Hamid Farahmandian

This article examines neurosis in the personality of Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a means to understand his intellectual and artistic development. Although Joyce’s fictional characters have been studied from various psychoanalytic perspectives, the psycho-neurotic aspect of these characters – particularly Stephen – has been largely overlooked. We use Karen Horney’s theory of neurosis as an analytic device to reveal how Stephen’s self-estrangement and neurotic personality bring about his successful evolution as a creative artist, suggesting that Stephen moves away from other people because of his neurotic need of perfection, self-sufficiency and narrow limits on his life. The uncertainty of these needs leads Stephen to become hostile to his society, as he is estranged from it. Consequently, he adopts a detached personality. His self-estrangement leaves Stephen neurotic inasmuch as it increases his artistic power.

This paper studies Leopold Bloom’s social isolation and detached personality through the lens of neurosis in James Joyce’s Ulysses. To achieve this, this paper draws on Karen Horney’s theory of neurotics, in which people with detached personality feel as though they do not belong among other people. Such neurotics not only separate themselves from others but become alienated even from themselves. According to Horney, three neurotic elements lead to the formation of a detached personality: the need for “self-sufficiency,” “perfection,” and “narrow limits in life.” In Ulysses, Bloom distances himself from other people because of his anxiety and his desire for freedom, which results in his social alienation. To deal with his isolation, Bloom needs to flaunt his superiority, prove his independence, and set limitations on his life to relieve the pressures imposed on him by people and society.