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KMID : 0385320030140020184
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Journal of Korean Psychoanalytic Society
2003 Volume.14 No. 2 p.184 ~ p.193
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On the Clues Left by a Suicide Note of Virginia Woolf
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Lee Byung-Wook
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Abstract
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Virginia Woolf is a famous British writer and pioneer of feminism. She drowned herself in the river Ouse, near her home at the age of 59. At the time she was suffering from a psychotic depressive condition with persecutory delusion and auditory hallucination. She left a suicide note to her husband, Leonard Woolf, and this letter reveals her serious psychic condition. This paper studies the clues in her suicide note and the relationship between her sudden death due to serious psychopathology and her life history. Virginia Woolf’s early childhood was very unhappy and traumatized; her parental imago persisted deeply in her mind and she could not overcome her own basic ambivalence and conflict. Furthermore, she was sexually traumatized by her two step-brothers from age six. Virginia’s sexual aversion and aversion to males was rooted in these terrible long-standing events. Her marriage also was very unusual because she requested of her husband, Leonard, an asexual life. Her husband not only accepted such an unreasonable demand, he even tacitly approved her homosexual relationship. Their platonic love is very unique, but it is hard to imagine the successful genius woman writer without her husband’s devoted love. Ironically, Virginia Woolf won fame as a successful feminist woman writer thanks to a man’s dedication.
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KEYWORD
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Virginias Woolf, Suicide, Sexual trauma
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