A Psychoanalytic Study of the Character of Numeriano Agujo in Edith L. Tiempo’s The Dimensions of Fear
A Psychoanalytic Study of the Character of Numeriano Agujo in
Edith L. Tiempo’s The Dimensions of Fear
Eddy Merly Borja
Out of all the theories for the study of literary criticism, psychoanalysis, perhaps takes the ground for familiarity. Psychoanalytic principles commonly referred to today as classical psychoanalysis, was pioneered by Sigmund Freud during the turn of the century (1856 -1939). It focuses on the function of the mind, particularly by the unconscious, to the behavior and patterned thinking of man. Adult behavior, as it surmised, was the result of childhood experiences, wounds, and non-confronted inner issues; all centered on the person’s ego1. Its ultimate goal was to help resolve psychological dysfunction and to lessen the occurrence of disruptive behavior2. There are numerous facets to the psychoanalytic theory: from the oedipal complex, ego psychology (the essence of the id, ego, and superego), dream interpretation, to the birth of other theorists such as Karl Jung’s archetypal types, or Harry Sullivan’s Interpersonal Theory and Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Development (where social interactions were the staple in the development of an individual)3, but the most relevant of all, in the context of this paper, was psychoanalysis’ motivations for specifying the causes for a person’s destructive behavior. These include the defenses, anxiety, core issues, and even the meaning of death.
Defense
mechanisms, or defenses,
are the processes by which the mind keeps all unwanted memories or
thoughts repressed in order to avoid an undesirable confrontation
with the real self 4.
Defenses may include selective
perception,
which is facing only what we think we can handle, or denial
which is refuting that the problem ever existed in the first place.
Other forms of defenses include avoidance
or staying away from the undesirable stimuli, displacement
which is the transfer of frustration to another deemed less
threatening subject, or projection
which
is transferring our guilty desires to someone else, then condemning
the other subject. When a person’s defenses are weak, they might
experience anxiety.
It could then reveal the person’s problematic core
issues.
These core issues could even be occurring simultaneously. For
example, the fear
of intimacy
could stem from a low
self – esteem
and an insecure,
unstable sense of self;
or vice versa. These core issues do not occur seasonally, rather, if
not properly dealt with, will stay in one’s life.
Death,
then (or the recurring thought of one), is inevitable. Psychoanalysis
renders death, or the relationship to the idea of death, as the
“principal organizer” of one’s psychological health; Freud,
labeling death as a biological drive or thanatos5.
In behavioral psychology’s operant conditioning, there are numerous
problems with punishment6,
and one most sensible way to dealing with it is its general avoidance
or escape.
The “ultimate escape”, then is suicide7.
The
principles of classical
psychoanalytic
theory discussed above consequently had a more contemporary
counterpart: Lacanian
psychoanalysis.
It was first introduced by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901 –
1981), and he proposed that the man’s conscious and unconscious
mind was comparable to that of the psychological growth of an
infant8.
In
its application to literary study, he then divides psychological
development into two “worlds”: the Imaginary Order and the
Symbolic Order. The imaginary
order
is considered as the “world of images”, where in its pseudo –
utopian bearings would render the “illusion of fulfillment”. It
is the pre
– oedipal stage, where
(still through the infant mind’s lens) the Desire
of the Mother
is strong, until its acquisition of language. The next world, the
symbolic
order,
then follows. It is the world where the production and elicitation of
meaning is important. It is when the child’s belief system is
aligned with society’s values, biases, or system of government
(depending on which culture it grew up on). The child’s
emancipation from the mother is then apparent when the first rule,
where the “Mother belongs to the father” or oedipal
prohibition,
takes root. The separation of the conscious and the unconscious mind
now begins; where the unconscious is made during the initial
repression to the Desire
of the Mother.
This separation results to the Other,
which is man’s effort to the formation of “selfhood”, or the
awareness of one’s own subjectivity9
Both imaginary order and symbolic order involves the constant pull
between the definitions of loss or lack; of metaphors and metonymy.
Metaphor is to condensation, a process of relating very different
things; while metonymy is to displacement, where we substitute a
person for actual objects. Both of which, are ultimately efforts for
the person to avoid The
Real,
where the concept of existence is buffered due to the inconsistencies
in our signifying and interpretation systems.
In
the text The
Dimensions
of Fear by Edith L.Tiempo, the protagonist (and also self
–conflicting antagonist), Numeriano
Agujo,
an unmarried fifty – four year old high school teacher, suffers
from a seemingly chronic state of anxiety. This deep - seated fear,
inexorably projected when he faced a mythical folk creature one
deserted afternoon.
As
he passed by the closed door of the storeroom he heard a scruffle …
In the dimness of the hall he made out a strange figure standing
about six feet away, a dwarf … bloated head and body.10
This
was not a sort of supernatural haunting, rather a manifestation of an
unresolved crisis in his life. His lover, Fidela, had died (four
years before this point in the story), and his lack of closure
attributed to this emotional baggage he had been carrying. They were
never married; still he had loved her all those years. The dwarf was
his condensation of Fidela; the dwarf, the very metaphor of his
life’s frustration.
It
was also implied at one part of the story he had been observing
Soledad, Fidela’s younger sister who also happened to be a student
in his class. Moreover, or more disturbing in truth, it was implied
that in a moment, he saw Fidela in Soledad, and perhaps displaced
some of his affection of Fidela to the young girl: Soledad, the very
metonymy of Fidela for Numeriano.
Agujo,
however, was not the only character repressed by the death of Fidela.
Fidela’s father, Tio Carlos, appeared to have neglected his own
well – being, even the very aesthetics of his home. During Agujo’s
overdue visit (avoidance
was apparent as he was wary of staying away anything which reminded
him of the painful indications of his lover’s death) , he noticed
that the whole house was neglected and run – down; sagging in its
place, and weeds sprouting all over the yard.
It
occurred to Agujo that Tio Carlos’ mood matched his surroundings
perfectly, one of placid gloom. And the man didn’t try to do
anything about it…didn’t try to change anything. Not a bit of
resistance, even inside of him.11
Not
only was Tio Carlos’ daughter, Fidela, had died, but his beloved
wife, Ciana, as well. Tio Carlos’ remorse on spending his middle
years “with no foothold” was just too much for him to bear. The
residence, as Agujo surmised was a perfect projection of the
melancholy of Tio Carlos. Later, he’d realize that Tio Carlos was
the perfect projection of himself. In his own way, Tio Carlo chose to
live his life in solitude.
Agujo
was a recluse himself. He would spend his afternoons at the high
school’s isolated tower – like room, and would reject the
constant attempts at flirtation of the woman at the drugstore. His
core issue, the fear of intimacy, very clearly linked with the loss
of Fidela, could be stemmed to his low self – esteem and unstable
sense of self. His unstable sense of self, along with his overbearing
anxiety then resulted to doing acts of thievery, even he, didn’t
know he was capable of. It started out small when he started piling a
bit of viand in his meals at the carinderia,
then to stealing the envelope with the school’s worth for a certain
project, up until the point he was willing for a scrawny third year
boy to take the fall for it. It is The
Real
that chastised him: a version of himself that he cannot quite put a
ring on, or a version of himself he could not quite understand.
Perhaps,
it was his unstable sense of self that caused his gripping anxiety,
and not the simultaneous occurrence of both. This
thievery, was in fact, still a minor sublimation of what he is even
more capable of doing.
Lacanian
psychoanalytic theory would dissect his fear into the imaginary and
symbolic orders. His life during his romance with Fidela was his
ideal world, his imaginary order. The life he had imagined with her
and their seemingly picturesque future together became his cradle. He
was the infant; Fidela, his Mother, and in this pre-oedipal phase,
his Desire for her, was the only air he breathed. Fidela’s death,
however, shook him. He was now a child acquiring language: a child
trying to fathom the meaning of his life and the purpose of his
individuality. His Mother is now not his own, but the Father’s
(life).
In
the literal world, Agujo was now in the stage where he was supposed
to reevaluate his life between generativity and stagnation, but was
idle because he was still trying to settle his identity issues, and
the consequent choice between intimacy or isolation12
His attempt at ending his life, when he finally tried to hang
himself over a broken swing, was the nail in the coffin.
Psychoanalysis,
deemed as a rather subjective and intrinsic method of analysis, still
proves to be relevant in critical theory. In the case of The
Dimensions of Fear (and the character of Numeriano Agujo), not only
does it study the mere patterns or structure of the literary work as
a form of “tit per tat”; rather, it goes deeper than what is
necessary: It studies the soul of the character. It studies, and
moreover, understands,
why the character (Agujo) did what he did; or why the reader should
feel how he feels. This, in all purposes and intents, is the heart of
the humanities.
Bibliography
Chance,
Paul. Punishment:
Learning and Behavior
(California, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2008): 220 – 221
Robbins,
B.D. “A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHT AND RELATED
THEORIES OF HUMAN EXISTENCE”. February 25, 2006. Accessed December
05, 2016, https://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/selfshape01bk.html
Tyson,
Lois. Psychoanalytic
Criticism: Critical Theory Today
(New York, Taylor & Francis Book Group, 2006): 12. 15 – 23. 26
– 32.
1
Bren Dean Robbins, “A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHT AND
RELATED THEORIES OF HUMAN EXISTENCE”. February 25, 2006. Accessed
December 05, 2016. .
https://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/selfshape01bk.html
3
Bren Dean Robbins, “A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHT AND
RELATED THEORIES OF HUMAN EXISTENCE”. February 25, 2006. Accessed
December 05, 2016. .
https://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/selfshape01bk.html
6
Punishment, in the context of non – retribution from the constant
feeling of anxiety is the punishment itself.
12
This is according to Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of
Development where a person’s social relationships are vital to
self – actualization.
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