Cycle of Rejection: A Psychoanalytical Reading of Doris Lessing’s “The Fifth Child”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36473/ujhss.v59i3.1147Keywords:
Psychological studies, rejection, ego, Lessing, emotional abuseAbstract
The children absorb the positive and negative conversation from their parents. Obviously, they response according to their receiving conversations and feeling. Doris Lessing shows the social complex relations between of diverse social character classes and their relationships to social institutions.
Indeed, one of the messages of the novel is that the more individuals and society at large reject the dark side of human nature, the more they relapse into primitive barbarity. The mother in “The fifth child” harbours the feeling of disgust and rejection towards the new born baby which results in more conflict and rejection in the novel.
This paper sheds the light on Doris Lessing’s psychological ideas that shape this novel. It contributes new reading of family psychic problems and circumstances. The rejection of family members of the new born child results in many defective characteristics of the fifth child. The child’s ego is the same ego of the mother.
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