An Analysis of Willa Cather's A Lost Lady

Just who determines what abnormal behavior consists of? Who can determine who is normal and who is not? Is normal even good? Sigmund Freud, a great psychologist during the 19th and 20th century set out to do just that. The basis for his research and time consuming laboratory work was to breach that of the normal and the abnormal behaviors. While yes, much of Freud's work had to do with the sexual behaviors of humans much of it also broadened into our everyday lives about how we live and communicate with others in this life.

Called the psychoanalytical theory, Freud developed a determinate of how to separate those normal behaviors with those that are abnormal in nature. In the work of fiction, A Lost Lady, written by Willa Cather, the emotional roller coaster that main character Neil rides for throughout the novel would be a prime project for Freud to examine. Neil has to deal with the problems that the Forrester family in a whole struggles with, although many of the problems are kept secret, below the surface. Neil's mixed emotions about Mrs.

Forrester mostly take up much of his thoughts and eventually end up forcing him to suspend his education in order to deal with the Forrester family. The psychology behind Neil's emotions in A Lost Lady really protrude the boundaries of what is known in today's world as abnormal behavior thanks to the work of Sigmund Freud.

When you're walking down the street can you possibly know what the person next to you is thinking? Most likely the answer is no. People don't always show their emotions or their thoughts on their "sleeve". That's why you could very easily walk right past a serial killer, a rapist or a thief and not know them from the average "Joe".

The psychology behind what we think is very much hidden within ourselves and cannot be known by other people just by sight. It is known in the psychology world that, "Everything that happens in a person's mind and everything a person does has a specific, identifiable cause" (Neill). Meaning that there no accidents that occur within the human mind. In A Lost Lady we know that all of what goes on in Neil's mind are direct effects of events that have happened to him over time.

Psychoanalytical theory can be related to almost anything dealing with human actions. When something traumatic or maybe just an ordinary event happens to a person, it starts a chain reaction linking all this person's past experiences with this new event giving the person the thoughts and emotions that he will then display. It was Freud who first founded this idea and who first discovered how the mind and the emotions work in a tandem. That's where the key lies in determining normal from abnormal behaviors.

Psychoanalytical defined means "incorporating the methods and theory of psychiatric treatment originated by Sigmund Freud" (Wordnet). In breaking down the theory, you find that Freud has split up his theory into many different side points that all connect in dealing with human behaviors. He started with the Pre-Oedipal stage which concentrates on the behaviors of young children and how they are born "with certain instincts" (Quigley) to survive and look for the three basic building blocks- food, shelter and clothing.

From there the child develops and enters the anal stage, wherein the child seeks to destroy the surroundings around him. The "child takes pleasure in defecation" (Quigley) and possesses almost a "sadistic" type of attitude toward objects and sometimes even people. This stage happens within most children but it shouldn't go for to long a time. If a 14 or 15 year old were to still show signs of this type of behavior then Freud would liken them to being quite abnormal and in need of help. The stage that follows is the phallic, where sexual attitudes are now being developed and we discover ourselves as sexual beings and not only children who play and have fun (Quigley).

Freud's most interesting part of his psychoanalytical theory however lies within the id, ego and superego. It is in these three components which the basis for your personality is formed. The id is the part of your personality which is completely "hedonistic" (Kardas) in its thinking. It wants what pleasures you and seeks only for things which will make you happy. Freud saw sexual energy as the only source of energy for the id (Kardas) but other psychologists have found that any form of elation will provide energy for it. Things such as cake and ice cream, videos games and any other pleasurable leisure activity. The ego on the other hand is the side of you which you choose to show the world.

This is the part of your personality which is governed by the principle of reality and which usually overrides the id's need for pleasure. (Kardas) For instance, the id part of your personality could be screaming for you to jump off of a bridge for the pure enjoyment and elation of the feelings that would come along with jumping into the water below. Yet something is telling you that this action might not be too safe or legal, and therefore you hesitate to jump. This part of your brain is the ego. It's when the id over rules the ego that problems tend to arise because you are now a pleasure seeker, uncaring of the risks at hand (Kardas).

The third part of your brain that affects your personality is the super-ego. It consists of two separate parts: your conscience and the ego-ideal (Kardas). Your conscience, simply stated is your brains way of telling you what's good and what's bad. Right and wrong are also elements of your conscience. The ego-ideal, is your idealized view of yourself. In other words, it's how you want to be. This is the aspect of the superego that keeps your id in check, and won't give into its desires. (Kardas)
Now picture a person walking down the street.

You still have no idea what is going on inside their mind, but you do know that what they are portraying on the outside is most likely not equal to what they're insides are telling them. In the case of a serial killer, however sick it may be, this person feeds his id and receives pleasure from murdering other human beings. But of course he won't show it on the outside. This person knows that if he were to show it on the outside then people would look at him differently, badly.

So instead his reality check, his ego, comes in and tells him to act "normally" protecting his true personality. His conscience, or super-ego, may be telling him that his id's intentions to kill are not good, but conscience can easily be overruled. So you'll walk by him on the sidewalk figuring him to be like any other guy, never knowing the intentions of his heart, his true personality.

Works Cited
Kardas, Edward. "Id, Ego, Super-Ego" http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/Kardas/Courses/GPWeiten/C12Personality/EgoIDSuper.html 26 March 2005
Neill, James. "Major Themes and Assumptions of Psychoanalytical Theory" http://www.wilderdom.com/personality/L81MajorThemesAssumptionsPsychoanalytic.html 26 March 2005
Quigley, T.R. "Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytical Theory" http://homepage.newschool.edu/~quigleyt/vcs/psychoanalysis.html. March 26 2005
Word Net. "Psychoanalytical" http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn?stage=1&word=psychoanalytic 26 March 2005