Psychoanalytic Criticism and Frankenstein

Psychoanalytic Criticism is based mostly on Sigmund Freud's work. Freud believed in the id, ego and superego. Psychoanalytic critics also rely upon the work of Jacques Lacan. Lacan believed that before a child realizes that his mother is not entirely his, the child experiences the mirror stage. In this stage, the child can view himself and his mother as individuals. This stage quickly brings on Freud's Oedipal stage, in which the child competes with the parent of the same sex for the affection of the other parent.

As we pass out of the mirror stage, we see ourselves from the outside, as others would see us. This creates a loss in humans; we lose "'that uniqueness that one could enjoy in one's self-being', the element that Lacan calls the object a" (Collings, 285). In Frankenstein, 'object a' is Frankenstein's creation, his monster. The creature possesses all of the qualities that humans suppress, or should suppress, as children: villainy, murderous thoughts, revenge, etc.






Critics from the psychoanalytic school of thought believe that Frankenstein wanted to replace his dead mother. Instead of doing what every other man does, marry someone like his mother, Frankenstein rejected Elizabeth, who was physically like his mother and had a history like that of his mother. Frankenstein wanted to recreate his mother, but instead he made a creature comprised of the socially repressed elements of Frankenstein (object a)and his wish for his mother. Frankenstein's creature comprises all of the unacceptable traits of humans, those we usually suppress. These traits may actually be a representation of those traits that Frankenstein wishes he had.