Loneliness in Alexander Trocchi’s Novel Young Adam: Phenomenological and Psychoanalytic Dimensions

Abstract

In «Meditations on First Philosophy» René Descartes opposed the soul to the body emphasizing their radical difference in modes of world cognition. This article is an attempt at «adequate study of human experience». According to M. Merleau-Ponty Descartes’ ideas of ontological dualism lack an analysis of physiology and psychopathology - fields that have developed since the XXth century. Therefore, this article undertakes a phenomenological and psychoanalytic analysis (based on the ideas of E. Husserl and J. Lacan) of the behavior of the protagonist Joe in the novel «Young Adam» by the well-known Irish writer Alexander Trocchi. The goal is to demonstrate, through example, that the study of human experience is indeed possible, though it will remain an attempt to analyze human experience grounded in the philosophical lineage from R. Descartes to E. Husserl and M. Merleau-Ponty, integrated with J. Lacan’s structural psychoanalysis.

Alexander Trocchi’s Young Adam, written in 1954, clearly reflects the author’s exposure to the ideas of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. The protagonist Joe can perceive the world only through the experience of his own corporeality, and for him, people appear merely as flows of objects and forms (in Husserl’s sense). However, Joe’s worldview is distorted because he has not passed through the mirror stage (J. Lacan), and thus his personal experience, as well as his perception of being and time, are fragmented and distorted. Time is not linear for him, and events and people remain merely movements of intentional objectivities (E. Husserl).

The article also employs J. Lacan’s concepts, aptly outlined in A. Rous’s work «Lacan: An Introduction to Structural Psychoanalysis», namely the three dimensions of human formation - the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic.