从心理分析角度解读《洛丽塔》中亨伯特的人格

School of foreign language,Hebei University of Science and Technology

Remember that Freud considered personality to be like an iceberg; most of personality exists below our level of awareness, just as the massive part of an iceberg is beneath the surface of the water. Freud believed that most of the important personality processes occur below the level of conscious awareness. In examining people's conscious thoughts about their behaviors, we can see some reflections of the ego and the superego. Whereas the ego and superego are partly conscious and partly unconscious, the primitive id is the unconscious, the totally submerged part of the iceberg.

How does the ego resolve the conflict among its demands for reality, the wishes of the id, and constraints of the superego? Through defense mechanisms, the psychoanalytic term for unconscious methods the ego uses to distort reality, thereby protecting it from anxiety. In Freud's view, the conflicting demands of the personality structures produce anxiety. For example, when the ego blocks the pleasurable pursuits of the id, inner anxiety is felt. This diffuse, distressed state develops when the ego senses that the id is going to cause harm to the individual. The anxiety alerts the ego to resolve the conflict by means of defense mechanisms.

2.2 Pedophilia

As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in a person's 16 years old or

older typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest toward prepubescent children (generally 11 years old or younger, though specific diagnosis criteria for the disorder extends the cut-off point for prepubescence to 13 years old). An adolescent who is 16 years of age or older must be at least five years older than the prepubescent child before the attraction can be diagnosed as pedophilia. In popular usage, the word pedophilia is often incorrectly used to mean any sexual interest in children or the act of child sexual abuse. For example,The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary states, \the part of an adult of engaging in sexual activity with a child or children. \sometimes conflates the sexual interest in and sexual contact with pubescent or post-pubescent minors. Researchers recommend that these imprecise uses be avoided because although people who commit child sexual abuse sometimes exhibit the disorder many child

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School of foreign language,Hebei University of Science and Technology

sexual abuse offenders do not meet the clinical diagnosis standards for pedophilia and these standards pertain to prepubescents.

III. Humbert's Abnormal Love Relationships

The book Lolita is mainly concerned with the hero Humbert and his abnormal admiration towards young girl whose age ranges from 9 to 14 years old. In Lolita, it mainly describes an abnormal relationship between the hero Humbert and the heroine Lolita, and there are some so-called pornographic descriptions as well as some involvement of pedophilia. All of these make the novel a controversial one. However, its controversy attracts many readers.

3.1 Humbert and Annabel

The background of Humbert generally like this: his family was a distinguished background with outstanding economic conditions and prominent reputation．His mother died when Humbert was just only three. Humbert, according his own word，he\grew a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs，see vistas and smiling faces\his family as\between Sybil and his father was very strange and mysterious to him. Humbert once mentioned his father with the description.

\，moil cheer petit papa，took me out boating and biking，taught me to swim and dive and waterski，read to me Don Quixote and Les Miserable，and I adored and respected him and felt glad for him whenever I overheard the servants discuss his various lad, friends, beautiful and kind beings who made much of me and cooed and shed precious tear over my cheerful motherlessness.\

As Humbert described that he seemed to live a happy life during his childhood. Mother's love is implacable for a child's growing, Humbert lost mother's love when he was only three years old．Although his aunt Sybil，took the responsibility of taking care the house without any pay, she could never replace mother’s love and mother's role totally for a young

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School of foreign language,Hebei University of Science and Technology

boy．Moreover，Humbert's father, the rich and handsome gentle man is busy with his stuff. He is surrounded by beautiful women．In such case, the father was always didn't remember that he has a son, what he cared and enjoyed were just the fun with beautiful ladies. All this childhood family experience influenced Humbert latter's life.

As a teenager, he met the daughter of an old friend of his aunt, Annabel. Annabel is also a half breed who has half British and half Dutch breed. As if all of a sudden, they fell in love. Their love was crazy, clumsy, indecent, quite painful, and even hopeless. In Humbert and Annabel's view, the fanaticism of mutual possession could be relieved only by means of real absorption and integration of soul and body. It was the first time that Humbert experienced love from psychology and physiology. However, it was unfortunate that their passionate tryst on the beach was found on the spot by some nasty people. What's worse, Annabel died of typhia before long. Annabel passed away, but Humbert's wonderful memory of the first lover was never forgotten with vanishment of the beautiful girl.

The special experience made him a unique pedophile, and he lost himself over it. He defined sexy girls as those who were 9 to 14 years old and had nice figure and look. No matter where he went, he always did not forget to pay attention to young girls around him to search the shadow of her first lover on them. He had lived in nursing homes (actually mental hospitals) several times, but the shadow of the childhood apparently caused huge wounds to his psychology.

3.2 Humbert and Valeria

The first marriage of Humbert is not based on love; he gets married just for the sake of

his safe and fame. Humbert is an outstanding people with special personal abilities，intellect. His background is complex. Humbert's father is a salad of racial genes with wealth, specialized training and experience. \and granddaughter of two Dorset persons, expert in obscure- paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively\complexion who can write poetry, and her husband spends most of his days in American, he is

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School of foreign language,Hebei University of Science and Technology

a great travelers in perfumes and eventually he founds a firm an acquired a bit of real estate in American. Humbert was born in such a wealth and eminent family. As a normal society man born in such family, he should get married, although he has a strong passion on the nymphet. Valeria behaviors like a young girl, which attracts Humbert. So for those two reasons they get married. At the beginning, they have spent quiet but not sweet time, Humber enjoys such silence family life but they seldom share similar hobbies. With time goes by, Humbert finds Valeria changed in some way. The fact is there is someone in her life, she loves someone else. One day she confesses that she has a lover, a secret lover. Humbert does nothing but just let them go. Valeria' lover carried her luggage from the house, so the first marriage which is not based on love is end up with betray. As far as happiness is concerned, there is no happiness in the first marriage; Humbert just enjoys the quiet brought by marriage. He is a normal man in other people's eyes. Although he also tried to lead a normal life, marrying the daughter of a polish doctor, Valeria, but soon he thought it was a poor compromises. And he analyzed the reason why he married Valeria is that she always inadvertently imitated that kind of expression of the little girls, and it is this style has fascinated him. He once described her,\looked fluffy and frolicsome, dressed a la gamine, showed a generous amount of smooth leg, knew how to stress the white of a bare instep by the black of a velvet slipper, and pouted, and dimpled, and romped, and shook her short curly blond hair in the cutest and tritest fashion imaginable.\(Nobokov, 2000:27) These descriptions fully reveal the distortion of his psychology, and also show that in fact he has not got rid of Annabel's shadow.

When Humbert was ready to set off for America, Valeria admitted that she had an affair with a Belarus ex-colonel. Humbert sent away the lovers acting as a gentleman, but afterwards he often imagined how he should give Valeria a lesson, and how to do something in return to the damn valentine's rude behavior by using his fist. He always liked to put his own feelings and thoughts in worthless fantasy, seeking happiness through it, which he took for granted. His psychology became constantly distorted and deformed in the frustration and blow of life.

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