Alienation and Depression: The Duality of Psychic Neurosis in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child

Abstract

This research studies alienation and neurosis in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child. The concepts of alienation and neurosis are going to be applied within the scope of psychoanalysis. These concepts help interpret the characters, namely the female protagonist Lula Ann Bridewell and her parents, and their resistance against people who taunt them for being black. This injustice causes the protagonist and her parents to be alienated from the society; and later they become psychically neurotic. Therefore, the research attempts to demonstrate how the characters’ depression and neurosis are caused by this experience. For this reason, three objectives are going to be achieved: 1) To examine alienation as an unconscious psychic phase which results in social fragmentation in the novel, 2) To investigate depression as an abnormal behavioural phase which causes neurosis when the alienation experience is triggered back, and 3) To analyse neurosis as a psychic disorder and the last conscious culmination of the characters’ psychic plights and marginalization. The research fills the gap concerning the characters’ psychic disorders as impetuses of their alienation and neurosis. The research’s methodology, consequently, relies on the application of Sigmund Freud’s concepts of alienation and neurosis. Thus, the research’s findings lie in the exploration of psychic alienation as a result of the characters’ depression.