A Psychoanalytic Study On Harmony In The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook is regarded as a significant novel in the present English literature and has determined Lessing’s significant status in English literature world, for the novel triumphantly manifests people’s mental world of British society in the 1950 s. Many scholars have made extensive researches on The Golden Notebook, which is Doris Lessing’s Nobel-winning masterpiece, from different angles, such as themes, psychological analysis, writing styles and so on. Though there are a few scholars both abroad and in China who are aware of Lessing’s harmony thoughts in The Golden Notebook and have recognized the important meaning of her harmony consciousness in English literary academia, they has not paid much attention to the perspective of psychoanalysis. It is for the purpose of exploring the psycho process of the three figures contributing to achieving harmony and the purpose of stating Lessing’s ways to attain the wholeness and harmony in The Golden Notebook that this thesis is constructed.Through an analysis of harmony by the norms of Freudian theory of personality structure and Laing’s theory of schizoid patient’s suicide and theory of ontological insecurity about attaining recovery, this thesis explores the process of Anna’s split, the influence Tommy and Saul make on Anna’s unity and the achieving of final harmony. Finally, this thesis finds that Doris Lessing is promoting to achieve this sort of harmony by balancing the relationship between man and woman and the relationship between human beings’ inner world and their outside world. So, people can live happily and progress smoothly in this harmonious world.