Toward Understanding the Don Juanism of Albert Camus: A Psychoanalytical Approach

Abstract

Albert Camus, the French Algerian, lived a short but action filled life; from losing his father when he was just one year old to the poverty he experienced in his grandmother’s house where he grew up after his father’s passage. From suffering from tuberculosis at a time its cure was still uncertain to his brilliance in school, his love for football, the country-side and philosophy, his becoming a renowned philosopher, rising beyond his mentors Messieurs Germain and Jean Grenier in his writings. Camus also became peers with French philosophers of his time notably, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir Nathalie Sarraute and a number of others. Added to this is his love for women as research reveals that he married twice and equally had a plethora of female lovers. The objective of our research is to look at his poor family background which made him experience extreme poverty as a child including a silent and sickly mother and an authoritative grandmother; we shall consider these in order to establish that on becoming a person of renown, the joy of living well, which he now experienced, pushed him beyond the brink making him to spare no opportunity at enjoying life whatsoever such opportunities were.