分裂的背景及雷辛和此運動的主要支持者雷因之間的關係。第二章著重於描寫安娜及其他受害者如何陷於不同的社會集體幻想體制及施虐被虐的人際關係。安娜的精神分裂狀態始於體認出由不同社會體制所捏造的虛幻，而此種認知促使她企圖從共產黨及婚姻的限制中解放。第三章以雷因的虛我系統理論來探究互相衝突的社會需求如何造成安娜多重虛我，這些虛我導致安娜分裂的人生，也是造成她寫作障礙的主因。在第四章中安娜試圖藉由在小說及日記中實驗不同的自我呈現來重整人生。第五章討論安娜從她和索爾格林之間施虐被虐的關係中察覺出自己的精神分裂狀態。此外，夢中的啟示有助她了解她精神分裂及社會崩解的原因。結論則點出安娜從精神分裂解放及雷辛的藝術突破。對安娜而言，從卡謬的神話西西佛斯的啟示中拋棄受害者的身分，重新定位自己為社會中的推石者，藉以從施虐被虐的人際關係中解放。對雷辛而言，她的藝術突破在於從安娜人生不同呈現的拼貼中找出現實與藝術之間落差的新詮釋。.

(7) Table of Contents Abstract. i. Chapter One: Introduction. 1. Chapter Two: The Interpersonal Entanglement. 11. Chapter Three: The Inner Split. 35. Chapter Four: The Writer’s Block. 55. Chapter Five: The Breakthrough from Schizophrenia. 68. Chapter Six: Conclusion. 86. Works Cited. 90.

(8) Chapter One: Introduction Before the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler introduced term schizophrenia1 in 1911, the study of schizophrenia had appealed to many psychologists and psychiatrists. Among them, Freud represented the most dominating force in the pathological study of schizophrenia (Freud did not use the term schizophrenia, but used dementia praecox instead).. He proposed that the patient who suffers from dementia praecox. regresses to a state of primary narcissism, which is characteristic of a period of infancy during which the distinction between id, ego, and superego disappears (Macmillan 363).. However, with the advent of the anti-psychiatry movement2,. psychosis is no longer regarded as a pathological phenomenon.. R. D. Laing, a major. anti-psychiatrist, interprets psychosis as “a kind of return of the repressed of modern society” (Frosh 147).. Laing applies a theory of the split between inner self and false. self to explain psychosis.. The false self exists as the complement of inner self.. Experience does not impinge directly on this inner self while direct relationships with the world are the province of false self.. In Laing’s interpretation, psychosis is the. sudden removal of the veil of the false self’s outer conformity.. As a result, the inner. self begins to pour out accusations of persecution by the very persons with whom the false self3 has been complying (Shean 239).. Schizophrenia, as one kind of. psychosis, is regarded “as an intelligible and potentially healing response to conflicting social demands” when the schizoid individual is filled with extreme. 1. Eugen Bleuler, who was influenced by Freud, rejected the term dementia praecox and began to take interests in the psyche of what he preferred to call the “schizophrenic” patient. See Louis A. Sass, Madness and Modernism, p. 379. 2 The anti-psychiatry movement originates from three dissatisfactions with the traditional institutional psychiatry. First, a dissatisfaction with its viewing men as the product of blind instinctual forces. Second, a dissatisfaction with the traditional definition of madness as a malfunctioning of the psychic mechanism. Third, a dissatisfaction with the traditional therapist/patient relationship in which the patient is inferior to the therapist. See Max Charlesworth, “Sartre, Laing, and Freud” in Sartre and Psychology, p. 23. 3 See R. D. Laing, The Divided Self, p. 96..

(9) Huang. 2. ontological insecurity toward his own identity (Showalter 238). Doris Lessing is one of the writers who are intrigued by Laing’s pioneering view of schizophrenia4.. Actually, in London in the late 1950s, Lessing, Laing, and Clancy. Sigal formed a circle of mutual influence5.. In Lessing’s novel The Golden Notebook. (1962), she reveals a similar interpretation of schizophrenia with Laing’s.. Though in. the novel Lessing uses the term “madness” or “breakdown,” instead of the term “schizophrenia,” the description of the protagonist or other characters corresponds to Laing’s description of schizoid individuals.. In the Preface to The Golden Notebook,. Lessing describes “breakdown” as “a way of self-healing, of the inner self’s dismissing false dichotomies and divisions” (GN 8).. In Lessing’s view,. schizophrenia is a process of coping with the world whose increasing divisions have driven the individual to divorce his mind from his body.. Like Laing, Lessing also. notices that social behavior is based on the principle of compartmentalization, which leads people to make a false division between the sane and the insane (Vlastos 129). Ironically, the institutionalized mental patients are forcibly confined in isolation. Therefore, Lessing attempts to demonstrate resistance against the desire of compartmentalization in The Golden Notebook.. In the Preface to The Golden. Notebook, Lessing asserts her purpose of composing this novel.. “[T]he essence of. the book, the organization of it, everything in it, says implicitly and explicitly, that we must not divide things off, must not compartmentalize” (GN 10).. Lessing aims to. demonstrate the possible emancipation from total breakdown through presenting the struggle between the desires of division and of the integration in The Golden Notebook.. 4. Joyce Carol Oates thinks that Lessing’s writing reinforces and is reinforced by the writing of her important contemporaries, like Ronald Laing and Abraham Maslow. See Earl G. Ingersoll, ed., Doris Lessing: Conversations, p. 38. 5 The character Saul Green in The Blue Notebook is characterized according to Lessing’s friend.

(10) Huang. 3. The Golden Notebook is composed of a realistic novel, Free Women, and five notebooks: the Black Notebook, the Red Notebook, the Yellow Notebook, the Blue Notebook, and the inner Golden Notebook.. Lessing attempts to explore the schizoid. condition of the protagonist, Anna Wulf, who strives to overcome her writer’s block through experimenting with fictional writing and journal-keeping. is framed by the realistic story, Free Women.. The whole novel. This story presents Anna’s. entanglement with the family dispute of her friend, Molly, an ex-communist, who was divorced from Richard, a successful businessman, and lives with her son, Tommy, and Richard’s wife, Marion.. The Black Notebook depicts Anna’s awakening from her. false interpretation of her colonial life in Africa, which serves as the background of her first novel Frontiers of War.. In her reminiscence of her life in Rhodesia, she. comes to realize that, in Frontiers of War, the color bar is romanticized and misinterpreted as nothing but a product of delusion.. The Red Notebook focuses on. Anna’s inspection of her role in the Communist Party. As an intellectual, Anna is responsible for the publication of the political writings by the other party members. In those works, Anna notices that the indulgence in the “communist myth” permeates the whole party. The indulgence in this myth increases Anna’s split between her role as a writer and her role as a communist.. The Yellow Notebook examines the. association between Anna’s schizophrenia and her sexuality through her experimental novel The Shadow of the Third, which she does not publish.. In The Shadow of the. Third, Ella, the fictional Anna, observes that the conflict between her role as a lover and her role as a writer leads to her schizophrenia.. The Blue Notebook expounds. Anna’s schizophrenia and her efforts to rise from the schizoid condition.. Saul Green,. an American ex-communist, lodges with Anna and develops a relationship with her.. Clancy Sigal. See Gayle Greene, Doris Lessing: The Poetics of Change, p. 8..

(11) Huang. 4. Their relationship intensifies Anna’s schizophrenia because she is gradually influenced by his schizoid condition.. Ironically, Saul also serves as a mirror. reflecting Anna’s own split personalities.. A character in her dreams whom she calls. “the projectionist” enlightens her to look at her life from a new perspective and through her dreams Anna recognizes the similarity among her, Saul, and the projectionist.. Recorded in the inner Golden Notebook is Anna’s final attempt to. reintegrate her inner split. My thesis aims to apply R. D. Laing’s theory to elucidate that in The Golden Notebook Anna avoids total breakdown because she can extricate herself from sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships.. R. D Laing’s theory on the interaction. between the individual and the society is applicable to explain that Anna’s schizophrenia results from her indulgence in social phantasy systems.. In Self and. Others (1961) Laing analyzes the significance of phantasy in the construction of group and the sacrifice people have to make in order to maintain that phantasy. He thinks that all social groups operate by means of phantasy, which people are all prone to be drawn into at the cost of their own identity.. People are immersed in the social. phantasy system so much so that they regard as unreal what contradicts their phantasy. In the social phantasy systems, those who willingly comply with others’ will play the role of victims, while those who deprive and manipulate the victims’ will play the role of persecutors or, in Anna’s term, cannibals. As Anna observes in The Golden Notebook, there are willing victims in politics, family, and marriage.. Michael’s friends, who are thought of as the traitors to the. Communist Party, are actually victims in the conflicts within the self-dividing Party. Marion and the wives of Anna’s lovers are the victims of marriage. senses that she also becomes a victim of the “communist myth.”. Anna also. However, she. strives to extricate herself from the influence of myth by leaving the Party. In the.

(12) Huang. 5. family, Tommy represents the victim of the conflicting ideologies his parents instill into him. Tommy struggles to get rid of the influence from both his parents.. His. father, Richard, a successful businessman, demonstrates to him the force of capitalism while his mother, Molly, a communist, instills Tommy with the communist ideal.. He. attempts to extricate himself from his family phantasy since he suffers from the ideological conflict between his parents. The victim’s compliance with the cannibal can be best demonstrated in sexual relationship or in marriage.. Further analyzing the cause of the victim’s compliance,. Anna discovers the interdependence between the cannibal and the victim.. This. interdependence does not lie in mutual help, but rather in mutual damage.. Claire. Sprague, in her “Doubletalk and Doubles Talk: The Golden Notebook,” describes the interdependence between the cannibal and the victim as she unveils the hidden force of destruction in the notebooks.. The cannibal takes pleasure in destruction while the. victim willingly submits himself to the cannibal.. Therefore, they become indulged. in the relationship of destruction and being destroyed.. To be more specific, this. interdependence is characterized as a sado-masochistic6 relationship between the cannibal and the victim7. Rene Girard provides a sociological interpretation of the necessity of the victim in the society in Violence and the Sacred.. According to Girard, the relationship. between the victim and the persecutor has been internalized by individuals, and sacrifice has been circumscribed in social institutions.. 6. Leslie J. Moran applies. According to The Fontana Dictonary of Modern Thought, sado-masochism means the coexistence in the same person of both sadism and masochism, or their alliance as the complementary halves of a two-person relationship. Its adjective “sado-masochistic” is usually reserved for fantasies of destruction or being destroyed, causing pain or receiving pain. 7 Since the term “the cannibal/victim interpersonal relationship” can not fully express the mutual dependence and destruction between the cannibal and the victim, I choose the concept of sado-masochistic interpersonal relationship to further explain the interaction between the cannibal and the victim..

(13) Huang. 6. Girard’s theory about the victim in the sacrifice to the analysis of social violence. She employs society’s need for victims to explain the force behind the sado-masochistic interpersonal relationship. Girard’s Deceit, Desire, and the Novel provides more clues as to the society’s innate need for victims.. He uses his theory on desire to analyze the strong. interdependence between the sadist and the masochist.. A corresponding. interpretation of the sadist/masochist interaction can also be found in the existentialistic work, Being and Nothingness8, written by Jean-Paul Sartre. explores the sadist’s need of appropriating the victim as an instrument.. He. Furthermore,. he reverses the dominance of the sadist, for hidden behind the dominance of the sadist is his innate need for the victim.. The vicious circle between cannibal and victim, or. between sadist and masochist is thus formed.. This vicious circle, as Lessing implies. in The Golden Notebook, leads to schizophrenia. In Self and Others, Laing indicates that those who desire to leave the social phantasy system are considered “mad.”. In Laing’s interpretation, schizoid. individuals are those who are trapped in the untenable position9since it is impossible for them to leave and unbearable to stay in the social phantasy systems.. They are no. longer willing to comply with others for the sake of the social phantasy system.. In. his work The Divided Self (1960) Laing further elucidates schizophrenia from a new perspective based on existential theories10.. 8. As Laing asserts, “[t]he reality of the. In Being and Nothingness(1943), Sartre focuses on the individual freedom and responsibility, equating consciousness with freedom. He thinks there is no difference between the being of man and his being-free. He illustrates the struggle of freedom between self and the Other in his description of the sado-masochistic relations that lie at the heart of all interpersonal exchanges. He concludes that conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others. Through his discussion of self and the Other, he questions the superiority of the sadist over the victim in terms of desire. 9 By untenable, Laing means that it is impossible to leave and impossible to stay as the individual strives to shake himself out of the false sense of reality. See R. D. Laing, Self and Others, p. 26. 10 According to Max Charlesworth, existentialism has profoundly influenced psychiatry. The Divided Self, as the product of this influence, is full of Sartrean themes about the possibilities and limitations of our relations with what Sartre calls “the Other.” See “Sartre, Laing, and Freud” in Sartre and.

(14) Huang. 7. world and of the self are mutually potentiated by the direct relationship between self and other” (DS 82).. In Laing’s theory, the schizoid individuals refer to “individuals. whose experience is split in two ways: a rent in their relation to the world, and a disruption of their relation to themselves” (Shean 237).. According to Daniel. Burston’s interpretation of Laing’s idea of schizophrenia, [s]chizophrenia is a symptom of extreme ontological insecurity, with its attendant fears of engulfment, petrification, and implosion; the consequent defense mechanisms are designed to maintain the person’s precarious sense of identity, such as the flight into fantasy and the deliberate cultivation of the rupture between the so-called real and false selves. (238) The anxiety of engulfment implies the fear of losing the schizoid individual’s being. The feeling of implosion suggests the emptiness of the inner self and the threat from reality.. Petrification involves the fear of being objectified and the power to objectify. the other. In the schizoid condition the self system goes through “the rupture,” with the inner self more charged with fear and the false self more mechanical with compulsive behaviors (Shean 239-40).. This split entails the false self’s compliance.. This compliance, on the one hand, indicates “a betrayal of one’s own true possibilities” and, on the other hand, serves as “a technique of concealing and preserving one’s own true possibilities” (DS 98).. Furthermore, the false self. develops into multiple personas as the split of the inner self gets worse.. Laing’s. concept of a false self system is influenced by Carl Jung’s interpretation of persona. Carl Jung offers a similar interpretation of the interaction between the inner self and the false self11.. Jung thinks that as the false self develops into a false self system, the. Psychology, p. 24. In Self and the Others, the complementarity in interpersonal relationship is also influenced by Sartre. 11 See Anthony Storr, ed., The Essential Jung, p. 94-5..

(15) Huang. inner self is growing weaker.. 8. The more compliant the false self is to the others, the. more futile and empty the inner self becomes. Anna’s exploration into the cause of her writer’s block turns out to be an inspection into her schizoid condition.. Her “frigidity” as writer, mother, communist,. and lover is symptomatic of her schizophrenia. of engulfment and implosion.. The other symptoms are her anxiety. Intensely and constantly conscious of the threat from. reality, she senses that her inner self is tormented with the fear of being engulfed by reality.. Besides, the anxiety of implosion depicts the futility or emptiness of her. inner self.. Anna’s inner self and false self split to defend her inner self against the. threat of the reality.. However, her false self’s compliance with others’ will results in. her indulgence in playing different roles to satisfy others’ need.. As a result, this. indulgence results in the development of multiple personas—the thinking Anna, the obedient Anna, and the Anna trapped in love.. As these personas constantly conflict. with one another, Anna’s split is further intensified. Anna’s writing, which was meant to provide a lucid presentation of her life, turns out to be an evasion from reality.. Writing, in fact, deludes her since she indulges. herself in her own interpretation of reality—in the form of diary, notebook, or novel. Finding out that her first novel Frontiers of War is poisoned by the wrong tone of lying nostalgia, Anna tries to represent her life through the fictional character Ella in The Shadow of the Third.. However, realizing that there are gaps between her. fictional self and reality, Anna turns to recording life without fictionalizing it so as to reconstruct reality.. Nevertheless, to her disappointment, in her attempt to record. reality in her journals, words fail to express reality as it is.. She comes to realize that. the divorce between words and meanings leads to the gap between reality and writing. Anna’s writer’s block results from her inability to bridge the gap between reality and writing..

(16) Huang. 9. As writing fails to elevate Anna from her mental chaos, Anna reaches the edge of total breakdown in her affair with Saul. mirror to Anna’s own.. Saul Green’s schizoid condition serves as a. Isolated from the influence of society, Anna comes face to. face with her inner split. Besides the revelation from Saul Green’s schizoid condition, her dreams serve as an unconscious guide to steer her away from her inner chaos.. Different from the. conscious act of self-inspection, the unconscious plays an important role in Anna’s extrication from total breakdown.. In her dreams, she recognizes that the principle of. joy-in-destruction common in human beings is responsible for her inner split. Besides, the projectionist in the dreams, as the unconscious counterpart, reveals reality with the logic of the unconscious.. A new significance of her life is. represented in dreams and thus she can recognize what has been overlooked in her consciousness. Therefore, Anna obtains a chance to see her life in perspective. She obtains a new revelation that, instead of being a cannibal or a victim, she determines to be a boulder-pusher in her modified myth of Sisyphus so as to elevate herself from the sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships. Although Laing fails to specify how the schizoid individual makes his breakthrough, his interpretation of sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships does enlighten Lessing in her exploration into the cause of schizophrenia.. Moreover,. Lessing aspires to offer possible emancipation from sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships.. Through the dialogues among the thinking Anna, the writing Anna,. and the unconscious Anna, Lessing concludes that Anna succeeds in extricating herself from sado-masochistic interpersonal relationships by generating a new sensibility.. Anna, discarding the role of a compliant victim, determines to play the. role of a boulder-pusher helping people who are trapped in marriage.. For Lessing. herself, she has successfully offered a new interpretation of the gaps between reality.

(17) Huang 10. and writing through the artistic representation of juxtaposing novels and journals in The Golden Notebook..

(18) Chapter Two: The Interpersonal Entanglement In The Golden Notebook, Lessing fully demonstrates the social causes for schizophrenia in the context of the interpersonal relationship in which the schizoid individual feels victimized and views other people as cannibals.. She discovers that. the schizoid individual indulges himself in putting on the mask of a victim and willingly submits himself to the cannibals’ will.. The schizoid individual is indulged. in his submission so much so that his subjectivity is threatened with disintegration. R. D. Laing provides a sociological interpretation of how the cannibal/victim interpersonal interaction leads to schizophrenia.. Laing in Self and Others elucidates. social phantasies as the cause for the schizoid individual’s indulgence in taking a false position as a victim.. Laing’s theory is based on E. Jaques’s analysis of the impact of. social phantasies on individuals. means to construct a group.. In Jaques’s opinion, social phantasies serve as a. “The type of experience a group gives us is one of the. main reasons, if not for some people the only reason, for being in a group” (SO 24). People tend to be attracted to groups without being aware of the loss of their individual identity.. The reason why people are eager to get the experience of being. included in a particular set of human collectives is that “the close-knit groups that occur in some families and other groupings are bound together by the need to find pseudo-real experience that can be found only through the modality of phantasy” (SO 24).. For most people, “[t]he normal state of affairs is to be so immersed in one’s. immersion in social phantasy systems that one takes them to be real” (SO 23).. In. other words, they live in the phantasy they take for reality and discard their true identity for a false position. trapped in it.. Taking the false position, they also find themselves. As Laing asserts, “The more untenable a position is, the more difficult. it is to get out of it” (SO 26).. The schizoid individual refers to the one who. endeavors to get rid of a doubly false position (doubly false because he failed to see.

(19) Huang 12. that it was false), in which he felt numb by the feeling of reality.. To extricate. himself from this doubly false position, he needs to recapture the feeling of reality so as to undo the doubly false position.. “To shake one’s self out of the false sense of. reality entails a derealization of what one falsely takes to be reality, and a rerealization of what one falsely takes to be unreality” (SO 23).. Therefore, in Laing’s view, the. process of striving to accomplish the process of derealization and rerealization is described as the schizoid condition. Andrew Collier in his R. D. Laing: The Philosophy and Politics of Pcychotherapy further explains R. D. Laing’s theory on why people are immersed in social phantasies.. Laing, in Collier’s observation, presents the idea of a false. objectivity to elucidate the definition of sanity. capacity to distinguish reality from phantasy.. The essence of sanity lies in the Besides, learning how to distinguish. the objective world from the subjective one requires the help of other people because when “their confirmation of an experience induces belief in its veracity, their disconfirmation throws doubt on it” (Collier 86). confirm is not necessarily true.. However, what other people. A false objectivity arises “from agreement about. what is real and what is not, when the agreed position is mistaken” (Collier 86).. The. most absurd belief can be held by a thinking adult when the community he lives in shares this belief.. Since phantasy is a form of wish-fulfillment, it is a more pleasant. mode of experience than reality.. So it is inevitable for a “normal” individual to be. indulged in phantasy, or to misrecognize it as reality without totally jeopardizing the practical relations if the phantasy can be shared with a close group of other people. Therefore, people tend to look for people of like mind just to give “pseudo-objectivity to [their] phantasies” (Collier 86). In The Golden Notebook, Lessing also analyzes the connection between the schizophrenia of the protagonist, Anna, and social phnatasies.. Working on her.

(20) Huang 13. notebooks, Anna comes to realize that the only solution to her ongoing breakdown is to wake up from her phantasies—her false nostalgia, her false ideal of communism, her false concept of family, and her false hope for marriage and love. Phantasy in Memory The phantasy in Anna’s memory thwarts her from producing an integrated Anna. As Evelyne Keitel asserts, “[i]dentity is usually effected by the unification of present and past experience” (Keitel 42).. Anna, in reexamining her identity as a writer,. comes to realize that her past experience is distorted in her first novel and that she fails to unify her present and past experience.. Anna notices that her first novel,. Frontiers of War, is actually composed on the basis of a lying nostalgia.. “[T]he. emotion it came out of was something frightening, the unhealthy, feverish, illicit excitement of wartime, a lying nostalgia, a longing for licence, for freedom, for the jungle, for formlessness” (GN 77).. Here the unhealthy excitement refers to the. indulgence in the pleasure in pain.. In the session with Mrs Marks, Anna admits that. it is this indulgence in the pleasure in pain that breeds a lying nostalgia for her past. “I say: ‘Mrs Marks, that sad nostalgic pain that makes me cry is the same emotion I wrote that damned book out of’” (GN 219).. This nostalgia is dispelled after one. recent incident reminds Anna of a past tragedy, which has been romanticized in her memory.. Anna discovers that this lying nostalgia bears a destructive power of. misinterpreting the racial issue in the African colony.. People’s innate desire for. destruction leads to their desire for distorting reality into whatever they desire. lying nostalgia is the product of this force of destruction.. The. “Nothing is more powerful. than this nihilism, an angry readiness to throw everything overboard, a willingness, a longing to become part of dissolution. This emotion is one of the strongest reasons why wars continue” (GN 78).. Anna is ashamed of creating this nostalgia because. this nostalgia justifies people’s desire for destruction.. This desire for destruction, on.

(21) Huang 14. the surface, is a cause for breaking the limit but actually brings people to mutual damage.. The very nostalgia also justifies Anna’s desire to be free to create her. memory in whatever way she likes. nothing but her phantasy.. Therefore, what Anna depicts about her past is. Keitel’s critique on narrated history explains the. emergence of Anna’s phantasy.. Keitel points out that the inevitable reduction of. narrated history, if taken to extremes, will produce phantasy.. He explains that since. “[e]very attempt to shape, structure and interpret life necessarily entails a reduction of complexity,” narrated reality is , to a certain degree, falsified reality (Keitel 46). Likewise, Lessing attempts to demonstrate that Anna’s reality is expressed in a sterile and falsifying way by being taken to its extremes in the Black Notebook.. Trying to. solve her writer’s block, Anna realizes that the false interpretation of her memory hinders her from unifying her past and present experience and thus makes it difficult for her to define her identity. Phantasy in Communism Of all the notebooks, the Red Notebook best exemplifies people’s desire to join a group because they are attracted to social phantasies.. Examining Anna’s history as a. communist, we will gain a better understanding of the relationship between social phantasy and her schizophrenia.. Anna joins the communist party in order to gain a. sense of integration, hoping that this sense of integration will prevent her from further breakdown.. However, staying in the Communist Party accelerates the process of. breakdown.. In Africa, as she observes, the Communist Party is also fabricated by a. lying myth in which the principle of self-division is inherent.. The existence of any. Communist Party lies in the members’ accordance with this self-dividing principle of the party at any given moment (GN 80).. In Anna’s observation, the British. communists in Africa fail to build up a connection with the African movement just because they neglect the incompatibility between communism and the colonial.

(22) Huang 15. situation.. There is a wide gap between ideology and reality1.. “In our case, the. inner logic of ‘centralism’ made the process of disintegration inevitable because we had no links at all with what African movements there were—that was before the birth of any Nationalist movement, before any kind of trade union” (GN 80). Back in England, Anna at first hesitates to join the Party.. In Anna’s original. perception, the Party gives forth the fear of the violent world and the protection for those exiled from society.. However, for the party, the intellectuals, who are always. drifting in and out of it, are often regarded as unwelcome members.. They can not. remain in the party because they are all aware of the fact that the Communist Party has been “saddled with a group of dead bureaucrats who run it, and that the real work gets done in spite of the center” (GN 152).. The split between the center’s policy and. the practical work implies the self-dividing characteristic of the party. However, like Molly, Anna joins the party in spite of herself.. They join the. party just to prove that they are truly practicing their ideal in communism even though they are aware that it is actually a lying myth fabricated by those who run it. After entering the party, Anna is still critical of it for its lying myth.. The. communists are immersed in the myth, which is intended to constitute the party, to such an extent that they assume their role as communists at the stake of their real selves.. Therefore, as Anna observes, two “personalities” evolve from the same. person.. When discussing political issues in the Party, one communist talks as if he. owns a second personality.. On the one hand, he sticks to the communist myth.. On. the other hand, he is fully aware of the enormous gap between ideal and reality. Anna also observes the split lurking in some communist when the communist publicly asserts that only communism can improve the world while in his mind he doubts the. 1. See Anita Myles, Doris Lessing: A Novelist with Organic Sensibility, p. 30..

(23) Huang 16. possibility.. “At the end of the dinner, he said: ‘The reason why we don’t leave the. party is that we can’t bear to say good-bye to our ideals for a better world.’ Trite enough. And interesting because it implies he believes, and that I must, only the Communist Party can better the world” (GN 156).. Although this ideal clashes with. what he said previously, he still claims the ideal to be true and takes the false position as a communist.. This obvious inconsistency between what he truly believes and. what he says is characteristic of the communist’s being trapped in the communist phantasy. Anna also recognizes her split personalities through observing the self-deceiving tone used by her and the other communists.. In her talk with Molly, she notices the. conflict between two personalities towards communism.. She has no control over the. emergence of her two personalities—“the dry, wise, ironical political woman, or the Party fanatic who sounds, literally, quite maniacal” (GN 156). the symptom of the conflict between her split personalities.. Anna’s stammer is. Hearing the. communist’s tone of self-deception, Anna realizes the cause for her stammer.. “His. tone the simple, bluff, I-am-a-good-fellow tone which I use myself sometimes” (GN 271).. Her stammer worsens when she lectures to the communists on art as the. product of group consciousness, not as that of the individual egotism.. On the surface,. communism encourages the members to give up their egotism for the sake of community.. This principle is illustrated in the emphasis on the return to a. communist concept of art back in the Middle Ages. Art during the Middle Ages was communal, unindividual; it came out of a group consciousness. It was without the driving painful individuality of the art of the bourgeois era. And one day, we will leave behind the driving egotism of individual art. We will return to an art which will express not man’s self-divisions and separateness from his fellows but his responsibility.

(24) Huang 17. for his fellows and his brotherhood. (GN 312) However, Anna can not quench her desire for the individual art, which actually clashes with the communist concept of art2.. Seeing that joining the party only makes. her more isolated and split, she decides to leave the party.. “I came home thinking. that somewhere at the back of my mind when I joined the Party was a need for wholeness, for an end to the split, divided, unsatisfactory way we all live. joining the Party intensified the split” (GN 156-7). essence of communism is alienation.. Yet. To her disappointment, the. “I continue however with my point:. ‘Alienation. Being split. It is the moral side, so to speak, of the communist message” (GN 320).. Leaving the party not only stops her from total breakdown but also. awakens her from social phantasies.. To lift herself from the false position of living. in the phantasy, Anna tries to discard her previous false position. However, people seldom wake up from this phantasy even after they think they have recognized it.. “Sometimes I think the one form of experience people are. incapable of learning from is the political experience. People are reeling off from the CP in dozens, broken-hearted and cynical to the degree that they were loyal and innocent before” (GN 395).. Even worse, people are willing to accept a tyrant as a. great man just to sustain that phantasy.. Discussing Stalin’s death with Molly, Anna. finds how strange it is that people would rather indulge themselves in the phantasy of creating a great man than face the reality of having a tyrant.. “[H]ow odd it was we. all have this need for the great man, and create him over and over again in the face of all the evidence” (GN 158). Anna comes to realize that the common goal of the party members lies in. 2. However, Anna is not blocked by this clash. She is indulged in writing parodies of the healthy Communist story, of the African story (Blood on the Banana Leaves). See Dorothy Brewster, “The Golden Notebook” in Doris Lessing, p. 39..

(25) Huang 18. sustaining the communist phantasy even though some of them know well that the ideal rooted in every member’s mind also confines them in the false position as communists.. For Anna or those who are aware of the communist myth, remaining in. the party will lead to more inner disintegration.. Leaving the party will free them. from the control of communist myth. Phantasy in Family In addition to the disillusion from the political phantasy, Anna also awakens from the family phantasy.. However, this awakening is obtained from the striking incident. of Tommy’s suicide.. Tommy is a typical victim confined by the family.. Before he. commits suicide, there are signs of hysteria in his trying to be extricated from this family phantasy.. Tommy’s hysteric giggle is suggestive of his near breakdown.. When Anna asks him if Richard, his father, is trying to influence him in some way, she finds that his giggle, which is not from a naïve young man, infects her.. “The. giggle was new—harsh, uncontrolled, and malicious. At the sound Anna felt rise in her a wave of panic. She even felt a desire to giggle herself. She calmed herself, thinking: He hasn’t been here five minutes, but his hysteria’s infecting me already” (GN 236).. In the last conversation with Anna before his suicide, Tommy’s giggle,. accompanying his mockery on the impossible extrication from the family phantasy, suggests his inner spite.. “Now he came and sat down opposite her; apparently. himself, the obstinate slow-moving boy she knew. Then he gave a sudden bright frightening giggle and she saw the flash of spite again” (GN 248).. Finally, he. commits suicide since there is no possible way to break away from the confinement of family3.. 3. Tommy’s suicide only appears in Free Women rather than in the notebooks. The suicide in Ella’s novel mirrors Tommy’s suicide. The existential implication in suicide will be further discussed in Chapter Four..

(26) Huang 19. Laing’s theory of family phantasy and schizophrenia is applicable in explaining the cause of Tommy’s suicide.. In Self and Others, Laing applies the concept of. complementarity in the interpersonal relationship to explain why Tommy is unable to get rid of the influence of his parents.. Laing’s theory of complementarity is derived. from Sartre’s ideas on the interpersonal relationship.. “Every relationship implies a. definition of self by other and other by self” (SO 69).. One person’s identity depends. on the affirmation from the complementary other’s identity. needs his parents to define his identity.. Therefore, the child. “By complementary I denote that function of. personal relations whereby the other fulfils or completes self” (SO 66).. This. relationship depends on one person giving and the other receiving so as to confirm each other’s identity. However, as Laing explains, there is another force of resisting this complementary interpersonal relationship, especially between parents and their sons or daughters.. “At some point a child rebels against the nexus of bonds which bind. him to these parents and siblings which he has not chosen; he does not wish to be defined and identified as his father’s son, or sister’s brother” (SO 70). impossible for a child to escape from family bonds.. However, it is. According to Laing, the. impossibility of leaving family phantasy results from the situation that as soon as a man tries to get out of the “box” that confines him, he is stopped by the others since to them the box is the whole world, and “to get out of the box is tantamount to stepping off the end of the world, a thing that no one who loves him could sit by and let happen” (SO 26).. Since a man is prohibited from getting out of the “box,” the. extreme resort is either getting mad or committing suicide.. On the other hand, if one. stays in a tenable position, one is granted with an “identity” or “personality” without intention of extricating oneself.. If any member of a group begins to wake up from. the group phantasy systems, he is sure to be classified as mad or bad by the group, for.

(27) Huang 20. their phantasy is reality, and nothing but that is real. In The Golden Notebook, Tommy suffers from the conflictual desires of defining himself as his father’s son or his mother’s.. His father, as a successful businessman,. demonstrates the power of capitalism while his mother instills him with that of communism.. At first, Tommy disapproves of capitalism; instead, he believes in his. mother’s communist ideal.. However, after reading Anna’s notebooks about her. doubts on what she used to believe in, Tommy awakens to the fact that people are all trapped in social phantasy.. Tommy’s failure to get rid of the enslaving impact from. his parents predicts his suicidal attempt. Tommy loses his eyesight from his suicide attempt. of his refusal to accept reality.. His blindness is suggestive. His blindness is foreshadowed in Anna’s description. of this young man when he comes to visit her.. “His lips even made small. preliminary movements before a mouthful, like an old person’s. Or like a blind man…Anna felt a small rising hysteria, as she had [been] sitting opposite the blind man, looking at the sightless eyes that seemed as if they were clouded with introspection” (GN 50). sensibility.. Blind as he is to family phantasy, he is constructing another. “His voice had gone back to what they knew: the hysteria, the immanent. giggle, the shrillness that had been in it on that evening he had visited Anna, had gone entirely. His voice, like his movements, was slow, full and controlled, every word authorized by a methodical brain” (GN 331-2). gained another sensibility remains uncertain.. On the surface, whether he has However, for Anna and Molly, Tommy. has totally abandoned his life and acted as a “zombie.”. “He’s had this terrible. damage done to him—and yet now I see him as a sort of zombie, a menace, something to be frightened of. And we all feel it. No, he is not mad, that’s not it, but he’s turned into something else, something new…” (GN 355).. For Anna and Molly,. this result is far more fearful than madness, for Tommy has deliberately objectified.

(28) Huang 21. himself, protesting against the deluding society. Phantasy in Marriage Besides the family phantasy, Anna also observes that marriage, which is superficially a protection for women, is actually a cage designed for them.. In the. Black Notebook, as Anna feels attracted by George, she also senses the threat of being confined in the domestic cage he builds.. “And yet—this man, George, the trapped. one, the man who had put that unfortunate woman, his wife, in a cage, also represented for me, and I knew it, a powerful sexuality from which I fled inwardly, but then inevitably turned towards…” (GN 130).. Even though the husband is having. an affair, the wife still can not extricate herself from the domestic cage that her husband makes for her. Besides, Anna’s affairs with married men enlightens her on the confinement of marriage.. In the Yellow Notebook, a dinner party illuminates Ella, the fictional. Anna, that Ella is no different from her lover’s wife. the wife are all in need of Paul’s protection. (GN 282).. Ella realizes that both she and. “In fact I was sheltering under him”. Ella also misjudges that her lover Paul will divorce his wife and marry. her since his marriage life is only for convenience.. To her disappointment, she. realizes that he never intends to marry her, for he regards his marriage as the result of a young and insensible decision.. He says to Ella, “You’re very wise not to get. married, Ella. Be sensible and stay that way” (GN 188). In the Blue Notebook, when listening to the conversation between her lover, Nelson, and his wife in a dinner party, Anna realizes that the phantasy of marriage is revealed as a metaphor that two animals are caged and bound to each other with hatred.. Seeing how Nelson’s wife is locked “in some permanent, controlled. hysteria” (GN 428), Anna realizes that either the husband or the wife is at the extreme edge of breakdown when this hysteria is disguised behind the good-humored talk..

(29) Huang 22. Despite the fact that marriage is nothing but a cage, both man and woman still take the false position as husband and wife. wife in spite of their mutual hatred.. They maintain their identity as husband and. To maintain this false position, they have to. wrap this hatred with “the deadly, hysterical, self-punishing humour” (GN 430). At first, Anna is surprised to find how they can be accustomed to living in the cage for years.. Then she realizes that this is already prevalent in society.. “[T]his. was nothing more than I had seen in a hundred English marriages, English homes; it was the same thing taken a stage further, taken into awareness and self-consciousness” (GN 429). It is difficult for women to extricate themselves from the phantasy of marriage because they are perplexed with the resentment against inequality between men and women and the guilt from this resentment.. “The woman’s emotion: resentment. against injustice, an impersonal poison” (GN 299).. On the one hand, women,. including Anna herself, are inflicted with the housewife’s common disease—women’s resentment against unfairness between men and women because women should spend time worrying over details, or pay attention to every family member’s schedule.. On. the other hand, women, who are tired of being tied up with the housework, suffer from the guilt that they long for work, or for a time of their own.. They have to fight. all kinds of guilt they recognize as irrational, usually when they desire to work, or to have more time for themselves.. According to Phyllis Chesler4, R. D. Laing. discusses the cause for this female disturbance in his Sanity, Madness and the Family. In the case of Ruth Gold5, Laing observes that women feel guilty about betraying their femininity until they regain it.. 4. “Women are often psychiatrically incarcerated for. Phyllis Chesler, in Women and Madness, applies R. D. Laing’s theory on how women are “hospitalized within their marriage to the cause of women’s schizophrenia.” See p. 95. 5 Ruth Gold feels that she is punished because of her desire for being an artist. This desire is regarded as a betrayal of her femininity..

(30) Huang 23. rejecting their ‘femininity’ as defined by those close to them—and are released or are considered as ‘improved’ when they regain it” (94).. Women’s desire for. self-fulfillment is misinterpreted as the cause for their madness. For Anna, the process of self-exploration enlightens her with a new understanding of the meaning of love, which she interprets as an aspect of phantasy. In the Yellow Notebook, she comes to realize that the theme of the novel The Shadow of the Third implies that naivety is embedded in the concept of love.. “The theme is. naivety. From the moment Ella meets Paul and loves him, from the moment she uses the word love, there is the birth of naivety” (GN 197).. It is this naivety that blocks. her from perceiving reality in the relationship between lovers.. “Any intelligent. person could have foreseen the end of this affair from its beginning. And yet I, Anna, like Ella with Paul, refused to see it” (GN 197).. This naivety is derived from her. willingness to let Paul destroy her intelligence.. “He destroyed in her the knowing,. doubting, sophisticated Ella and again and again he put her intelligence to sleep, and with her willing connivance, so that she floated darkly on her love for him, on her naivety, which is another word for a spontaneous creative faith” (GN 197).. This. “creative faith” is actually a phantasy created by women in love. Later Anna perceives that this naivety, which explains her indulgence in the phantasy, leads to madness.. Despite the awareness of Paul’s breaking up with her,. she still continues to act as if he would eventually visit her.. For Anna, being unable. to stop herself from doing something irrational is madness.. She obtains a new. revelation that the illusion of happiness, which is derived from naivety, causes her madness.. “And, standing there and looking at herself, she could see how this. madness was linked with the madness that had prevented her from seeing how the affair would inevitably end, the naivety that had made her so happy” (GN 209).. The. deluding happiness is an evasion from the cruel reality of being dumped by her lover..

(31) Huang 24. Realizing her evasion from reality, she also recognizes her split personalities. Cannibals and Victims In The Golden Notebook, the indulgence in social phantasy also traps the individuals in a cannibal/victim interpersonal relationship, which leads to schizophrenia.. Lessing implies that the cannibal/victim interpersonal relationship. causes the schizoid individual’s identity crisis, and even leads to his total breakdown. This interpersonal relationship involves the invasion of the victim’s freedom and deprivation of the victim’s own will. of his parents’ conflict.. Take Tommy for example.. He is the victim. His father tries to convince him of the significance of. capitalism while his mother instills him with the ideal of communism.. Tommy,. experiencing the impact of the conflict between these two ideologies6, suffers from the paralysis of his will.. One the one hand, he desires to be a communist like his. mother, or Anna, rather than his father, a businessman.. On the other hand, as. Tommy sees how much his mother and Anna feel disillusioned about the Communist Party, he begins to suspect that these communist ideals are all phantasies. Furthermore, as he observes, the interpersonal relationship is actually grounded on the preservation of egotism; in other words, self-protection has been deemed as the first priority of survival.. Tommy thus concludes, “I think people aren’t good at all, they. are cannibals, and when you get down to it no one cares about anyone else. At the best, people can be good to one other person or their families. But that’s egotism, it isn’t being good” (GN 247-8).. Anna herself also perceives this cannibal/victim. interpersonal pattern when urging Richard to save his son Tommy from being a family victim. “There are people who need victims, dear Richard. Surely you understand that?. 6. Sartre describes ideologies as “false totalities” which arise from the need to legitimate power for the rulers or impotence for the ruled. For Tommy, the definition of power relation his father believes in is contradictory to that his mother believes in. See Thomas R. Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, p. 132..

(32) Huang 25. After all, he is your son” (GN 341). In addition, in the Yellow Notebook, the conversation between Ella and her father reveals a similar observation of human relationship.. In her father’s opinion,. the chaos and complexity of human society results from the mutual invasion among people.. People are like cannibals hurting one another.. The best solution to this. cruelty is isolation so that people can stop from feeding on the other’s subjectivity. “People are just like cannibals unless they leave each other alone” (GN 409). Men and Women In terms of male-female relationship, Anna finds that men tend to be cannibals or persecutors sapping her or the other women’s will.. In the Yellow Notebook, the. fictional Anna, Ella, describes her relationship with her husband, George, who actually becomes her jailor.. Her torture does not end until she leaves his house.. “The last few weeks with George were a nightmare of self-contempt and hysteria, until at last she left his house, to put an end to it, to put a distance between herself and the man who suffocated her, imprisoned her, apparently took away her will” (GN 172). As to her relationship with her lover Paul Tanner, Ella is supposed to be free since they are not married; nevertheless, she feels that her life is based on Paul’s will. “Now she felt, not free, but disconnected or as if she floated on someone else’s will—Paul’s” (GN 190). However, Anna observes that the relationship between the cannibal and the victim is not merely one-sided.. Anna thinks that it takes the surrender of the other. people’s will to make an individual a cannibal.. “The people who are oh so willing to. be victims are those who’ve given up being cannibals themselves, they’re not tough or ruthless enough for the golden road to maturity and the ever-so-wise shrug” (GN 544). In the inner Golden Notebook, Anna discusses with Saul the price people pay for being wise.. “You simply don’t get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you’ve been a.

(33) Huang 26. raving cannibal for thirty years or so” (GN 543).. It requires the victims’ sacrifice to. build up the cannibals’ path to maturity because the cannibal preserves his identity and subjectivity by depriving the victim of his will and freedom. In The Golden Notebook, the victims’ willingness to submit themselves is best exemplified in the male-female relationship. way, willing to submit themselves to men.. As Anna observes, women are, in some From Willi Rodde, Anna’s lover in. Africa, she understands how women are willing to give up their will when she sees how Mrs. Fowler, the hostess of the Mashopi hotel, enjoys being bullied as if she were a well-brought-up small girl.. Anna understands that this willingness to be inferior to. men has already existed no matter how hard she tries to deny it.. “It was from Willi. that I learned how many women like to be bullied. It was humiliating and I used to fight against accepting it as true” (GN 106).. Even in herself she also finds this. willingness as the negative side of being a woman.. “No, what terrifies me is my. willingness. It is what Mother Sugar would call ‘the negative side’ of the woman’s need to placate, to submit. Now I am not Anna, I have no will, I can’t move out of a situation once it has started, I just go along with it” (GN 425). Another weakness of Anna’s is shown in her relationship with Willi.. Anna. describes why she lives with Willi even though they neither like nor understand each other.. She explains that the strong bond between them lies in her weakness and his. cruelty. But nothing stopped us from choosing other partners. That I did not, isn’t surprising, because of that quality in me I call lethargy, or curiosity, which always keeps me in a situation long after I should leave it. Weakness? Until I wrote that word I never thought of it as applying to me. But I suppose it does. Willi, however, was not weak. (GN 83) In short, Anna is willing to play the role of victim because her will is weaker than.

(34) Huang 27. Willi’s. Therefore, the victims willingly give up themselves to satisfy the need of the cannibals while the cannibals count on the victims’ will to satisfy their need.. The. unbreakable and dependent relationship between the cannibal and the victim is explained as an essential part of the structure of society.. However, this. interdependence is not derived from mutual help, but from mutual need for destruction or being destroyed.. In a word, there exists a sado-masochistic. relationship between the cannibal and the victim. Sadism and Masochism In “The Legal Subject of Sado-Masochism,” Leslie J. Moran argues that the sado-masochism in interpersonal relationship may correspond to the relation between cannibals and victims, which Lessing has explicated in The Golden Notebook. Moran’s interpretation well explains that the coexistence of sadism and masochism underlies the ritual of sacrifice.. Moran applies Rene Girard’s theory on the. relationship between violence and rituals7 to the construction of the legal subject of sado-masochism.. Rene Girard’s theory aims at explaining that, when the form of a. ritual has been replaced by the social institutions, the interaction between the persecutor and the victim is thus embedded in the interpersonal relationships, which, as Girard observes, is a sado-masochistic relationship.. The society’s need for. victims does not diminish with the disappearance of the sacrificial rituals. victims appear in the judicial system or other social institutions.. Instead,. However, the need. for victims and the impulse to impose violence on them, which are embedded in individuals, explain the vicious circle of the sado-masochistic interpersonal relationship.. 7. Rene Girard argues that since the force of violence circulates in society, the judicial system or other social institutions replace sacrificial rituals, choosing victims for sacrifice..

(35) Huang 28. As to the sadist, Jean-Paul Sartre offers a lucid explanation of the self’s sadistic relation with the Other. Sadism is passion, barrenness, and tenacity. It is tenacity because it is the state of a For-itself which apprehends itself as engaged without understanding in what it is engaged and which persists in its engagement without having a clear consciousness of the goal which it has attached to this engagement. It is barrenness because it appears when desire is emptied of its trouble. (399) The sadist experiences himself in the face of the Other as a force of transcendence by using the masochist’s body as a synthetic totality and center of action so as to escape from his facticity8.. He aims at making use of the Other not. only as an object but as a form of pure transcendence incarnated.. In sadism the. emphasis is on the instrumental appropriation of the incarnated-Other.. Sartre. concludes that sadism is the sadist’s refusal to be incarnated, a flight from all facticity, and a seize at the facticity of the Other.. Sadism is also an effort to incarnate the. Other through violence, or through utilizing the Other so as to make the Other present in pain.. In pain facticity invades consciousness, and ultimately the reflective. consciousness is fascinated by the facticity of the unreflective consciousness.. But at. the same time the pain is procured by means of employing the Other’s body as an instrument.. The body of the torturing For-itself is no longer anything more than an. instrument for giving pain.. Thus from the start the For-itself can give itself the. illusion of getting hold of the Other’s freedom instrumentally; that is, of plunging this freedom into flesh without ceasing to be the one who provokes, who grabs hold, who. 8. According to Sartre, facticity is the For-itself’s necessary connection with the In-itself, hence with the world and its own past. It is what allows us to say that the For-itself is or exists. The facticity of freedom is the fact that freedom is not to be free. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 631..

(36) Huang 29. seizes, etc (Sartre 399).. Sartre also points out that sadism and masochism are the. two reefs on which desire may founder.. Whether the sadist surpasses his disturbance. toward an appropriation of the Other’s flesh or gets intoxicated with his own trouble, he focuses only on his flesh and asks nothing of the Other except that the Other should be the look that aids him in realizing his flesh (Sartre 404). Sartre thinks that what the sadist seeks to appropriate is the transcendent freedom of the victim (Sartre 405). discovers his mistake.. It is only when the victim looks at the sadist that he. In other words, when the sadist experiences the absolute. alienation of his being in the victim’s freedom, he realizes that he has not recovered his being-outside and that sadism fixes him in the activity by which he seeks to recover his being-outside (Sartre 405).. The sadist, through the victim’s look, finds. out that the victim’s freedom is what he wants to enslave, and at the same time he realizes the futility of his efforts (Sartre 406). more it escapes him.. The more he desires this freedom, the. Sadism and the failure of desire form a vicious circle.. “Sadism is the failure of desire, and desire is the failure of sadism” (Sartre 405). The interaction between Ella, the fictional Anna, and Paul Tanner may best demonstrate that their sado-masochistic male-female relationship starts with Paul’s jealousy.. His groundless jealousy comes from the role he sometimes plays—his. shadow.. His shadow, a self-mocking heartless rake, closely follows Ella’s shadow,. the wise, serene, and calm woman.. “And Ella now sees, side by side with the wise,. serene, calm woman, her shadow, the shape of this compulsive self-hating womanizer. These two discordant figures move side by side, keeping pace with Ella and Paul” (GN 194).. On the surface, Paul is playing with his “positive” self as a good man;. however, Ella knows that his “negative” self, his shadow, is waiting to sabotage their relationship.. With the awareness of the incompatibility between his self and his. shadow, bitterness keeps growing inside from her mockery of the gap between Paul’s.

(37) Huang 30. self and his shadow.. On the surface, he seems to play the role as a victim, but, in. fact, it is he who is manipulating her.. On the surface, Ella seems to be the origin of. his pain, but, in fact, he causes all the bitterness in Ella. In Anna’s relationship with Saul, her willingness to submit herself is recognized as the important factor in the vicious circle of their sado-masochistic relationship. Anna realizes this when Saul demands her golden notebook.. “I was annoyed at. myself, because I wanted it, yet so nearly gave it to him. I knew this need to comply was part of the sadistic-masochistic cycle we are in. I said: ‘No, you can’t have it.’” (GN 527).. For Anna, this willingness to satisfy Saul’s need prior to her own triggers. the vicious circle of their sado-masochistic relationship9.. Once she refuses to meet. his need, the circle comes to a halt. Love and Hate The concession of the victim’s will results in the paradoxical coexistence of love and hatred, which explains the victim’s indulgence in sado-masochistic interpersonal relationship.. Love and hatred are often two sides of a coin.. In her session with Mrs.. Marks, Anna confesses her belief in the coexistence of love and hate in her attitude towards her political life, her daughter, and her lover.. Her attitude towards the. Communist Party oscillates between hatred and strong attachment.. Towards her. beloved daughter, Janet, Anna sometimes regards her daughter as an obstacle to her freedom.. The similar feelings also exist in her attitude towards Anna’s best friend,. Molly, and her lover (GN 218). especially in her love affairs.. Anna feels the strong contrast between love and hate In the Blue notebook, the dream about the telephone. conversation between Anna and her lover Nelson helps her to recognize that. 9. Robert J. Stoller discovers in his study of the sadists and the masochists that, within them, behind the “games” lies the fear of loss of identity. See Robert J. Stoller, Pain and Passion: A Psychoanalyst Explores the World of S & M, p. 287. This fear, in some perspective, explains Anna’s compliance..

(38) Huang 31. embedded in love is a destructive power, namely, hate, when she notices that she herself also wears the same spiteful smile on her face as her lover does (GN 434-5). Destruction becomes an aspect of love and love thus turns into hate. Fear serves as the connection between love and hate. Anna realizes that the fear of loneliness brings two people together, just as her relationship with Saul (GN 493). It is not only the fear of being alone but also the fear of being invaded by Saul’s love. For Anna, love is likely to engulf her self.. The more Anna falls in love with Saul,. the more she fears that her self is to be engulfed. longs for Saul’s love.. Therefore, on the one hand, Anna. On the other hand, Anna fears that the attraction between her. and Saul is so intense that her thinking is influenced by his even though they are in different rooms (GN 532).. At that moment Anna comes to realize that the. engulfment has emerged as a threat to her subjectivity.. Anna senses her ontological. insecurity when she fears being engulfed by each other’s love. that people refuse love or other emotions for fear of being hurt.. Anna also discovers Anna concludes that. the reason why people choose to freeze themselves is that every emotion has been distorted by money and power (GN 478). Indulgence in Pain-Giving Therefore, people, in order to keep love alive, feel the contrast between love and its conflicting emotion like hate.. “It is possible that in order to keep love, feeling,. tenderness alive, it will be necessary to feel these emotions ambiguously, even for what is false and debased, or for what is still an idea, a shadow in the willed imagination only…” (GN 478).. In Anna’s observation of Nelson’s relationship with. his wife, she realizes that the paradoxical coexistence of love and destruction results from the indulgence in pain-giving.. Pain-giving has become an essential part of. marriage, confining both husband and wife to sado-masochistic relationship.. “They. are tied by the closest of all bonds, neurotic pain-giving; the experience of pain dealt.

(39) Huang 32. and received; pain as an aspect of love; apprehended as a knowledge of what the world is, what growth is” (GN 433). The indulgence in pain-giving is exemplified in how human beings justify their killing.. The pigeon-shooting scene in Africa demonstrates how people’s innate. desire for pleasure-in-pain leads to the emergence of cannibals.. At first, the. pigeon-shooting is done for making a pie; however, it gradually becomes a sport. Finally, it ends up as an aimless killing.. However, the pleasure in pain-giving is. transformed into fear when Anna and her friends realize that the killing has already been justified by the indulgence in pain-giving. The process of hunting is a demonstration of how a cannibal comes into being. Here Paul plays the role of the cannibal, who is responsible for the cruel pigeon-shooting.. After shooting the first pigeon, Paul says that they need a dog.. This implies that this is not just the hunting for food; instead, it is the hunting as sport. The oddity arises as his friend, Jimmy, should turn himself into a human dog by retrieving the dead pigeon himself.. Jimmy becomes a part of the “killing game” by. thus doing while the other people either stay indifferent to the killing or watch the killing without the courage to stop it.. As Jimmy retrieves the second and the third. pigeons, Paul ironically remarks that “[w]e don’t need a dog after all” (GN 375). This remark not only makes Jimmy a human dog but also makes Paul a hunter for amusement.. As Maryrose reminds Paul of the opening time of the pub, Paul replies. that he will leave the slaughter to the other as the pub opens. affirms Paul’s ability to kill.. However, Maryrose. “None of us can shoot as well as you” (GN 376).. This. affirmation is a gesture suggestive of Jimmy’s willingness to give up this power of destruction to Paul.. The fourth pigeon is an ordeal to Paul.. whether he should wring the pigeon to death. real cannibal.. He has to struggle over. If he can, it can be a proof that he is a. However, the pigeon dies suddenly.. In Paul’s explanation, he is the.

(40) Huang 33. god-favored one.. “‘Yes, I know,’ said Paul. ‘I know it. The Gods favour me.. Because I’ll admit to you, dear Jimmy, that I could not have brought myself to wring this pigeon’s neck’” (GN 377).. As the fifth pigeon is shot, this time Paul fetches it. on his own; however, Jimmy still fights with himself to become Paul’s human dog, following Paul.. Before the shooting of the sixth pigeon, Paul’s critique on the. destructive side of progress serves as a contrast with the damage of hunting.. He. asserts that, whether socialism or capitalism, neither of them can make a better future for human beings10.. For the so-called progress is only the destruction itself. fabricated by capitalism or socialism.. In contrast with the devastation brought by. capitalism and socialism, the savagery in Africa turns out to be less bloody and simpler. “Simple people killing each other for good reasons, land, women, food. Not like us. Not like us at all” (GN 381).. After he has shot seven pigeons, which are. enough for making a pie, he shoots two more. wounded one without hesitation.. He even wrings the neck of the. For Paul, the shooting is not the only killing. happening in the secluded and quiet place.. He says, “‘If we had ears that could hear,. the air would be full of screams, groans, grunts and gasps. But as it is, there reigns over the sunbathed veld the silence of peace’” (GN 382).. As the killing comes to an. end, they head back to the pub with nine pigeons’ blood dripping all the way. are stepping on the bloody trail of the sacrificed victims--the pigeons.. They. The trail of. human history is piled with victims sacrificed for the sake of human beings’ desire for pain-giving. Claire Sprague considers that the pigeon-shooting episode successfully dramatizes the innate principle of destruction that Paul has observed (74).. 10. Sprague. According to Mona Knapp, Albert Camus pointed out the problem of socialism in 1957. He asserts that “the socialist realism can have little to do with ‘reality’ as long as the real world is not predominantly socialist” (64)..