The Lacanian Psychoanalysis Of Desire In Narcissus And Goldmund

David Tilley

Professor Martinez ENGL 3060

Final Paper

April 29, 2014

The Lacnian Psychoanalysis of desire in Narcissus and Goldmund

The desire behind the characters in Narcissus and Goldmund is not always blatantly obvious as we might like to think. Sometimes to understand the desire and how it functions in this novel, you need to look through a different lens to examine the inner workings of the main characters. To do this it is required to employ some type of psychological theory in order to understand the actions and what they mean. I will be using Lacanian psychoanalysis and will examine the desire of the main character of Goldmund, from the Herman Hesse novel Narcissus and Goldmund, in terms of Lacan and his theories.

In order to examine the titular character and his desire, you must first understand the underlying concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The Lacanian school of psychology is a stark departure from the earlier Freudian school of psychology as it is concerned with the relationship to culture as opposed to biology (Eagleton 142). The main tenet of this ideology, according to Lacan in the eleventh of his seminars, states that humans are born into a condition of ‘lack’ (IX). This ‘lack’ is to mean an absence of something important. This object is referred to as the ‘real’, which can in turn described as the existence we inhabited before birth (Eagleton 161). According to these ideals, the ultimate goal in life is to chase after the ‘real’ by finding ‘signifiers’ that signify the ‘real’ (Eagleton 161).This means that throughout your life you will try and find the ‘real’ you once had using the different ‘signifiers’ that are encountered acting as waypoints on the journey to your ‘desire’.

In addition to the theories be...

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...t” (310). The reasons you cannot exist with your ‘real’ I suggest is the idea that the real exists beyond so many things such as language and symbolism, which are arguably a majority of the world we inhabit.

As we have seen through my analysis of this novel, the ideals of Lacanian psychoanalysis can be applied to situations found throughout the novel in order to interpret the actions of the main character. We have seen that Goldmund has developed through the different phases of development set forth by Lacan in his work. We also have identified that the ‘desire’ of the main character is to meet his mother, while his ‘signifiers’ are the many women that he has brief relationships with. From this interpretation of Goldmund and his desire, you can see that Lacanian psychoanalysis is an effective and exceptionally useful way to approach critically examining literature.