Analysis Of The Novel 'A Byatt's Possession'

Chapter three Psychological Resistance In more detail, A.S Byatt’s Possession is redolent of certain aspects of Freudian psychology, more specifically, repression. In this novel the reader is told of the undertakings of the main character Roland Mitchell not only because of growing up in a society filled with a “ pretty blank day” but because of growing up in the hands of a drunken mother. A.S Byatt writes that “[H]e thought himself as a latecomer” and adds:
He (Roland) had arrived too late for things that were still in the air but vanished, the whole ferment and brightness and journeying’s and youth of the 1960s, the blissful dawn of what he and his contemporaries saw a pretty blank day. Through psychedelic years he was a school boy in a depressed Lancashire cotton town. His father was a minor official in

Such redirection for Roland at first stage is non-conscious repression of those feelings. He represses those anxiety- producing feelings to protect him against emotional issues which are probably the most valuable and intuitively accessible picture of his internal mental that he has. Of course the painful Memories and urges which are exiled to Roland’s unconscious, will not fade. In fact they will continue to have an influential effect on his behavior through whole his life. There are some forces, which try to keep painful or socially undesirable thoughts and memories out of the conscious mind. These forces are called defense mechanisms. There is a continuous combat between the wish (repressed into the id) and the defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are used to protect one from feelings of anxiety or guilt, which arise because one feels threatened, or because ones id or superego becomes too