本文是一篇英语论文，本文以弗洛伊德的焦虑理论为理论基础，旨在通过现实性焦虑、神经性焦虑和道德性焦虑这三种焦虑形式对《占有》中知识分子焦虑心理的表现及其消解焦虑采取的措施进行分析。
Chapter One Theoretical Foundation
1.1 Realistic Anxiety
Realistic anxiety is also called objective anxiety. Realistic anxiety is defined by Freud as “a reaction to be perception of external danger and harm that is expected and foreseen” (2013: 411). In other words, realistic anxiety is a kind of painful emotional experience which results from the perception of external danger. Danger refers to the external conditions that may cause harm to people. The feeling of anxiety and danger can be said to be congenital in a sense, because people can obtain the tendency to panic about some existing thing or external state. At the same time, this kind of anxiety can also be obtained in the life after birth. The anxiety of darkness may also be acquired, because people are more likely to experience terrible things at night. Of course, anxiety may also be the co-product of congenital heredity and acquired experience. Heredity may make people sensitive to anxiety, while acquired experience may make such sensitivity come true.
In realistic anxiety, people’s perception of the external conditions starts in infancy. Babies and children are easy to be anxious. Newborns can be anxious all of a sudden when they meet a lot of stimuli from external conditions. This is primitive anxiety. This anxiety is the original form of secondary anxiety reaction. For instance, children cry if they are hungry or separated from their mothers. If they are in a situation which may lead to traumatic experience, a feeling which is concerned to the initial trauma will occur. Children feel anxious when they have an encounter with strangers because they are so familiar with their families that their libido can not be consumed or stored for long. The young body is often overwhelmed by anxiety, because it does not develop enough to control stimulation. Then the experience with overwhelming anxiety is called traumatic, and such experience makes people relapse into the state of a baby. The archetype of traumatic experience is birth trauma.
1.2 Neurotic Anxiety
Neurotic anxiety is caused by fear of being punished for expressing instinctive desire. Neurotic anxiety is an anxiety in relation to a danger which we do not know (Freud, 2013: 126). When one realizes that his instinct might lead to some danger, one would feel anxious. When one’s ego could not hold back id, one will feel anxious. It is neurotic anxiety. Before studying anxiety, Freud concentrates his study on general neuroticism. He puts forward that there are three kinds of actual neuropathy: neurasthenia, anxious neuropathy, and melancholia. Anxious neuropathy here is the forerunner of neurotic anxiety and psychoanalysis has included it in its area. Afterwards, a lot of neuroscientists are complaining that they are suffering from anxiety. Freud starts to realize that anxiety can be heightened, therefore, anxiety officially becomes a crucial part of psychoanalysis. Neurotic anxiety has two main stages in Freud’s study. In the first stage, Freud concludes the cause of neurotic anxiety is the threat response which is self-sustained from the id or the instinct desire impulse that is suppressed from the view of binary psychological model. In the second stage, Freud holds that source of psychoneurotic anxiety is actually a kind of unexplained excitement after he analyzes the ternary personality structure. The excitement of libido is awakened, but it is not satisfied or utilized. Libido is replaced by anxiety and gradually disappeared. Then the unsatisfied libido directly changes into anxiety.
Neurotic anxiety could be divided into three forms. The first one is a kind of sequestered worry in a relatively smooth environment. This kind of anxiety is especially noticeable among the paranoid people. They would always worry about things to the worst. We often say that people with this kind of anxiety is even afraid of their own shadows. However, it is more likely to say that this kind of people is afraid of themselves. In fact, what they are afraid of is that their id might control ego and lead ego to a helpless situation.
Chapter Two Realistic Anxiety of Intellectuals
2.1 Embarrassing Finance
Embarrassing finance is a kind of realistic anxiety that intellectuals face in their lives. In Possession, there are intellectuals, like Mortimer P. Cropper, who are born in rich families with a great wealth. But the majorities are from ordinary families who suffer a lot from embarrassing finance in their course to become intellectuals. Embarrassing finance could not only influence intellectuals’ living situation but also their academic study. Not only do intellectuals own scanty personal income, they also have scanty research fund.
2.1.1 Scanty Personal Income
Intellectuals have realistic anxiety because of scanty personal income. In Possession, younger intellectuals get personal income mainly from their families, scholarship and part-time jobs. Intellectuals have scanty personal income. They often get little support from their families. For example, Roland and Val, his girlfriend, get little financial support from their parents. Roland can not get enough financial support from his family from a very young age. Roland’s father is a minor official in the County Council, and his mother is an English graduate who is disappointed in herself, in Roland and in her husband. Roland has to work at a young age to pay his tuition fees for his study. For instance, Roland pays a math coach by a paper-round when he is little. Roland relies on scholarship to finish his study, but the scholarship that he gets is scanty. His scholarship is barely enough for his study let alone the cost of living. “Roland is an obscure, unemployed graduate” (Flegel, 1998: 416). Roland has to do part-time jobs to support himself, but the income is so scanty that he has to be very frugal all the time.
2.2 Academic Worries
Academic worries are another kind of realistic anxiety that intellectuals face in their lives. Intellectuals are usually measured by their academic achievements. But in the course of academic pursuit, they are inevitably exposed to endless problems. They encounter restrictions from authorities and lack of academic innovation. The burden of knowledge creates a lack of belief and widespread suspicion that also brings the wear and tear of feelings and emotional alienation (Lin Yun, 2022: 86). Intellectuals fall into great academic worries.
2.2.1 Restrictions from Authorities
Intellectuals have realistic anxiety when they meet restrictions from authorities. Against the backdrop of a society in which traditional intellectuals have gradually lost their spiritual temperament of reality as they have been institutionalized, professionalized, and bureaucratized, the self-consciousness of contemporary intellectuals is floating precariously between the struggle between ideas and reality (Li Lixin, 2019: 62). First, intellectuals have restriction from their tutors. Intellectuals are restricted to study on what their tutors agrees. Roland follows his tutor, James Blackadder, to study Randolph Henry Ash. James Blackadder thinks that they should put more emphasis on textual analysis rather than probing into background of the writer. Roland must do the same. James Blackadder is influenced by his tutor, F. R. Leavis, to study Randolph Henry Ash and employ the technique of textual analysis. “The devastating effects of Leavis’s hegemonic vision are charted in Byatt’s critical and creative work, but they are most thoroughly rendered in Possession, Byatt’s most explicit treatment of the state of postwar literary criticism” (Adams, 2008: 342).
Chapter Three Neurotic Anxiety of Intellectuals .................... 38
3.1 Inner Torment ......................................... 38
3.1.1 Fear of the Unknown .................................. 38
3.1.2 Need of Being Recognized ................................. 41
Chapter Four Moral Anxiety of Intellectuals .......................... 54
4.1 Paradox of Speech ......................................... 54
4.1.1 Telling Lies ..................................... 55
4.1.2 Keeping Partial Facts ............................. 59
Conclusion .................................... 73
Chapter Four Moral Anxiety of Intellectuals
4.1 Paradox of Speech
Intellectuals are expected to be moral for a long time. Ideally, intellectuals are expected to be moral not only in their academic study but also in their life. Intellectuals try to comply with moral principles in academic study and in life. However, they fail to follow all the moral codes all the time. Therefore, intellectuals fall into moral anxiety. In Possession, intellectuals are morally anxious because they sometimes experience paradox of speech. They know for sure what they should say to be right. But they say differently for certain reasons under different circumstances. Intellectuals have gradually lost their spiritual temperament of moral criticism (Li Lixin, 2019: 62). Intellectuals in Possession have two kinds of moral paradox of speech: telling lies and keeping partial facts. Intellectuals tell lies not only in their academic study but also in their life. They keep partial facts not only in their academic study but also in their life.
4.1.1 Telling Lies
In Possession, intellectuals become morally anxious because they tell lies in their academic study and in their life. Intellectuals sometimes lie to their colleagues, friends, families or others. Intellectuals bury themselves into moral anxiety because of their immoral lies. They know that it is not moral and right to lie, but they choose to lie in order to achieve their goal under different circumstances. In the first place, intellectuals lie in their academic study in order to get research findings. In the second place, intellectuals lie in their life to satisfy their own needs.
Conclusion
As a prolific novelist and critic in contemporary English literature, A. S. Byatt devotes herself to the pursuit of human beings’ freedom and liberation. Her works reveal distress of intellectuals in different periods, including Possession. The novel enjoys a great fame from readers all over the world. It plays a significant role in contemporary society. Through focus and exploration of inner world of intellectuals, the novel shows crucial factors that lead to individual’s anxiety in different periods.
Possession is not only a romantic story, but also a story of how intellectuals undergo inner conflicts. They break away from traditional ideas and achieve self-awareness. At last, intellectuals relieve their anxiety and have peace of mind. Scholars and critics analyze Possession from the perspectives of narrative techniques, feminism and humanism, but few people interpret it with the theory of anxiety. However, anxiety theory is an indispensable perspective to analyze Possession. Therefore, based on previous studies, this thesis shows the essence of intellectuals’ anxiety in Possession with the use of Freud’s anxiety theory.
This thesis draws some conclusions. In the first place, this thesis reveals that the essence of anxiety is a significant perspective to figure out the theme of Possession. Through the study of anxiety in the novel, this thesis tries to integrate her exploration of the essence of anxiety with Byatt’s expression of the psychological, social and cultural matter. The content of Possession is characterized by anxiety in the changing society and cultural background. Appling the anxiety theory to interpret Possession can further broaden and enrich the novel’s connotation, emphasize the theme, and highlight the artistic value of the novel. In the meantime, with the help of contradictions and conflicts in Possession, Byatt shows that this novel probes into the anxiety of modern people in pursuit of freedom and adaptation of social changes. Anxiety is an increasingly obvious and universal phenomenon in modern society. It symbolizes a spirit of self-negation, which helps people get rid of difficulties and improve themselves. Therefore, it is able to appreciate the rich connotation and practical importance of Possession through the analysis of the novel from the perspective of the theory of anxiety.
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