A Separate Peace: Psychological Analysis
"Self discovery is a bitch
but it's a necessary evil." Eventually, everyone goes through a time in their life in which they try to grasp the truth of who they really are. Jung, a psychologist, describes this time as the "process of individuation" in which we go through three stages when three parallel phenomena occur: separation of child from family, separation of society from nature, and separation of ego from consciousness. The latter is the process of self-discovery. Rollo May, another psychologist, explains this separation of ego from unconscious in four stages as well as the transition from being unfree to being free. Both men's ideas are well demonstrated in John Knowles World War II novel, A Separate Peace through the development of Gene. Similar to most adolescents, Gene struggles through the stages of consciousness and ultimately gains the freedom to control his own life as his ego moves out of his unconscious and he becomes an adult. As are many teenagers his age, Gene is naïve and unfree in the summer of 1942. He justifies causing Finny's fall by saying,
It was just some ignorance inside me, some crazy thing inside me, something blind (ASP 183). Gene's "blind impulse" would be described by May as a demonstration of his unfreedom. He is controlled by his unconscious, forced to do something his conscious would never have dreamt of. In his one of his essays May states,
They are unfree that is they are bound and pushed by unconscious patterns, (May 4).
This describes Gene perfectly. Had he really been able to analyze the possible consequences of his actions, he definitely wouldn't have "jounced the limb" (ASP 52). Gene constantly projects his subconscious personality traits onto Phineas. In other words, Gene thinks Finny feels all of the jealous feelings he unknowingly feels. A prime example of this is when Gene detected that Finny was a den of lonely, selfish ambition, (ASP 48).
Gene is in what May termed the rebellious stage, in
It was just some ignorance inside me, some crazy thing inside me, something blind (ASP 183). Gene's "blind impulse" would be described by May as a demonstration of his unfreedom. He is controlled by his unconscious, forced to do something his conscious would never have dreamt of. In his one of his essays May states,
They are unfree that is they are bound and pushed by unconscious patterns, (May 4).
This describes Gene perfectly. Had he really been able to analyze the possible consequences of his actions, he definitely wouldn't have "jounced the limb" (ASP 52). Gene constantly projects his subconscious personality traits onto Phineas. In other words, Gene thinks Finny feels all of the jealous feelings he unknowingly feels. A prime example of this is when Gene detected that Finny was a den of lonely, selfish ambition, (ASP 48).
Gene is in what May termed the rebellious stage, in