A Psychoanalytic Approach to Alice in Wonderland

The twentieth century saw the emergence of the Psychoanalytic School founded by Freud and his disciples; as a result, a general interest in the unconscious motives in literary works was aroused. One of the tenets of the Psychoanalytic literary criticism is that a writer reveals his unconscious stresses in his work. Thus, the aim of this book is to study and try to understand from a psychoanalytic perspective the life story of Lewis Carroll and the events in his life which led him to write Alice in Wonderland. In the introduction, the identity formation theories are analysed from the perspective of various thinkers. In the second part, the life story of Carroll is examined and his problematic relation to his mother in preoedipal period stands out as the most important stage in his identity formation.In the third part, whole chapters of Alice in Wonderland are examined and it is suggested that Carroll reveals his supressed feelings by identifying himself with Alice. The analysis of identity formation theories should be especially useful to English Language and Psychology students. Also, the book can arouse the interest of anyone who wants to read Alice from another perspective.