Jane Toppan: Psychoanalytic Theory What led Jane Toppan to kill more than 31 people with morphine and atropine? How could she have admitted that she felt no remorse after seeing so many people poisoned? Sigmund Freud would say that it was a direct result from her troubled childhood. Toppan grew up in a family who was poor and offered her little love. As a young child, Toppan lost her mother due to tuberculosis and was left with an alcoholic and abusive father. Freud would say that at an early age, Toppan developed an oral fixation due to lack of holding and breastfeeding. Oral fixations can result in being sloppy, always late, and eating too much. Toppan however, would have mostly likely fulfilled this fixation by poisoning her patients. Her behavior also reflected this oral fixation because she was a troublemaker who told lies about other children; and loved to spread rumors and gossip. Another of the stages Sigmund Freud described was called the Phallic Stage which is from ages 3 to 6. As a young child, Freud would say that Jane developed penis envy for her dad. Penis envy is when …show more content…
Defense Mechanisms are the methods in which a person justifies bad behavior; it is healthy to use defense mechanisms, but a problem can occur when they are used too often. This was the case with Jane Toppan. One of the most prominent defense mechanisms she used was reaction formation, which is when you try to be the exact opposite of who you are. Jane decided to be a nurse, whose role is helping people who are struggling with illness. A nurse is usually a person who wants to save people, not someone who decides to poison her patients. In my opinion, in an attempt to hide from her dark fantasies, Jane Toppan became a nurse. She thought this would help her hide from her true self, but eventually her unconscious came rushing to the surface and she began to poison her