2 Literature Review

This chapter pides into three parts. The first part makes a brief introduction of Huxley and his writing origin of his book. The second part briefly introduces Freud and the development of his theories. The third part demonstrates the main psychoanalytic theories which are going to be utilized in the paper.

2.1 Huxley and his works

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) is a British novelist. He is very erudite, best known for his dystopian fiction Brave New World. He is a high-yield writer who wrote nearly 50 works, including fictions, poetries, essays, philosophy, and travel writings. His writing style of satirizing the British genteel class is widely recognized and admired. He was well-educated and was astonishingly prophetic in his evaluation of the aggressive contradictions inherent in human life, particularly the treacherous gap between thriving scientific achievements and moral evolution.

Huxley wrote Brave New World in his house in Sanary-sur-Mer, France in the four months from May to August of 1931. By this time, Huxley had already established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, and had published a collection of his poetry (The Burning Wheel, 1916) and four successful satirical novels: Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928). Brave New World was Huxley’s fifth novel and first dystopian work.

Huxley said that Brave New World was inspired by the utopian novels of H. G. Wells, including A Modern Utopia (1905) and Men Like Gods (1923) (see Smith, 1969:348). Wells' hopeful vision of the future's possibilities gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. He wrote in a letter to Mrs. Arthur Goldsmith, an American acquaintance, that he “had been having a little fun pulling the leg of H. G. Wells,” but then he “got caught up in the excitement of his own ideas.” (Heje, 2002:100) Unlike the most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a “negative utopia”, somewhat influenced by Wells’ own The Sleeper Awakes (dealing with subjects like corporate tyranny and behavioural conditioning) and the works of D. H. Lawrence. (see Heje, 2002:100)

2.2 Freud and the development of his psychoanalytic theories 

Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856—23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the father of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. He was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1881, he was qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Vienna (Sheehy & Forsythe, 2013:22), and then carried out research into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy at the Vienna General Hospital (Kandel, 2012:45). Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902.

In creating psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory (Jones, 1949:47). His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillment provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the mechanisms of repression as well as for elaboration of his theory of the unconscious (Mannoni, 1971:49). Freud postulated the existence of libido, an energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt (Mannoni, 1971:146). In his later work Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture, even the whole human civilization.