CHAPTER I

Introduction

Interpretation of literature is crucial to the experience of reading literature. However,

interpreting any work of fiction involves working with the different theories of criticism.

There are various theories within the canvas of literary criticism which tend to analyse a

text on the basis of its political, cultural, or ideological aspects but none of them engage

with the working of the human mind directly except the psychoanalytic literary theory.

“Psychoanalytic criticism”, as Michael Delahoyde explains “adopts the method of reading

employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts”. The prime assumption of this

theory is that works of fiction covertly reflect the anxieties, unconscious desires, and

neurosis of both; the author, as well as, his characters. A researcher may analyse a particular

character psychoanalytically or reflect upon the manifestation of the author’s personal life

in his works. The study seeks evidence of unresolved conflicts, guilt, displacement,

fixation, childhood traumas etc. within the text. Psychoanalytic criticism is not focused on

what the author intended but on what he never intended. The censored text is deciphered

to bring forth the unconscious material. The job of this critical theory is to ask questions

such as, “What was Hamlet’s problem?” (Delahoyde) or “Why is Jane Austen obsessed

with marriage in her novels?”. The present study focuses on Paulo Coelho and his four

works-Adultery, Veronika Decides to Die, The Spy, and The Winner Stands Alone. The

analysis of the major characters; their present personalities, as well as, the events of their

past life are explained with various concepts such as the defence mechanisms, NPD, ASPD,

and other anxiety disorders.

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The impact of the introduction of the psychoanalytic criticism has been immense

in the field of literature. Hendrick M. Ruttenbeek states that:

Psychoanalysis has had twofold influence on contemporary literature: it has given

the reader and the literary critic new insights, and it has opened for the writer new

areas of understanding-both of himself and the material with which he works.

Consequently, criticism has grown perspective in new directions; drams, poetry,

and the novel-all have new materials and new tools with which to use those

materials.

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis was a voracious reader of plays, poetry, and

novels. In his papers such as The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming, Freud unravels

the mysterious connection between the writer and the reader. Other works which reflect

Freud’s deep interest in the field of literature are The Theme of Three Caskets and The

Uncanny. The Theme of Three Caskets explains the recurrent theme of three caskets in two

Shakespearian works-The Merchant of Venice and King Lear. Similarly, in The Uncanny,

Freud examines Hoffmann’s short story The Sandman (1817). Freud considered works of

fiction as the rendering of human struggle with psychic impulses, drives, guilt, and

aggression. This process sometimes takes place overtly through the words used by the

writer or covertly with the latent meaning of the work of fiction. The human experience is

essential and central to the entire field of literature. For example, in the case of Ernest

Hemingway, one of the best American writers, Megan Collamati in her article Ernest

Heminway: How his Life Affected his Writing argues that Hemingway was young when he

was “introduced to camping, hunting, and death”, he was also an ambulance driver during

the First World War. The result of such experiences were his works like In Our Time (1925)
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and A Farewell to the Arms (1929) which create a parallel between the main storyline and

the authors lived experiences. Similarly, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels such as The Beautiful

and the Damned (1922) and The Great Gatsby (1925) were largely based on his

relationship with his wife. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife in the review

of the novel Beautiful and the Damned wrote, “Plagiarism begins at home.” Joe Fassler in

his article The Great Gatsby Line that Came from Fitzgerald’s Life and Inspired a Novel

(2013) reports that Fitzgerald’s wife had pointed out “F. Scott Fitzgerald spent a lifetime

eavesdropping on the conversation of his peers, making a study of their character for his

future literary characters”. Furthermore, if we look into the works of profound novelists

such as Charles Dickens, we will witness a profound mixture of fact and fiction. Dickens

combines his vivid imagination with the people he had met in his everyday life. Anil

Sehrawat in Autobiographical Elements in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (2013)

states that “Dickens has immortalized some of his traits in the easy-going optimism of Mr.

Micawber. The misery of his childhood situation is aptly pictured in David Copperfield’s

experiences in the wine warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby”. Psychoanalytic criticism

has the task of finding the fact in fiction or the lived experience of the author in fiction. It

deals with finding the unacknowledged unconscious influences of the writer. Yet another

part of the psychoanalytic criticism is to analyse the unconscious motives and desires of

the characters in a work of fiction. Works of various psychoanalysts are also used to draw

proper symptomology of disorders from the text.

However, it should be noted that the advances made by the psychoanalytic theory

in literature were only made after its effectiveness in the field of therapy. Psychoanalytic

criticism examines the manifestations of mind in any given work of literature but as a
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therapy it was propounded by the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud (1867-1939),

mainly to treat hysteria and neurosis in his patients. According to Peter Berry,

“Psychoanalysis itself is a form of therapy which aims to cure mental disorder by

investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind” (96).

Freud in his practicing days would encourage his patients to talk freely and recall their

memories and ideas. During the session, the patients would reveal their personal lives and

painful memories. The information gathered in the process would be used by Freud to

access the unconscious part of their mind. The patient’s level of trust and comfort with

Freud was very important in the treatment, the same holds true for every therapist and

patient till this date. If the rapport building between therapist and patient is perfect then the

treatment and diagnosis will be better. Freud’s entire theory rests on the concept of the

unconscious, which can be explained by first understanding the concept of the conscious.

Barbara Low explains consciousness as “all the mental processes of which a person is

aware, distinctly or vaguely at any given time” (24). Apart from the conscious, there is also

a pre-conscious part of the mind, which is explained by Barbara Low as “all that mind-

stuff of which a person is not at a given moment, necessarily aware, but which can be fairly

readily (perhaps with certain effort) recalled” (24). The last and the most important part of

the human mind is the unconscious, according to Guiren “The foundation of Freud’s

contribution to modern psychology is his emphasis on the unconscious aspect of the human

psyche” (127). However, Peter Berry argues that Freud was not the first person to talk of

the unconscious. Centuries before Freud, the Greek philosophers such as Aristotle referred

to the unconscious in the definition of tragedy plays and the effect of catharsis by

combining pity and terror in such plays. Similarly, Plato’s referring of a poet as a madman
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and poetry as misleading can also be regarded as a psychological theory. Sarla Parker in

Psychological Fictions, Literary Truths argues that:

Long before Freud could discover the unknown forces and drives in the mental

structure of man and name those as the unconscious, literature had borne out of the

testimony of their existence. To take an example that has now become cliché: the

enigma of what deflected Hamlet from carrying out his intention of avenging

himself on his stepfather and threw him instead in a slough of despond? (166)

The idea of Primary and Secondary Imagination by Coleridge and the moral effects of

poetry by Sir Phillip Sidney also have the likeliness of the psychoanalytical theories

(Guerin 126). Thus we may conclude that Freud is not the discoverer of the unconscious

but he is certainly responsible for giving it a scientific edge and for the dissemination of

the concept. The basic postulates of Psychoanalysis were functional in literature way before

the advent of Freud and the official naming of the theory itself. William Shakespeare’s

Hamlet is clear evidence of this claim. Shakespeare had described the complex working of

the human mind in Hamlet way before Freud. Freud is in fact credited with examining

Hamlet with the psychoanalytical concept of Oedipus complex wherein, Hamlet’s anguish

on his mother’s second marriage and the subsequent avenging of his murdered father is

explained. The Oedipus complex itself has its roots in the Greek drama, Oedipus Rex, the

story of the drama revolves around the king Oedipus who mistakenly kills his father and

marries his mother. Within the Psychoanalytical school of thought, Oedipus complex is

associated with the emotions of a boy child who regards his father as his enemy and who

unconsciously wants to sexually possess his mother. Roger Horrocks in Freud, Modernism,

and Postmodernism gives a critic’s view of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jane Austen’s
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Emma. Such investigations further the cause of psychoanalysis in literature. With regard

to Jane Eyre, the madwoman in the attic has been described by feminist critics as the

representation of “the unconscious feelings of Jane Eyre herself, particular feelings of rage

and sexuality” (21). Similarly, in Emma, the heroine’s acting like a matchmaker for other

characters is regarded by critics as the denial of her own sexuality and the projection of her

own desires unto others. Gregory Zilboorg in Sigmund Freud: His Exploration of the Mind

of Man argues that a person may be considered as “made up of a number of superimposed

layers. How uncanny this stratification makes us all, who in our "normal" daily life go on

unsuspecting that we are but a sort of endless dynamic battlefield rather than a compact

whole…” (78). Zilboorg cites the example of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude and

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, as the torch bearers of a psychoanalytical age. Freud’s

seminal work in 1900 The Interpretation of Dreams was used by psychoanalytic critics to

explain texts such as Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

Thus a never-ending space of psychoanalytic interpretation to literature was founded. But

it was not only Freud whom the literary critics found instrumental in their interpretations

of texts, the Freudian contemporaries such as Otto Rank, Eric Erickson, Melanie Klein,

Anna Freud, Kernberg etc. were also used. Ross C. Murfin in Psychoanalytic Criticism

and Jane Eyre explains that

Freud's application of psychoanalytic theory to literature quickly caught on. In

1909, only a year after Freud had published "The Relation of a Poet to

Daydreaming," the psychoanalyst Otto Rank published The Myth of the Birth of the

Hero. In that work, Rank subscribes to the notion that the artist turns a powerful,

secret wish into a literary fantasy, and he uses Freud's notion about the "oedipal"
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complex to explain why the popular stories of so many heroes in literature are so

similar. A year after Rank had published his psychoanalytic account of heroic texts,

Ernest Jones, Freud's student and eventual biographer, turned his attention to a

tragic text: Shakespeare's Hamlet. In an essay first published in the American

Journal of Psychology, Jones, like Rank, makes use of the oedipal concept: he

suggests that Hamlet is a victim of strong feelings toward his mother, the queen.

(505)

However, not all critics analysed a text, some of the psychoanalysts like Alfred Adler

examined the writers and argued that “writers wrote out of inferiority complex” (505).

Other critics who followed Carl Jung generalized all works of literature as “the

manifestation of desires once held by the whole human race” (505). Robert Rogers in

Psychoanalytic Study of the Double in Literature explains that an individual is

multilayered, he has multiple personalities and the work of any writer is actually the

revelation of his own repressed self. Peter Barry in Psychoanalytic Criticism describes that

psychoanalytic critics analyse unconscious motives and feelings of either the character

depicted in the work or the writer (105). Barry cites the example of Harold Pinter’s play

The Homecoming for character analysis. The play The Homecoming revolves around an

all-male family whose only female figure i.e. their mother has passed away. The third son

of the family who is a college professor in America decides to show up with his wife after

years of absence. Contrary to the expectations of the reader, the family decides on keeping

the third son’s wife as a prostitute in their family and in a strange twist of events the wife

of the third son also agrees on the condition that she will be the boss of the new household.

The play ends on the third son leaving alone. “The all-male family” according to M.W.
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Rowe is suffering from “a classical condition known as mother fixation” (108). Such men

are only attracted towards women who resemble their mother but because of the incest

taboo are not able to feel sexually towards them. Therefore, they tend to degrade the woman

(like the family in the play) to the level of a prostitute to generate sexual excitement in

themselves. Not only Pinter but other major writers such as, D.H Lawrence, Henry James,

James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Toni Morrison have produced works wherein the

characters and the conflicting themes can be studied psychoanalytically. All of these works

are the proof of the efficiency of the Freudian model.

As already mentioned, the present study is focused on the works of Paulo Coelho.

The following section will delve on Paulo Coelho as a man and his journey as a writer.

Paulo Coelho’s Life: The Roller-Coaster of Emotions

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro on 24 August 1947. Although, “he spent his first

three days in an incubator” (Morais 38) yet apart from asthma symptoms his childhood was

normal and healthy. Paulo Coelho’s performance and experience at school were not what

his father Pedro Queima Coelho de Souza had imagined it to be. He was an average kid

“who loathed all the subjects he was taught, without exception” (Morais 41). He was never

able to live up to the expectations of his father, who wanted him to be an engineer. His

parents wanted to see him in the top institutions of Rio de Janeiro but Paulo ended up in

the Jesuit schools. His parents were certain that the strict atmosphere of the Jesuits would

put him on the right track. The small steps towards Coelho’s spiritual journey began with

his experience at the school and “he returned home certain that he had acquired the virtue

which-through all the highs and lows of his life-would prove to be the connecting thread:

faith” (Morais 60). Paulo Coelho’s physique and the debilitating attacks of asthma made
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him unfit for most of the physical activities that boys would do at his age so, he led a

sedentary but passionate hobby of reading books. He read through multiple genres of

literature from Arther Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes to the lyrical poems of Michel

Quoist to Jean-Paul Sartre. While his friends would be busy with sports and girlfriends,

Paulo would invest his time with his constant companions, his books. It was during this

phase that he became obsessed with the idea of becoming a writer.

At St. Ignatius, Paulo participated in an annual poetry competition and contrary to

his expectations he won the first prize for his poem “Thirteen-Year-Old Woman.” He got

a certificate and a cheque of 1,000 cruzeiros as a prize but his parents were not proud of

his achievement. As Fernando Morais mentions in A Warrior’s Life, Coelho’s father said

he would have liked him to get good marks in academics rather than participate in some

poetry competition. His mother also added salt to his wounds by arguing that he cannot

earn his living via writing.

At the age of fifteen, Paulo Coelho joined the science stream on his father’s

insistence. Because of his performance at school, Paulo was in no position to argue with

his parents but when he turned sixteen, his father bought him a typewriter. It was a gesture

to mend his relationship with his son and it turned out to be fruitful until his grades began

to fall again. Lygia, Coelho's mother decided to take him to a nerve specialist which was

traumatic for her teenage son. Paulo could not understand why his mother would take such

an extreme step and he ended up calling her selfish in his personal diary. After this incident

things only went downhill for Coelho; his performance at school was below average and

thus the school authorities requested his parents to admit their son in some other school to

prevent any further embarrassment. Pedro used another tactic to teach his son a lesson, he
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withdrew his pocket money and other expenses and found him a small job with a dredging

company. But Paulo Coelho enjoyed the newly attained freedom although he did not have

enough money yet he was happy and shifted to Gavea, where he formed a literary club,

Rota 15.

At seventeen, Paulo Coelho’s first girlfriend, Marcia, left him and he realized that

he was skinny and unattractive. It was more shocking for Paulo to hear that his girlfriend

had been convinced by her parents, if she would leave Paulo, they would buy her all her

favourite clothes. So, she had exchanged Paulo for good clothes and that was demeaning

to the self-esteem of Paulo, who had considered her the first love of his life. He fell into

depression after this incident and what happened next was unanticipated by him and his

parents.

On one of the days, following this incident, Paulo Coelho joined some friends over

a beer. His friend suggested going on a drive and Paulo who had never driven a car before

chose to drive. And unfortunately, after hitting the main road, a boy got hit by his car. It

was traumatic for Paulo who had nearly killed a boy. Lygia could not bear her son’s plight

and she again sought a consultation with a psychiatrist. Paulo did not find the reasons

behind his detention in an asylum as rational. According to him being a bad student and a

rebellious teenager was normal and it was not a reason enough to make him suffer at a

psychiatric facility. However, years later, his experience at the asylum inspired him to write

novels like Veronika Decides to Die. Paulo was kept at the hospital for twenty-eight days

and when he was discharged, he had become weaker in health. He turned to the works of

Marx and Engels and decided to become “an intellectual delinquent” (Morais 105)

precisely because he lacked the physical strength or aura to join other boys around him.
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In 1965, Paulo joined theatre and became a successful comedian. He was hired as

a minor actor who would entertain the audience while the other actors would prepare for

the next scene. He was entertaining people but money was not enough. He had to find

himself a college and join drama classes to gain independence. In the meanwhile, his father

found him a job of a storekeeper. Paulo would sweep the floor and get boxes to the room.

This job was humiliating as Paulo wrote in his diary, “This is like a slow suicide. I’m not

going to cope with waking up at six every morning, starting to work at seven-thirty to

sweep the floor and cart stuff around all day without even stopping for lunch, and then

having to go to rehearsals until midnight” (Morais 114). Life was difficult with bouts of

depression, asthma attacks and bad job but Paulo did not give up on reading, he read

everything from Dostoevsky to David Harold. His parents would ask him to come home

early and would constantly nag about his lifestyle, profession, and his long hair. Once he

came home late and the door was locked. Paulo was drunk and he started to pelt stones at

the windows of his house to wake his parents up. The next morning he was again taken to

the psychiatric hospital for electroconvulsive therapy. His parents would often come to see

him at the hospital and Paulo would kneel and cry before them but they would do nothing

to do take him out of the asylum, they believed that he was getting better there. He was left

with no option than to run away from the clinic which brought disgrace to his parents.

Paulo again started acting in plays and he was happy with his days at the theatre. In

1969, Brazil witnessed the most atrocious form of dictatorship; the government had powers

to censor the press, the theatre and books, as well as closing down the National Congress.

Peaceful student marches were common but Paulo would rarely participate in any of them.

A number of guerrilla groups were active throughout the country. In 1969, Paulo decided
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to take his new girlfriend Vera to watch a football match in Asunción. The couple along

with other friends stopped at a restaurant to have dinner when a fully armed group of

soldiers entered the restaurant and accused them of being terrorists and thieves who had

recently raided a bank. Paulo, Vera and their friends were kept in custody for five days.

They were physically and mentally exhausted but the incident had turned Paulo into a man,

for the first time he had sought independence without the help of his parents and he was a

true hippie now.

Paulo recalled later having spent days in a row under the effect of cannabis, without

so much as half an hour’s interval. Completely free of parental control, he had

become a true hippie: someone who not only dressed and behaved like a hippie but

thought like one too…With the same ease with which he had crossed from the

Christianity of the Jesuits to Marxism, he was now a devout follower of the hippie

insurrection that was spreading throughout the world. ‘This will be humanity’s

final revolution,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘Communism is over, a new brotherhood

is born, mysticism is invading art, drugs are an essential food. (Morais 171-172)

Paulo had discovered a unique joy in drugs, he was always in a trance-like state. He enjoyed

hashish, marijuana, and mescalito and would even record his experience over a tape. Only

his desire to become a writer kept him connected to reality. He would read Kafka,

Cervantes, Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley etc. But soon his interest shifted to occult

practices and Satanism. At this point, Paulo met Raul Seixas, a producer of a multinational

recording company and both became good friends as they had a similar interest in occult

and witchcraft. During this time Paulo was desperate to make his career in writing, at

twenty-five he was still an anonymous face. Because of his desperation, he decided to sign
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a pact with the Devil like Dr. Faustus but soon he realized his stupidity and cancelled the

pact. In 1973, Paulo started a collaboration with Raul Seixas. Paulo wrote poems for Raul

and Raul’s band ‘The Panthers’ would perform them. For the first time in his life Paulo

earned both fame and fortune with his collaboration but at the back part of his mind was

his dream of becoming a writer.

An Overview of Paulo Coelho’s Novels

In 1979, he met Christina Oiticica, his old friend and ended up marrying her. On her

suggestion, the couple roamed around Europe where he visited a Nazi Concentration camp

in Dachau, Germany. Paulo had a life-transforming experience at the camp, he had a vision

in which he saw a man. The man convinced Paulo to turn to God and Catholicism. He also

suggested that Paulo should undertake a pilgrimage to Santiago, which he eventually did.

The pilgrimage metamorphosed the life of Paulo because in, 1987, he wrote his novel The

Pilgrimage in twenty-one days based on his experience at Santiago. The book recounts

Paulo Coelho’s journey of self-discovery and rebirth. The Pilgrimage was a sign from

heaven that things will work out for him. Among the list of books which are highly

autobiographical along with The Pilgrimage is The Valkyries. Published in 1992, The

Valkyries is the story of Paulo and his wife travelling through the Mojave Desert. The

Pilgrimage and The Valkyries both present Paulo Coelho and his wife as characters of the

novel.

The world bestseller The Alchemist was published in 1988. Notable personalities

such as Kenzaburo Oe, Madonna, and Julia Roberts have praised the book. The Alchemist

revolves around the journey of a young shepherd to Egypt. The physical journey draws a

parallel with the spiritual journey of the young shepherd. The entire narrative focuses on
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signs and symbols and wisdom shared by old men, gipsies, and desert people. In the world

of capitalism and abysmal materialism, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist soothes the senses

of the readers by taking them back to the wisdom of nature. The dream of Santiago, the

Andalusian shepherd and his journey in the search of a treasure becomes the tour de force

of the book. Santiago is aided in his journey by the king of Salem, and the alchemist, who

advises him to realise his true self. The idea introduced in the novel is that of personal

legend. Initially, the book was published in small publishing houses of Brazil and

subsequently, Harper Collins published the English version of the book which was

immensely celebrated. The Alchemist won the Nielsen Gold Book Award UK in 2004 and

the Corine International Award for Best Fiction in 2002.

After the success of The Pilgrimage and The Alchemist, Brida (1990) was treated

badly by the critics. The newspapers in Rio and São Paulo showed no mercy to Paulo, in

one of the reviews it was reported that, “The author writes very badly. He doesn’t know

how to use contractions, his use of pronouns is poor, he chooses prepositions at random,

and doesn’t know even simple things, like the difference between the verbs ‘to speak’ and

‘to say’” (Morais 375). Despite the criticism suffered by Brida the fans of Coelho kept

buying the book and soon it became Paulo Coelho’s third bestseller. By the River Piedra I

Sat Down and Wept (1994) next novel by Coelho is centred upon the reunion of a young

couple who meet after eleven years only to realise that they had grown up to be different

from each other. Pilar, the girl is a strong independent woman while her anonymous lover

has turned into a spiritual leader. Pilar, however, realizes that love should not be selfish, it

should set one free so she would not want her anonymous lover to leave his spiritual

journey just to be with her. Their love transcends the physical world, it reaches a place
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wherein they do not need each other’s physical presence to feel anything. By the River

Piedra I Sat Down and Wept was lauded by “praise from the clergy such as the Cardinal-

Archbishop of São Paulo, Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, but there were no such surprises from

the critics” (Morais 395).

The year 1996 blessed Paulo Coelho with the Flaiano International Award in Italy,

Super Grinzane Cavour Book Award in Italy, and Knighthood in the Order of Arts and

Letters of France. He also published The Fifth Mountain in the same year. The Fifth

Mountain revolves around a modified version of the Biblical Elijah, the prophet. Due to

the persistence of his parents, Elijah is compelled to live the life of an ordinary carpenter.

But then after many years, Jezebel, the princess of Tyre orders to slay all the priests and

prophets to make people worship the gods of Lebanon. Elijah manages to escape to Akbar,

wherein he is received by a widow but as soon as Elijah enters their life, the son of the

widow dies. People of Akbar ask Elijah to perform a miracle to bring back the dead son of

the window. The miracle happens and the widow’s son comes back and people start

respecting Elijah. The Fifth Mountain is a story of doubts and spiritual awakening. Paulo

Coelho intertwines his idea of personal legend within this novels also. The story explains

growth and learning via adversities of life, it also reinforces our belief in miracles.

In 1998, Paulo Coelho became the Comendador de Ordem do Rio Branco, Brazil

and in the same year Veronika Decides to Die got published. Veronika Decides to Die is a

phenomenal book that talks about mental disorders within a beautiful narrative. With this

novel, Paulo Coelho revealed something that no author in his place could have revealed.

He admitted to being a patient at Dr. Eiras clinic in Rio, where he had also undergone

electroconvulsive therapy. The novel is set in Slovenia wherein the protagonist Veronika
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attempts suicide and lands in an asylum like Paulo himself. At the hospital she falls in love

with Eduard, a schizophrenic patient, who is often subjected to shock treatment like Paulo

had been at Dr. Eiras’s clinic. Veronika’s experiences at the asylum make her live life to

the fullest. Together with Eduard, she forms her own world wherein, whatever they decide

is normal.

In 2000, Coelho was awarded the Crystal Mirror Award in Poland and then came

The Devil and Miss Prym (2000) which was again based on a spiritual theme. The village

of Viscos is visited by a man Carlos, who is identified by Bertha, the oldest resident of the

village as the companion of Devil. Carlos gives a girl named Prym a chance to be rich but

for that to happen, a murder should take place within the village. The villagers have to

decide who to kill for ten bars of gold. The story revolves around temptation and the basic

binary of good and evil. The author believes that human beings are essentially an

amalgamation of both good and bad. Eleven Minutes (2003), Paulo Coelho’s next novel

was interpreted by many critics as a story about the misfortunes of a prostitute but on the

contrary, it is more about the exploration of one’s sexual identity. Eleven Minutes is the

story of a nineteen-year-old young girl, Maria from Brazil, who travels into Europe in

search of fame and fortune. But on arriving, she realizes the bitter truth that she is to be a

prostitute in order to survive. It is an odyssey of self-discovery and the narrative touches

upon the sacredness of sex or sex as the stepping stone of self-realization. Eleven Minutes

won the Ex Libris Award in 2004. The next novel, The Zahir (2005), as reported by

Fernando Morais has been inspired by “a story by Jorge Luís Borges about something

which, once touched or seen, would never be forgotten” (428). The anonymous main

character is married to a war correspondent, Esther. The narrative begins when Esther
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leaves the nameless protagonist, most likely for her lover. The protagonist soon realizes

that unless he does not find his real self he would not be able to find his wife. The Zahir,

like other novels of Paulo Coelho, is based on the motif of quest and spiritual awakening.

The Zahir was profoundly lauded and it also won the Hit of the Year Kiklop Literary

Award. In the same year, Paulo was bestowed with the Direct Group International Author

Award and Goldene Feder Award in Germany. Coelho also won at the Budapest

International Book Festival, the Budapest Prize in Hungary.

The three novels which deviate slightly from the spiritual theme are The Winner

Stands Alone (2008), Adultery (2014), and The Spy (2016). The former is a crime thriller;

the story of a Russian magnate who arrives at the Cannes International Film Festival to get

back his wife Ewa. In the course of twenty-four hours the protagonist, Igor kills many

innocent people just to send across a message to Ewa that he can destroy worlds for her

sake. Adultery, on the other hand, is an unconventional story of a woman Linda, who

commits adultery despite a seemingly perfect life. The author permeates through the

unconscious mind of an adulteress, to give a peep into her mental conflicts and anxiety.

The author in flashbacks also acquaints the reader with Linda’s childhood and adolescence

to covertly shed light on the various aspects of her past life which paved way for her present

personality. The Spy, is the story of Margarethe Zella or Mata Hari, a renowned dancer

who was falsely accused of being a spy. Coelho narrates Mata Hari’s riveting tale through

the letters which she keeps addressing to her lawyer. The readers are presented with a

balanced perspective on Mata Hari’s life. The entire ordeals that forced her into the life-

threatening situations wherein she got trapped. Coelho also presents us with the narcissistic
 18

personality of Mata Hari which also becomes the cause of her downfall and horrific

execution.

Paulo Coelho’s recent novel Hippie (2018) introduces us to a phase of Paulo

Coelho’s life when he was a part of the hippie movement, Morais explains that Paulo

Coelho was not just a hippie in action but also in thought. The story takes place across the

entire journey of Paulo Coelho’s hippie group; the group travels to Bolivia, Peru, Chile,

Argentina and Amsterdam, where he meets Karla who convinces him to travel to

Kathmandu, Nepal. The book talks about Coelho’s experience of being imprisoned and

tortured by the military. Coelho considers the hippie movement as an important phase in

his life and the book is autobiographical therefore, a treat for Paulo Coelho fans.

On January 26, 2020, the world was devastated by the untimely death of the NBA

star, Kobe Bryant’s untimely death. Matt Bonesteel in his article on “The Washington Post”

states that Paulo Coelho was working with Bryant on a children’s book but after the

shocking death of the NBA legend, Coelho twitted that the book had lost its reason and

therefore, he will delete the draft of the book.

Awards and Honours

Apart from the awards and honours mentioned above, in the year 1999, Paulo Coelho won

the World Economic Forum Crystal Award, for contribution in improving the state of the

world. In 2002, Paulo Coelho was chosen to be the lifetime member of the Brazilian

Academy of Letters. In 2007, he became the Messenger of Peace for the United Nations.

In 2010, Coelho received an “Honorary Award” from the city of Odense and became the
 19

first recipient of Hans Christian Anderson Award. He also works with UNESCO as a

Special Counselor for Intercultural Dialogues and Spiritual Convergences.

A Review of Relevant Literature:

The critical and literary studies based on Paulo Coelho’s work are a recent development.

Most of these studies analyze Coelho’s work from a spiritual, eco-critical, and feminist

point of views. A review of some of the recent research on Paulo Coelho is presented here.

In the thesis, Vision of Life in the Selected Novels of Paulo Coelho (2017), Maske

Vishal Balajirao had tried to investigate on the author’s views regarding the progressive

attitude of mankind and how the stories of love, religion, journeys etc. provide an antidote

to the same. The study views Paulo Coelho as a philosopher who uses a double-barreled

gun to entertain as well as enlighten. Another work with a similar theme is Confluence of

Yoga Marga and the Path of Self Actualization: A Study of Paulo Coelho’s Character’s in

his Selected Works (2019) by Sharda R. The study delves upon the vision of Coelho in

portraying the theme of self-actualisation. It shows the characters in the works of Paulo

Coelho as adopting a middle path between Abraham Maslow’s paradigm of self-

actualisation and the Yoga Margas, which is the Indian mystical pathway to attain self-

actualisation. Abraham Maslow is the father of humanistic psychology and in his hierarchy

of needs which starts from basic needs such as food, water, shelter, and sex, he goes on

describe the sequence which leads a person to the last step of self-actualisation. The thesis

combines the mystic and the psychological aspects of the works of Paulo Coelho. But the

only psychologist it uses is Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. The research

project does not go beyond humanistic psychology and thus leaves ample scope for further

psychological inquiry.
 20

Another aspect of Paulo Coelho’s works which has been continually touched upon

by various researchers is the motif of journey or quest. The study entitled Journey of Self-

Discovery in the Select Novels of Paulo Coelho by S. Sivapriya focuses on the select novels

of Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage, The Zahir, The Devil and Miss Prym,

and By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept. The study again like the work of S. Lakshmi

draws a parallel between the physical journey of the characters with the inner journey

towards sagacity and insight. The study talks about the spiritual metamorphosis of the

various characters of Coelho. Yet another thesis Spiritual Quest as the Pervading Motif: A

semiotics Analysis of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (2015) by Silvie Antony, as the title

suggests, studies signs and symbols in The Alchemist. The study argues that the meaning

which we bestow upon any work of literature is relative. Individuals differ and their

experiences also differ, therefore there can be more than one interpretation of literature.

The focus of the study is the motif of spiritual quest in The Alchemist and the use of various

figurative devices such as simile, metaphor, personification, metonymy etc. and their

significance in the text. It also studies the symbols such as “ ‘shepherd’, ‘Melchizedek’,

‘Desert’, ‘love’, ‘Alchemist’ and ‘The hand that wrote all’ ” (Antony) from the perspectives

of biblical symbols. A Spiritual Odyssey of Quest for the Mysteries of Life: A Study of

Paulo Coelho’s Fiction (2014) by Archana Rajendra is another thesis which focusses on

the theme of spiritual quest. It begins by describing what spiritual odyssey means. The

research talks of the physical journey as a metaphor for a greater journey of spiritual

enlightenment. It delineates the same concept with relation to Coelhian protagonists in

novels such as The Pilgrimage or The Brida. The study in its culmination shows how “the

initial hesitation is the major barrier in our spiritual odyssey of the quest” (Banale 8). Being
 21

and Becoming: Reinventing the Sublime in the Select Novels of Paulo Coelho (2014), a

thesis by C. Jeyasekar attempts to present Coelho’s protagonists as warriors, who are on

their way to understand the meaning of life and in this way they have to put up with a lot

of adversaries. Jeyasekar has used phenomenologist like Martin Heidegger and Gabriel

Marcel’s works to explain the sublime. Paulo Coelho’s Select Fiction: A Study in

Inspirational Literature (2017) by Shruti Meghnad Joshi draws a parallel between the

works of Paulo Coelho and his personal life. The research project is similar to the earlier

works done on the motif of journey and discovery. However, the author has also tried to

delve upon the Jungian archetypal hero in relation to the protagonists in the works of

Coelho but other than that it does not go much beyond the theme of journey. A.K Sailaga

in The Semiotics of Salvation: A Spiritual Odyssey in the Selected Works of Paulo Coelho

has analysed four novels of Coelho – The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello, Brida, and

Aleph. The study again focuses on the spiritual odyssey of the Coelho’s protagonists

together with the classification of signs and their connotative significance in the novels.

A Feminist Perspective in the Works of Paulo Coelho (2016) by Mallika A. Nair

also talks about spirituality but unlike the earlier works, it uses feminist spirituality as its

point of focus. Nair in her thesis draws an analogy between feministic mysticism and the

novels like Brida, The Zahir, By the River Piedra I Sat down and Wept, The Witch of

Portobello etc. The study discusses the rebirth of Mother Goddess and the application of

the idea of a female God in the works of Coelho. Delving on the spiritual plane is another

work by Pooja. In her thesis titled Fiction as Spiritual Space: A Study of Mystic as

Protagonist in the Select Works of Hermann Hesse, Raja Rao, Richard Bach, Paulo Coelho

and Sujata Vijayaraghavan (2014) examines fiction as a spiritual space via the analysis of
 22

the main characters, she talks about The Alchemist as the mystic protagonist’s spiritual

journey. Coelho, according to Pooja, portrays characters in search of their souls and all

these characters mirror Coelho himself.

Alchemy of Transcendentalism in Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore and Paulo

Coelho (2015) by Lochana R trace the science of alchemy from Sri Aurobindo’s alchemy

of the realization of life divine on earth to the alchemy of self-realisation of in Gitanjali by

Tagore to the alchemy of dream realisation ion in The Alchemist and Brida by Paulo

Coelho. Another work which mentions Sri Aurobindo’s and Paulo Coelho’s philosophy

of life together is Metamorphosis of the Individual Self from Uniqueness to Universality

in the Select Novels of Paulo Coelho (2016), a thesis by R. Vijay in which he uses the

theory of existentialism, evolution and integral theory to explain the transformation of an

individual. Vijay justifies the transformation of Coelho’s characters vis-à-vis the

philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the theory of Ken Wilber.

The project titled Mystical Quest in the Novels of Paulo Coelho (2012) by S.

Lakshmi elaborates on the theme of mystical quest in Coelho. The study progresses into

Coelho’s style of magic realism and his use of fantastical elements on the borders of

mysticism. Lakshmi also explores the Hindu myth from Bhagwat Gita in the works of

Coelho. Literary Techniques of Paulo Coelho: A Select Study (2018) by D. Vijaya Lakshmi

reflects on the life and works of Paulo Coelho. It talks about the symbolism as a medium

to introduce spirituality in the select novels of Coelho. The research in the likeliness of the

work S. Lakshmi goes further into the realm of magic realism to expound on the fantastical

elements of the author’s writing.

 23

Popular Literature in the Light of the Selected Contemporary Popular Fictions

(2019) by Patel Naresh Kumar Popatlal expounds on Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and

Eleven Minutes along with the work of Khalid Hosseini, Yam Martel and Sidney Sheldon.

Nareshkumar argues that with the rise of print and electronic media, the circulation of

popular works of literature has increased significantly, it has given rise to the phenomenon

of bestsellers, for example, The Alchemist. The research also focuses on the changed

relationship between the author and the readers.

Socio-cultural Concerns of the Selected Novels of Paulo Coelho (2017) by Sonali

Pramod Kherdkar shows the development of the plotlines of Coelho’s works through the

medieval, modern, and postmodern society. The research focusses on how Paulo Coelho’s

novels are concerned with society and culture.

One of the path-breaking works on Paulo Coelho has been done by G. Hamilton in

Eco Fiction as Meditative Foundation for Self Awareness: An Eco Critical Probing into

the Novels of Paulo Coelho (2018). Hamilton explains the worsening effect of the shift

from an agrarian society to an industrial world and presents Coelho as an advocate of the

lost world of nature. The journey of the protagonists in the novels of Coelho across the

deserts and mountains and the mystical experiences and transcendental encounters leading

to self-actualization is the focus of the study.

Among the few notable research papers on Paulo Coelho is Vijay R. More and

Karuna P. Deshmukh’s The Feminine Aspect in Paulo Coelho’s Writings: An Overview

(2015) talk about the feminine side of the author as revealed in novels like Veronika

Decides to Die, Brida and By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept. According to Vijay

and Karuna Deshmukh, it is impossible to know about Paulo Coelho without understanding
 24

the part played in his life and work by the feminine element, they have analyzed the said

novels by contextualizing them with the profound teachings of Lord Krishna and Gita.

Mamta Sharma in her research paper A Woman’s Search for Identity in Adultery by

Paulo Coelho (2015) talks about the dilemma of a woman who wants to search her identity

in a world ruled by patriarchy.

Sheme Mary P U in her article Relocating the Soul in Paulo Coelho’s Novel The

Devil and Miss Prym (2013) shows the psychic conflict of the main character Miss Prym

and the psychological reasons for her oscillation between angels and demons and her final

win over her temptations.

Machmud Yunus, in his article A Study of Life and Death Instincts in Paulo

Coelho’s Novel Veronika Decides to Die (2014) discusses the case of depression in

Veronika with the Freudian concepts of Eros and Thanatos. He describes Eros as the life

instinct missing in Veronika and Thanatos as the death impulse with which she attempts to

make terrible decision of committing suicide.

In addition to the above mentioned works, there are many research articles, reviews

and a few dissertations regarding different aspects of the novels of Paulo Coelho. However,

most of the studies hold Paulo Coelho as a spiritual writer and his plotlines as journeys

towards self-realisation or spiritual quests. The eco-critical perspective on Coelho has also

been explored along with the other minor themes of magic realism, humanistic psychology,

signs and symbols. None of the works published so far discusses the works of Paulo Coelho

from a full-fledged psychoanalytic perspective. It is obvious that there is a considerable

 25

unexplored research area. Therefore, the present study undertakes the qualitative analysis

of Paulo Coelho’s selected novels to fill the gap.

Research Objectives

The present thesis conducted a psychoanalytic study of some selected works of Paulo

Coelho. This present literary research work has contributed significantly to the existing

knowledge on the works of Paulo Coelho. It has not only delved upon the contributions of

psychoanalytic theory to the world of literature but has also shown literature as the seedbed

of the major psychological concepts. Some of the research objectives accomplished within

this research project have been highlighted below:

 The study of the thematic concerns of the respective novels.

 The study of the selected works of Sigmund Freud and their application on the

selected novels of Paulo Coelho.

 The study of the progress made by the successors of Sigmund Freud and the

application of their ideas and works in the selected works of Paulo Coelho.

 The study of the importance of a psychological approach to the field of literature.

 The study of the overall psychological perspective in the major characters of the

respective novels.

 The study of some of the psychobiographical elements in the selected works.

 The study of the tabooed themes of the present society such as adultery and mental

disorders and their causes.

 The in-depth understanding of the psychological roots that drive human thought

and behaviour.
 26

Justification of the Research Work

Many researchers do not take up psychoanalytic approach for literary analysis because it

requires one to have some mastery over the psychological understanding of human mind

as well. The difficulties involved with psychological approach has left significant works of

popular literature to be analysed by other critical approaches such as the postcolonial

approach or the feminist approach. However, the present times of growing capitalism,

materialism, and anxiety calls for a psychological understanding of the world as well as

the multitudes of literature produced around us. There is a rise in mental illness among

people in the post-modern era because of the cultural, ethnic, religious, economic, and

political changes and the worst news is that people are not ready to talk about their mental

health issues. Under such circumstances an author like Paulo Coelho is a beacon of light

and an inspiration for people to come out and tell their stories of struggle with

psychologically issues. The author chose to talk about the shock treatment and his

experience at the mental asylum in his novels and biography. The researcher has tried to

coalesce the psychoanalytical investigation with the remarkable stories of the Paulo Coelho

world. The study digs deeper into the causes behind the tormenting mental condition of the

characters within the novels and it also tends to connect it to Coelho’s life wherever

necessary. Among the frequent causes behind the mental disorders in young adults and

teenagers is the parental pressure or improper child rearing techniques or even the

emotional unavailability of the parents. This study is an elaboration on these and many

other minor causes. What makes this study all the more crucial is that it can help both the

researcher as well as the readers of the thesis an opportunity to understand human

behaviour better. This study will inspire more people to give words to their thought and
 27

describe their own as well as comprehend the psychological suffering of others. A better

understanding of mental disorders through these selected novels can help people to be

sympathetic towards people who are actually suffering from minor and major health issues.

Furthermore, the works of Paulo Coelho have been primarily identified with themes such

as spiritual quest, alchemy, mysticism, and feminine aspects of God, a robust

psychoanalytic study of his novels has not been attempted before. The researcher has tried

to go along the untrodden ways to make findings which are both fresh as well as relevant

to the present global scenario.

Research Methodology

The research is based on a deep and thorough analysis of the works of Paulo Coelho from

the psychoanalytic perspective. The critical comments and theories of various

psychoanalysts, psychologists and other experts in the field of psychology have been used.

Critical scrutiny of the major characters and the plotline of the works is the major agenda

for the research. Since the research work involves no fieldwork, the texts of selected novels,

the reference books, journals, interviews, websites have been referred for study. The nature

of the research is restricted to the close reading of the four novels of Paulo Coelho:

Adultery, Veronika Decides to Die, The Spy, and The Winner Stands Alone.

Any research work involving the psychoanalytic literary theory is incomplete

without the mention of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the father of psychoanalysis. Edith

Kurzwell and William Phillips in Psychoanalysis and Literature reflect on the pairing of

literature and psychoanalysis and mention that, “A new world of research and speculation

began when he (Sigmund Freud) observed that the creative faculty draws on drives and

fantasies buried in the unconscious and that they provide the clue to understanding the
 28

imaginative mind as well as individual works” (1). Hendrick M. Ruttenbeck (1964) states

that Freud was himself a voracious reader of plays, dramas, and poetry. His papers and

works show that he mainly focused on the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, Macbeth,

Dostoevsky and artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci. Ruttenbeck goes on to say that “in

papers such as The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming Freud deals with the source of

creativity and particularly with the mystery of the interaction between writer and reader”

(9). Freud linked the imaginary activities of the artist to children at play because both use

their imagination to make something creative. But in case of an artist as Freud would say

“he transcends his own person so that the product becomes a source of pleasure for the

hearers and spectators of the work” (20). Although, some critics are of the opinion that

Freud referred to an artist as “a man who turns from reality because he cannot come to

terms with the demand for the renunciation of the instinctual satisfaction as it is first made,

and who then in phantasy-life allows full play to his erotic and ambitious wishes” (10). But

actually, Freud, as Ruttenbeck would say, “recognizes that the writer, because of his special

gifts, is able to reconcile us, as well as himself, with reality and so to achieve a more

constructive relationship with the bases of existence” (10). Freud’s seminal work The

Interpretation of Dreams made the concept of unconscious clear for the novelists, it

reinforced their intuitive knowledge of the psychic processes. Similarly, Three Essays on

the Theory of Sexuality (1905), gave the novelists and playwrights a peep into the

complicated parent-child relationship. The concept of the Oedipus complex especially gave

a new dimension to the theme of family. The 1914 essay of Freud On Narcissism which is

considered to be Freud’s theory of narcissism. Freud defines narcissism as adoration for

oneself, the self being an object of sexual desire. Freud views narcissism as a form of
 29

neurosis. A little amount of narcissism is normal during the stages of development and it

has been classified by Freud as primary narcissism. After some period due to the conflict

within the self, primary narcissism tends to get directed towards on outside object.

However, if this object affection is gain turned back onto oneself, it can cause secondary

narcissism. The major consequence of secondary narcissism is detachment, disinterest in

the outside world, and low self-esteem. Freud’s concept narcissism saw significant

modification by Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg. Heinz Kohut asserts that:

Adult narcissism psychopathology is a result of parental lack of empathy during

development. By failing to provide appropriate empathic feedback during critical

times in the child’s development, the child does not develop the ability to regulate

self-esteem, and so the adult vacillates between an irrational overestimation of the

self and the feelings of inferiority. (Mclean)

Otto F. Kernberg, on the other hand, differentiates between normal adult narcissism and

narcissistic personality disorder. Normal adult narcissism is a part of the normal

development process and it is a direct result of a healthy object relation while as narcissistic

personality disorder is characterized by self absorbance and fantasies of grandiose and

“excessive success in love, beauty, happiness and influence” (David). In Narcissistic

Personality Disorder, a person’s self-worth is directly proportional to the appreciation from

his cheerleaders and once that stops he comes crashing downwards. Karen Horney, the

founder of feminist psychology, saw narcissism on a completely different plane. Her views

on narcissism differed from Freud, Kohut, as well as, Kernberg. She believed that

narcissistic personality is the consequence of the environment, a child grows into. If the

parents are overindulgent or if they undervalue the child, it can cause abnormalities in his
 30

behaviour. He may desire perpetual praise and validation from people. The concept of the

real self is very crucial to the entire work of Karen Horney. Under healthy conditions, a

person is directed towards growth and self-actualization but hostile conditions can generate

basic anxiety in a child which can lead him to narcissism and further to the use of

“interpersonal defensives moves: toward, against, [and] away from others” (Lewis 118).

Freud’s, Mourning and Melancholia (1917) presents us with Freud’s Views on

depression which was then referred to as Melancholia. He differentiates between mourning

and melancholia within the paper. “Object loss in mourning relates to a literal death; the

psychological significance of which is well appreciated by the mourner and those around

him” (Carhart et al.), while as in depression as Freud himself would say, “[in depression],

one cannot see clearly what it is that has been lost, and it is all the more reasonable to

suppose that the patient cannot consciously perceive what he has lost either” (74). Again

Freud’s views on depression were transformed, modified if not challenged by Edward

Bibring with his model of depression. Bibring finds frustrated aspirations and helplessness

responsible for depression. Bibring finds depression as “the emotional expression

(indication) of a state of helplessness and powerlessness of the ego, irrespective of what

may have caused the breakdown of the mechanisms which established his self-esteem”.

There are three aspirations which a person aims for: “The wish to be worthy, to be loved,

to be appreciated, not to be inferior or unworthy; The wish to be strong, superior, great,

secure, not to be weak and insecure, and the wish to be good, to be loving, not to be

aggressive, hateful, and destructive (Haddad and et al. 163). The tension between the

unattainability of these aspirations and the ego’s acute awareness of its helplessness causes

depression.
 31

Almost all the present advances in the field of psychoanalysis have been grounded

on Freud’s work. They are either a modification or a diversion from what Freud had said

in his theories. Therefore, it becomes crucial to define Freud’s views on various things and

then move on to his successors for investigation or application. Freud gave his

psychosexual stages of development in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), he

categorized them as the oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latency stage, and genital stage.

While Freud focused on sexuality and erogenous zones, his successors like Erik Erickson

focused on the social aspects of development. Erickson’s stages of psychosocial

development start from trust vs mistrust and end on ego integrity vs despair. While Freud

restricts his categories of development to the genital stage, Erickson expounds that

development continues throughout life. However, psychoanalysts like Karl Abraham, who

was one of the chief collaborators of Freud only added to his psychosexual stages of

development, he did not go much beyond the already established theory. He provided the

sub-divisions for each stage of psychosexual development, for example, earlier oral and

oral-sadistic or anal expulsive and retentive etc.

Sigmund Freud came up with the term defence mechanism in his paper The Neuro-

Psychoses of Defense (1894). When the conflicts in the unconscious part of the mind

generate anxiety, ego defence mechanisms come into action to conceal the internal drives

which tend to lower self-esteem. As Anna Freud would explain in The Ego and

Mechanisms of Defense (1971), “were it not for the intervention of the ego or of those

external forces which the ego represents, every instinct would know only one fate-that of

gratification” (44), which is not feasible because every instinct has to be gratified under

certain circumstances and on an appropriate time. Although Freud had mentioned nine
 32

defence mechanisms here and there in his works, Anna Freud further illustrated them and

also added sublimation and displacement to the list.

Apart from the works mentioned above, Civilization and its Discontents (1930) was

another groundbreaking work of Freud. As the title suggests, it talks about the tendency of

civilization or society to repress the instinctual desires of a person. Because of the law and

coercion, an individual’s ability to gratify himself is restricted. While these restrictions are

absolutely necessary yet they are responsible for a perpetual discontent in an individual.

This text is seminal to the analysis of the anxiety disorders generated by an individual’s

conformity of social and cultural norms.

Another field of investigation which finds its root in psychoanalysis is

psychoanalytic criminology. In 1916, Freud cited that a person commits a crime precisely

because of a sense of guilt generated from “the Oedipus complex and was a reaction to the

two great criminal intentions of killing the father and having sexual relations with the

mother”. The thought of killing one’s father is not agreeable to the superego and therefore,

the ego some form of punishment to compensate for the sense of guilt. A person commits

a crime to seek punishment for what he had felt towards his father and mother. Franz

Alexander, a psychoanalyst who worked profoundly on psychoanalytic criminology

accepted the fundamentals of the Freudian proposition. However, Alexander along with

his colleagues tried to go beyond the oedipal guilt “by introducing an explicitly sociological

and historical context to the study of criminal behaviour”. They came up with a path-

breaking finding that some criminals are “merely victims of an existential dilemma which

forced them to identify with other criminals in a criminal subculture” (Fitzpatrick 72).

Furthermore, Kate Friedlander, a pioneering female psychoanalyst whose work The

 33

Psycho-analytic Approach to Juvenile Delinquency also talks about crime and

psychoanalysis. She classifies people who have antisocial behaviour because of the

“unsolved conflicts originating in the Oedipus phase of life” (Friedlander 71) as neurotic

criminals. She gives the “popular version of quintessential Freudian stance” (179) that

“criminals” are “human beings who have failed to achieve social adaptation in their

childhood and have been frustrated in their human relationships, especially with their

mothers” (Shapira 180). However, Kate Friedlander focuses on the impairment of superego

as being closely related to the formation of antisocial behaviour.

In culmination, Freud opened new vistas of knowledge in the field of psychology

and his successors worked extensively to improve and expand the scope of his ideas.

Writers, as well as researchers, continue to be benefitted from the psychoanalytic thought

and approach. It not only gives them a way to understand their selves better but it also

presented them with an opportunity to make caricatures of their own psychic experience in

their works. The psychoanalysts mentioned above have been used throughout the thesis to

explain the characters and the plotlines of the novels taken up for study.

Chapter Plan

This chapter “Introduction” focused on the introductory details of theme of the thesis, the

background study of psychoanalysis as a theory of literary criticism, the challenges it faced

in being recognized as a valid option for evaluating literary works, and the novelist Paulo

Coelho’s journey into the field of fiction writing. It also explained how the major concepts

of psychology find their roots in literature, for example, Oedipus complex, Electra

complex, Denial, Repression, sadomasochism etc. As such the field of psychology should

be indebted to literature. This chapter introduced the readers to the basic concepts of the
 34

psychoanalytic theory which are used later on to examine novels of Paulo Coelho at length.

It also provides a brief synopsis of Paulo Coelho’s works.

The second chapter analysis the novel Adultery by using the Freudian Defence

Mechanisms such as Denial, Repression, Regression, and Rationalization. Sigmund Freud

introduced the term defence mechanism but it was Anna Freud who listed ten defence

mechanisms and meticulously illustrated them in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense.

The use of Defence mechanisms is noted in every stage of Linda’s development. Linda’s

adultery is explained as a consequence of the overuse of defence mechanisms and the

maladjustment of her personality in various phases of her life. To explain the problems in

her childhood and young adult phase, Erik Erickson’s theory of psychosocial development

is used.

The third chapter briefly studies anxiety disorders in the main protagonists of the

novel Veronika Decides to Die. Veronika’s life is examined via flashbacks of her childhood

and the same is the case with Eduard, the schizophrenic patient and Mari, another patient

at the hospital. Veronika’s personal history is studied via Bibring’s model of depression

and Karl Abraham’s stages of psychosexual development. Eduard, on the other hand is

studied for the use of drugs, forced career choice, and excessive parental control which

lead him into schizophrenia.

In the fourth chapter, the character of Mata Hari or Margarethe Zella in Paulo

Coelho’s The Spy is analysed. The Spy is a fictionalized version of the life of Mata Hari or

Margarethe Zella, an artist who rose to fame during the time of the First World War. Within

the novel she is studied as a narcissistic person, with grand fantasies and arrogance. The

chapter studies her as a case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder or NPD. The chapter also
 35

considers her early childhood, the initial presence of her father in her life, and the

subsequent death of her mother to examine her case. Her history is analysed with the

symptomatology of narcissism given by Otto Kernberg in “Theory of Narcissistic

Personality Disorder” (1975). Other major psychoanalytic critics are also used to scrutinize

the life of Mata Hari.

The fifth chapter gives a brief explanation of psychoanalytic criminology and the

Antisocial Personality disorder in case of Igor Malav, the protagonist of The Winner Stands

Alone by Paulo Coelho. The antisocial personality of Igor is accredited to a psychic conflict

which also classifies him as a neurotic criminal. Freud’s concept of crime out of the feeling

of guilt is also explained but the work of Franz Alexander, Hugo Staub and Theodore

Millon are mainly used.

The conclusion recapitulates all the chapters with a brief summaries of the novel

and their findings. The author Paulo Coelho’s art at portraying tabooed themes like mental

disorders, crime in the upper class of the society, and the phenomenon of adultery is also

lauded and acknowledged.