Marissa Kleckner Dr. Pennington
Engl 305 - A Literary Theory & Writing Abstract & Keyword Search Original (Rough Draft) 10/08/14 Abstract of Greg Zacharias’s Essay: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on the Turn of the Screw Greg Zacharias uses Lacan’s perspective to psychoanalyze the character of the
governess in the Turn of the Screw and relates Lacanian concepts, theories, and terms to explain
the relationship between the Big and Little Other. He goes on to explain how this relationship is
connected to how and why she sees the ghost, the way she responds to her fantasy like situation,
and explains why the governess is confessing to the Big Other. Near the end Zacharias explains
that it is difficult to discern what is real and what is fantasy in the story, but Zacharias thinks this is
the reason why the Turn of the Screw is such a good story and why people continue to read and
discuss it and it’s ambiguity.
Keyword Search of Greg Zacharias’s Essay: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on the Turn of the Screw Zacharias, Greg. "A Psychoanalytic Perspective." The Turn of the Screw. 3rd ed. Boston:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 320-32. Print. Subjects: The Turn of the Screw, Psychoanalytic
Theory, objet petit a, Jacques Lacan, language, unconscious, fantasy, reality, confession,
authority, Big Other, Little Other, anxiety, symbol, symbolic relationship, rules, governess,
jouissance, psychic wholeness, desire, mise-en-scene, pleasure, superego imperative, release of
anxiety, apparition, self-doubt, Lacanian fantasy, desperation, Foucauldian Confession Psychoanalytic Essay Assignment: Analyzing Young Goodman Brown & His Loss of Faith A large part of Freudian psychoanalysis is about our conception of the mind and
how the “unconsciousness attempts to break through the repression barrier and enter
consciousness” (Pennington & Cordell, 52). In the Ego and the Id (1923) Freud theorizes
that the mind contains the id, the ego, and the superego, which serve specific functions.
According to Freud, the superego is the moral code that reflects a variety of sources of
authority – social, parental, and religious. The ego is the “I” that seeks to balance the
opposing of the id and the superego. The id is the “it” of life force for humans – the
center of our instinct, our libido, and our desires (Pennington & Cordell, 52). This way of
viewing and theorizing about the mind linking these three distinct concepts connect to
the story Young Goodman Brown, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Puritan
community’s morals and faith and Brown’s Puritan faith can be seen as a manifestation
of his superego. In the story, Young Goodman Brown himself is the person that is trying
to balance these two opposing forces. In the story, the devil with his powerful, magical
snake-coiled staff represent Brown’s id in that they lure and persuade him to question
and eventually completely lose his faith. The forest is the place where Brown explores
his doubts and opposing desires, and represents his personal hell. Goodman Brown was
trying to repress and hide his curiosity and questioning of his Puritan faith from everyone
including himself. Goodman Brown’s journey through the woods with the Devil serves to
represent the curiosity and questioning of his faith and it also serves as a metaphor for
the mental struggle between balancing his id and superego. Toward the end of the short
story, Brown completely loses his balance between his id and superego and by choosing
to side with his id and continue his journey through the woods, eventually leading to his
negative outlook on life. Using Freudian Psychoanalytic theory, I am going to analyze
the decline of Goodman Brown and his loss of faith by examining his superego, ego, and
id. By examining Goodman Brown’s superego one can begin to fully understand
why he so easily lost his faith and why he took on a negative perspective in life using the
Freudian Psychoanalytic theory. As mentioned previously, the superego is the moral
code that is affected by social, parental, and religious authority. The social and religious
authorities influence Brown’s superego most heavily. It is the cultural faith that shapes
his morality. The Puritan community’s faith and Brown’s Puritan faith represent Brown’s
superego. The role of the social and religious authorities seems to intertwine, but not
necessarily in a positive way. The social authority that influenced Goodman Brown was
the Puritan community and their morals. For example his old catechism teacher, the
church minister, and the church deacon influence him both socially and religiously. But
since the society he lived in was very strict and religious, the social and religious parts of
Brown’s life overlapped and this seemed to cause problems for Brown as seen by the
events that happen to Brown on his journey through the forest. This claim is evident in
the fact that he seems to only be able to express his faith by the faith of other people In the beginning the story Brown mentions his wife Faith and how faithful she is
when he says: Poor little Faith! What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of
dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream
had warned her what work is to be done to-night. But no, no; ‘t would kill her to
think it. Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth, and after this one night I’ll cling to
her skirts and follow her to heaven (Hawthorne, 3). But Goodman Brown eventually finds out that Faith might not be such an angel.
When talking with the devil, Brown talks about how proud of his family he is and
mentions the good reputations they have in the Puritan community. Goodman Brown
exclaimed to the Devil while unconsciously resuming his walk that “My father never went
into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of
honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of
the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept…” (Hawthorne, 4). Brown never
gets to finish what he’s saying because the Devil interrupts him. But one can infer by
looking at the rest of the sentence that Brown was about say that he was the only person
in his family that ever took the path with the Devil and kept going. That is an interesting
statement for him to make and ends up being ironic in the end because according to the
devil, he isn’t the only person in his family who have taken a walk with the Devil. This
statement is ironic because Brown looks up to his family with respect and is proud of
their past and seems to be blind to the fact that his family may not have the cleanest
past and always been the holiest of Puritans. But once the Devil challenges his beliefs
about his wife and family with accusations that they sinned and were evil, Brown almost
seems to believe him. With each person that he originally perceived as holy and faithful
to God that he sees or hears on his journey to the Devil’s evil forest ceremony, his own
faith in God begins to falter and his ego begins to hesitate. In the story, Goodman Brown is trying to balance the two opposing forces of the
id and superego. When he decides to enter the forest and meet with the mysterious
stranger is when he begins to lose the balance between his id and superego. The
figurative balance begins to teeter back and forth between his id and his superego
during his journey to the forest and continues to waver throughout his trek through the
forest with the Devil. On the pathway into the forest and while walking with the Devil, is
when Goodman Brown really begins to question himself and his faith. This is when he
begins to reason with himself and the Devil. Brown tells the Devil that he wants to stop
and turn back and says “Well, then to end the matter at once there is my wife, Faith. It
would break her dear little heart; and I’d rather break my own” (Hawthorne, 5) Here,
Brown is saying that it would break his wife’s heart if he decided to continue to walk on
with the Devil, but doesn’t really mention his own faith. Instead he mentions how his loss
of faith would affect his reputation. So in this way, so to is Faith a major part of the
superego. Goodman Brown is the person that is trying to balance the opposing forces of his
id and superego because he does make his own choices. But it is important to note that
he is greatly influenced by many people throughout his journey and this in turn affects
his faith in God and his choice to continue on into the forest. Brown’s id desires to sin
and to be evil, though Brown’s superego won’t let him. The fact that Brown’s faith in God
is weak makes him an easy target. Because the Devil seems to know that deep down
Brown wants to just give in to his pleasures is the reason why the Devil is trying to get
him to go over to the bad side. Each person he encounters on his journey through the
forest influences him. He had originally perceived each of the people he sees as holy,
pure, and faithful, until he hears or sees that they are capable of sinning and being evil,
represented by them also in the forest and on their way to the Devil’s evil forest
ceremony. He is shocked and mortified by this and not only loses his trust and faith in
each of the people that he thought he knew, but with each person begins to lose faith in
God. When he hears the voices of his minister and deacon he is again surprised. In
response, “Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being ready to sink
down on the ground, faint and overburdened with the heavy sickness of his heart. He
looked up to the sky, doubting whether there really was a heaven above him”
(Hawthorne, 8). Here he again gains the knowledge of what people are really like behind
their holy Puritan façade. He also loses his innocence and not only loses his faith in
other people, but begins to lose faith in God. But it’s also important to note that Brown’s
questioning of and loss of his faith would not have been possible without the catalysts of
the snake and the devil because these are major roles played by Brown’s id. Lastly, I will examine Goodman Brown’s id to analyze his loss of faith and his
eventual decline using the Freudian Psychoanalytic theory. As previously mentioned the
id is the center of our instinct, our libido, and our desires. In the story, both temptation
and sin are represented by the Devil with the snake-coiled staff. While his community
represents the social aspect of his superego, his faith represents the religious aspect of
his superego. In the story, the devil with his powerful, magical snake-coiled staff
represent Brown’s id in that they lure and persuade him to question and eventually
completely lose his faith. This is not only apparent by the fact that his staff seems to
have magical powers, but by the fact that there is a snake wrapped around it, which is a
Biblical reference and is used often to symbolize evil and sin. The image of the snake
appears in the story of Adam and Eve and is also a story related to the story because of
the theme of evil and sin. There are many similarities and connections between these
two stories. The story of Adam and Eve in the Bible attempts to explain how evil and sin
entered the world. Going back to the story of Young Goodman Brown, although Brown
eventually leaves the physical location of the forest, mentally he stays there for the rest
of his life. This also connects to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. Just like Adam and
Eve in a way lose their innocence and gained knowledge, so to did Goodman Brown.
The only difference is that Brown is cursed with the knowledge that the Puritans in his
community aren’t as holy and faithful as he originally perceived and now they are evil in
his eyes. The complete loss of his faith and his decline into distrustfulness and depression
happens when he hears his wife Faith in the forest on her way to the ceremony and
see’s her at the Devil’s mass and gives himself up to the devil’s evilness. This is
because in the beginning Brown originally looked up to his wife, Faith, and was inspired
by her purity, holiness, and faith in God. But when he sees her in the forest and at the
Devil worship ceremony his perception of her completely changes and he can no longer
look at her the same and thus psychologically this is when his ego is overtaken by his id.
It is evident that seeing Faith in the forest is the tipping and falling point of Brown’s own
faith by the way he reacts to the sight of Faith and her pink hair ribbon. He shouts Faith’s
name but got no response. But something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of
a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon. “My Faith is gone!”
cried he after one stupefied moment. “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a
name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given” (Hawthorne, 9). After this climax of the story, Brown without faith or anyone to trust and believe in, he
begins to panic and freak out. He gains knowledge about what his townspeople and his
wife are actually hiding behind their Puritan facade and he loses his innocence. In the
quotation he declares that there is no good on earth and invites the Devil to join him
again and picks up his magical staff. He could no longer feel that the society informing
the values of his superego were respectable. The downfall of the character of Goodman
Brown into a life full of distrustfulness and depression is apparent by the conclusion of
the story where the narrator writes that Brown became a “stern, a sad, a darkly
meditative, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream…
And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by
Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a good procession, besides
neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying
hour was gloom” (Hawthorne 13). The forest is the place where Brown explores his doubts and opposing desires,
and represents his personal hell. Goodman Brown was trying to repress and hide his
curiosity and questioning of his Puritan faith from everyone including himself. The
Puritan community’s morals and faith and Brown’s Puritan faith represent Brown’s
superego. In the story, Goodman Brown himself is the person that is trying to balance
these two opposing forces. In the story both temptation of knowledge and sin are
represented by the Devil with the snake-coiled staff. Brown is tempted by knowledge and
sin because of how weak his own faith is in God. In this way the snake and devil
represent Brown’s id in that they lure and persuade him to question and eventually
completely lose his faith. Goodman Brown’s journey through the woods with the Devil
serves to represent the curiosity and questioning of his faith. His journey also serves as
a mental struggle between balancing his id and superego. Toward the end of the short
story, Brown completely loses his balance between his id and superego and by choosing
to side with his id and continue his journey through the woods, eventually led to his
downfall. Works Cited Attridge, Harold W., Wayne A. Meeks, Jouette M. Bassler, Werner E. Lemke, Susan Niditch, and Eileen M. Schuller. The HarperCollins Study Bible: New
Revised Standard Version, including the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books
with Concordance. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. Print. Cordell, Ryan. "Chapter 3 Writing about Character and Motivation: Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism." Writing about Literature through Theory. By
John Pennington. Washington, DC: Flat World Knowledge, 2014. 47-54. Print. Gardner, Janet E. "Young Goodman Brown." Literature: A Portable Anthology. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 3-13. Print.