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Frankenstein Psychoanalytic Analysis

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Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist in Frankenstein, and his creature have been subject to many different interpretations. Some of them including a psychoanalytic approach based on Sigmund Freud 's theory, others have compared them to other characters from mythological stories as, for example Oedipus. However, only a few have analyzed Victor as a narcissist. The DSM-5, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, lists among others the following traits: exaggerated self-importance, embellished and overstated achievements, belief of superiority in regard to others and fixation of imagination of success and power, as symptoms of narcissism. In this paper, I will demonstrate how these symptoms apply to the depiction …show more content…

“[...] the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp” (34). He was aware that there was still a lot of work necessary, but not once he doubted that he would achieve it in the end. “[…] but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed.” (35) It is again a sign of his narcissistic nature which does not permit him to question his ability in the least. Hence, when deciding whether to animate a human being like himself or a simpler animal, he himself admits that his imagination, while only being able to think of the eventual success, would not allow him to settle with the easier task. “I doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like myself or one of simpler organization; but my imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man.” (35) Victor 's self-absorbed nature leaves him no other choice as to always strive for the most demanding challenge, as he is confident he will not fail. Therefore, he chooses to build a human being as his project, a recreation of his own self. This undertaking eventually proved itself to be the ultimate peak of his pathological narcissism. It was his hubris as he indisputably attempted to play God. He created a 'self ' purely after himself and his ideas. At first, fulfilled by the feeling of success, he thought the creature was “beautiful” (39). But it was not long until he realized how ugly and faulty his creation really was. It crippled him when he is finally able to grasp what exactly he had created; shattered him. Because the pathological narcissist had not ever dared believe that he could possibly fail so

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As a child, Victor was emotionally neglected by his father. He was never taught how to be a father because he did not have a good role model to look after. Consequently, when Victor’s creation came to life, he did not know how to act. He was scared and tried to run away from his problems. Since his creation has no parental figure to support and teach him, he develops behavioral problems and is very confused.

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Victor would stop at nothing to finish his project and became so obsessed that he was isolated from his family and friends. His way of collecting lifeless matter for his creation is unethical and morally wrong. Eventually, he is punished for his actions: “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body.” (pg.56) Additionally, extreme devotion to the building of his creation caused Victor mental distress due to the fact that he neglected his own needs in order to work exclusively on the creature: “I had deprived myself of rest and health.”

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Victor first begins creating the monster, working tirelessly for selfish reasons. His body suffers tremendously and he drags himself along treating his body like a slave. He states: “My cheeks have grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement.” (Shelly 33)

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Fighting a Mirror In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, self deception eclipses Victor Frankenstein and clouds his judgment. Victor’s passion in breaking the bounds of nature guides him in making the creation, but when Victor regrets giving life to the hideous creature, he deserts it. The abandonment is just the first step Victor takes to introduce the creation to malevolence followed with Victor’s assumptions of evil and lost responsibility in the results of his own zeal. Victor Frankenstein’s self deception not only forges evil into the creation, but also incriminates him for the consequences of Victor’s ambitions.

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Victor Frankenstein experiences a range of many different emotions throughout this story. He created the very monster that murders Justine and William, so I think he thinks of himself more as a criminal. However, Frankenstein gets physically ill every time he even thinks about the death of another, so the extreme guilt and remorse he feels over their deaths is what he might claim makes him suffer more than the accused party. When the monster begins threatening Victor and demanding that he create a she-monster for him, he begins to feel overwhelmed and guilty because the situation has become out of his control. I personally think Victor is the victim because although he created this monster and kept it a secret from most everyone, he in turn

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Victor fully trusted in himself which gave him the ability to do what he did. Like Emerson says, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” If you trust yourself you can truly be content with whatever you do. If you work hard you can achieve greatness. Victor shows us that not all that comes

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His personality and traits are different and similar to some of the other narrators such as the creature. Victor is pictured as an inimitable chronicler through the fact that he is a dynamic character throughout the course of the novel. It is debatable that he changes as the story processes through and how he begins to understand his current surroundings through the creature and himself. For example, before the creation, he states, “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!

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He never gave up on what he wanted to know about. He spend hours doing research to bring life from death. He didn't not even think about any consequences about bringing something that is left back to life. He even spends time away from his family in order to accomplish the goal that he had for himself. All of this causes him to suffer because of the negative consequences that it brought him.

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“ Children who are good at self-control grow up to be morally mature adults” and when they “can control their impulses [they] are more likely to be intelligent, self-confident, happy, and socially skilled” (Barber 24). Victor was able to develop the kind of self-control that he needed to grow up happy, self- confident, intelligent, and to be a socially skilled adult. His ability to form self-control allowed him to venture out and be able to achieve his “desire to learn” (Shelley). Victory had enough self- discipline to go off to school to learn all that he desired “whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied [him], still [his] inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world” (Shelley). However unlike Victor, the creature never developed the ability of self-control.

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Such passion is seen in Victor’s ‘noble intent’ to design a being that could contribute to society, but he had overextended himself, falling under the spell of playing ‘God,’ further digging his grave as he is blinded by glory. His creation – aptly called monstrous being due to its stature, appearance, and strength – proved to be more of a pure and intellectually disposed ‘child’ that moves throughout the novel as a mere oddity, given the short end of the stick in relation to a lack of familial figures within his life, especially that of parents. Clearly, Victor Frankenstein had sealed his fate: by playing God he was losing his humanity, ultimately becoming the manifestation of Mary Shelley’s hidden desires, deteriorating into The Lucifer Principle by which the author Howard Bloom notes social groups, not individuals, as the primary “unit of selection” in human psychological

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In reality, he is disgusted by the sight of his creation so he abandons it leaving it all alone in the world without any guidance and runs away to the next room. Victor himself suffered from being a social outcast and now he bestowed the same feeling onto the creature by abandoning him. By treating the creature as an outcast, “he will become wicked … divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations—malevolence and selfishness” (Caldwell). Not only is Victor selfish for abandoning his creature but he is shallow as well. Instead of realizing that he achieved his goal of bringing life to an inanimate body he runs way because of how hideous it is.

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