D. H. Lawrence and narcissistic issues: a psycholiterary study

D. H. Lawrence addressed issues of selfhood in his fiction decades before the psychoanalytic community's intensive investigation of narcissism. The present study examines his literary exploration of self-themes, beginning with an irony in his fiction: Lawrence projected himself into multiple perspectives in depicting characters who essentially remain stuck in their own egocentric orientation-- an incongruity between author and character that defies his proclamation of art for his own sake. Lawrence addressed self-issues most directly in Women in Love , where he counterposed a subjectivity that retains its egocentric imperative with an objectivity highly critical of others' shortcomings. He explored various facets of this duality--relatedness and independence, immersion and reflection, sensuality and spirituality--which pose problems for integral selfhood. Through the image of stellar equilibrium, Lawrence envisioned a reconciliation of these polarities in the paradox of united-butseparate relations. His symbol aptly expresses the paradox of simultaneous subjective identification and objective perspective inherent in the transcendence from grandiose narcissism to mature narcissism and from idealizing narcissism to empathy. Yet Lawrence achieved only limited success in substantiating that vision in the characterization and dramatic action of his novels. His occasional portrayal of his characters' transient empathy depicts the pain implicit in the vital awareness of aloneness and otherness. These brief episodes, however, contrast with the novels' resolutions, which generally offer some vague, untested hope for future self-realization.

The present study formulates a bipolar model of subjective and objective experience, similar to Bach's (1980) and Fast s (1984), for its exploration of narcissism and creativity. Its origin and breadth establish the approach as a psychologically-based hermeneutics, a system that encompasses not only its subject matter, but also its own theory and method. Thus, the model applies to polarities beyond those examined in Lawrence's fiction: first, in symbolic communication, the abstract, scientific method of psychology versus the concrete, artistic expression of literature; and second, in psychoanalysis, the reductionistic traditional theories versus the humanistic post-Freudian reformulations. The study explores its model's broad implications for literary criticism and psychological investigation and its narrower relevance to the Kohut-Kernberg debate on narcissism.