QUEST FOR CONSCIOUSNESS: A PSYCHOANALYTIC READING OF DORIS LESSING

Abstract [English]

One of the significant problems confronting the contemporary world is the total absence of meaningful relationships. Disquiet and vexation in relations arise because of an individual’s constant encounter with the mores and customs of society. Owing to grave social inequities permeating society, human minds experience growing resentment. Gender difference is one of the greatest malaise which plunges women into the mire of negotiations made by a patriarchal society. The women’s struggle against a male ideology condemning them to virtual silence and docility has been a constant phenomenon. The dominant problem of a woman’s relationship between society and the unconscious remains unresolved. It is in this context that Doris Lessing’s works gain prominence as she provides solutions through her protagonists who survive the crisis of “cracking up” and ultimately emerge as a new entity. Her protagonists are enmeshed in their enigmatic mental make-up inhibiting them from establishing personal or social relationships. They try to adapt themselves to the phallocentric society repressing their hedonistic desires and contorting their personality. Usually, women with extra sensory perception are labelled as insane and misfits in a patriarchal society favouring the less intelligent and the more obedient. The paper attempts to explore the inherent reasons for the acute desolation experienced by women, their seemingly contorted personalities and the prevailing crisis in their relation with others and how women re-conceptualise and redefine the established patterns of relational dynamics. The paper aims to critically examine in Lessing’s semi-autobiographical sequence, Children of Violence, the skewed ways in which the female mind expresses feelings and the strategic method by which the self is relocated through interaction with the familial and socio-cultural environment by applying advanced psychoanalytic theories propounded by Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, Julia Kristeva, R.D. Laing, Lacan, etc.