REPRESSION AND THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND: A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF THE YELLOW WALLPAPER BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

Abstract

This research comprises a psychoanalytical study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 text "The Yellow Wallpaper", considering repression and the unconscious mind under the framework of patriarchal medical authority. A qualitative literary-psychoanalytic case study approach was adopted, with qualitative textual analysis underpinned by a hermeneutic interpretative method, integrating psychoanalytic perspectives based upon Freud's and Jung's and Lacan's theories. Each aspect of the wallpaper was considered: a visual image of repressed desire; the medical politics of looking; the unconscious, return of the repressed, and crisis in the woman's subject status; repression of the woman's artist self; the shattering of the patriarchal master structure. The research combines concepts of repression, the return of the repressed (Freud); the archetypal theory of the shadow (Jung); the divided subject (Lacan); with female psychoanalytic critique (Feminist Theory). Results indicate that the woman's identification with the creeping woman is an enactment of banished energies returning, while her final crawling over her husband's corpse represents an unclear and ambivalent freedom that carries with it both psychotic collapse and a rejection of authority. Limits of the study include the choice of one text and the limitations of psychoanalytic methods. Future work is considered. Intersectionality, disability studies, comparative texts across cultures, and application to patient care would be appropriate areas of study.