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KMID : 0378019890320070033
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New Medical Journal
1989 Volume.32 No. 7 p.33 ~ p.48
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The Contemporary Psychoannalytic Truth in S.H. Lee´s Work ´The Prodigal Son´
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Abstract
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Sigmund Freud (1856 -1939) once suggested that the unconscious mind, a prod ct of his own hypothesis, might actually manifest itself through various artistic works.
Present day psychoanalysts find severe difficulties in the diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders. Of course it is true that personality disorders it the neuropsychi., tric field have been well classified in description and that the unconscious motivations and dynamics of them are being continually researched. However, because psychiatric client´s personality spectrums are often mingled with similar ones according to existing psychiatric classfications, it is very difficult to diagnose personality disorders with exactness.
For the above mentioned reasons, the existing therapies for personality disorder- are not mostly effective due to the tentative nature of diagnosis.
Because of this problem, I see the necessity for some radical restructuring in the approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders.
It was in the midst of this that present author, by chance, read Sun-Hee Lee´-(1911-?) short story [The Prodigal Son]. Through reading this work, I could not help but be urprised that about fifty years ago S.H. Lee had already a thorough grasp of the kernels involved in personality disorders-a thing which modem day psychoanalysts are still trying to discover.
The biographical details about S.H. Lee´s are sketchy. She was born in Ham eung in Ham Kyung. South province, now located in North Korea, and grew up in the city of Won San near the ocean. When she was six years old, her mother died of pulmonary tu.-rculosis, thus she grew under the engrossing love of her physician father. She attended on San Lucy girl´s senior high school and later studied literature at Ewha Women´s Speci. school. Soon after graduation she was engaged as a journalist at the Kai-Pyouk publish´ g firm. Other than these basic facts little other information is known about Lee´s life.
Lee stated that her literary style and tastes were clearly romantic ; this is evide t in her story [The Prodigal Son] which was published in Jan. 1940 in the literary journal "Moonjang". The story [The Prodigal Son] is a strong example of the symbolic and primitive romantic style evident in Lee´s work.
The paleologic mind is the keynote of the primitive concrete delusion. Counter to that, the neologic mind is the bases of existing reality and morality. What then is, if anything, located between the paleologic and the neologic and how are they closely bound together human mind? In my opinion, Lee´s work [The Prodigal Son] gives resounding answers to the .hove questions thus predating modem psychoanalytic theorists by almost fifty years.
A psychological analysis of Lee´s work yields the following
The deep analysis of Lee´s unconscious mind proves that the oedipal complex, ie the emotional fixation to her father in her childhood, was the reason she could not help s;-king a romantic disguise in addition to Bohemian´ carefree life style. Therefore, the unconscious motivation for Lee´s [The Prodigal Son] can be equal to a freeing from aboriginal anhedonia in real life.
The pessimistic hero of [The Prodigal Son] turns out to be symbolic, that is, he was planned to disguise Lee´s incestual fantasy with her father and must be the illegitimate child who comes into the imaginary , or frontier world, as the inevitable consequence, the means of elaboration in Lee´s incestual fantasy. Logically, the bastard complex of the pessimistic hero substituted for Lee´s oedipal complex in her childhood. Lee had unconsciously left her illegitimate child to his own devices as the lighthouse man on the isolated fantastic i- and. But the pessimistic hero himself little suspected that he was the castoff bastard who had been unconsciously borne as a result of Lee´s incestual, fantastic pregnancy, looking at it as an immaculate conception.
The anonymous heroine makes a reluctant voyage to the island of the lighthouse and reaching that place. She at last has the fatal meeting with the young, pessimistic hero such an encounter is the consequence of the interactions among many variables-just like ´ e, space, libido etc. The heroine faintly calls to mind that her aboriginal anhedonia ow its origin to the unconscious incestual drive. In such a case, it is logical that the hero be her son-exiled from her consciousness owing to her own, unpardonable, sin-sickness. These could be condensed to following conclusion in analysis : The hero, so to speak, should be destined dried to become [The Oedipus Rex] of our time. The extreme spiritualism of this works is equal to the hero´s perfectionistic pessimism, which can be analytically interpreted as his ´ er repressed aggression via deprivation of erotic feeding in the oral stage. Meanwhile, his proposal of displaying "White flag" to her can be seen as a "high eros" in disguise. This is his wish to suck milk from her bosom, rather than running a meaningless life. She was at a loss about how to answer his proposal. From the analytical viewpoint, her silence gives consent to this sweet eros while at the same time feeling the fear of disobedience to God´s rule. The ero had hardly caught the point of her silence when he became aware of having been [ he Oedipus Rex] of our time. It was fated that man and woman´s salvation should be an dispensable condition.
The hero carrys out resolutely the "plan of salvation" through performing his own ordinances. The ordinances require several terms in the order named: repentance, atonement, immersion and dramatic uprising. His plunging gesture, ie. immersion, could be interpreted
as the washing of the sin which originated from his patricidal wish. When he asked he to become the eye-witness, as he were going to plunge from the cliff into the sea, the witness becomes equal to a priesthood which can baptize him. His cruciform disguise can be analyzed as an identification with the sin-offering of the ordinance or unconscious bribe to the superego. Such an unconscious incestual rendezvous throws him into wild confusion ; that means a developmental arrest ranging from anal to oedipal period.
Now, the problematic point is whether she should submit to superego or not. This situation leads to repetition-compulsion. It is true that repetition-compulsion-compatible with the harmomic oscillation between dream and reality-can ease oedipal tension, but it may be hard to remove the resistance against her salvatory hope.
The satisfactory settlement of such resistance can theoritically be made by the interaction of the "mesolibidon" that the present author defines as a hypothetical libidinal binder which oscillates between the paleologic and the neologic mind. Also, the present author assumes that the "mesolibidon"is located in the frontier zone, presumedly is bordering the paleologic and the neologic. The "mesolibidon" in the frontier zone is assumed to have the free-will or option in place. Indeed, "mesolibidon"can choose anything among three parts in the mind but the likelihood of it´s location is the highest in the frontier zone.
Now they can have their option between oscillation and dissociation owing to their free-will. The ordinance must be the necessary condition for their salvation but is not sufficient. It is the only condition in which they can become free to obtain sufficient salvation. Owing to free-will, she chose an oscillation but he opted for dissociation instead of restitution. Oscillation between dreams and reality do not so much divide the mind as unite it.
He begs her to witness the loss of his consciousness identical to dissociation, while falling from the cliff to sea. He camouflages an oedipal wish with the defense mechanism of dissociation, so she seems to have an illusion of his ascension to the red star.
In short, he made an about face from suicidal acting out to a salvatory device due to the dissociative mechanism.
In spite of his ascension, she experiences oscillation similar to resistance in psychotYerapy, while switching dreams to reality. Therefore, it would seem that the frontier zone, ac ;ompanied by singular oscillation, exists in her mind. The present author´s idea is that the tentative introduction of "between structure", as oscillatory organization in mind, into psychiatry is worth consideration.
The plan of salvation is to western insight what the discovery of "between -structwe" in mind-even after achieving the salvation-is to eastern insight, analogous to an everlasting eddy of the yin-yang idea of the Universe.
For this reason, the present author dare say that oscillatory nature in the frontier zone can be the spiritual root of eminent writers and, also, can give a reason for the artist´s raving a preference-for "warm-blooded ego" to "cool-headed one".
The present author carried out some hypothetical thought experiments in order to em-plain the oscillatory mechanism of the mesolibidon at the frontier zone of the mind. The new hypothesis is an [S]-shaped three-dimensional space. S-space consists of C1(imaginary C) and CR(real C), point-to-point symmetrical to each other(Fig. 1).
The "mesolibidon" will only oscillate within the frontier belt if it remains within centr.petal habitual gravity. If the movement of "mesolibidon" shall lose self-regulation and risk rotic stroke on CI-surface, it makes an about face from oscillation to dissociation. It is the e with the spiritual stroke on CR-surface. The "dissociation by free-will principle" results in a jump onto the paleologic, or the neologic.
Another hypothesis is a [Y]-shaped, three divided plane figure. The "Y-plane" consists of the paleologic, the mesologic and the neologic(Fig. 2). The paleologic compartment .is. simlilar to id and corresponds with the "biologic need principle". The mesologic compartm- is identical to the frontier belt and corresponds with the "free-will principle". The neologic: " compartment is similar to reality or morality and corresponds with "social need principle.Twokinds of .demarcation exists between the paleologic and the neologic: The one is direct a border in that libidon can hardly permeate into an adjacent area because of its highest differential threshold, the other is frontier zone in that libidon can selectively permeate I to frontier zone. Therefore, the "mesolibidon" can oscillate between the two different are .s. Thus, we can assume that the libidinal fluctuation in the frontier mind is equipollent ´th "Bohemian life style".
Fig. 3 shows the frontier zone (ab I) where repetition-compulsion of eros-seeker (S.H. :-) was being performed owing to the emotional fixation to her father along the axis of er memory by the use of Korea´s Chang-Ku (Korean two-headed drum) model.
Judging from discovery of oscillation or dissociation on a basis of free-will, which manifests itself at "prodissociation" time (just before dissociation), Lee seemed to have known the score about her own destination.
To sum up, the keystone of Lee´s [The Prodigal Son] lies not so much in how God forgives human error, as in how human inconsistency can harmonize free-will power.
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