Psychoanalysis+of+Humbert+in+Lolita

Psychoanalysis of Humbert in the Novel //Lolita// By Courtney Rush To psychoanalyze the main character in //Lolita//, H.H., would take years. His desire for the “nymphets” that surround him is supposedly explained through the loss of his childhood love, Annabel. When he was a child, Humbert was in love with a young girl named Annabel. Annabel was the same age as him, so she was never one of his “nymphets”. However, before the two young children were ever able to consummate their relationship, Annabel died. Humbert claims that their inability to consummate their relationship is what prompted Humbert to subconsciously have these sexual desires for the young nymphets. In psychoanalysis, Freud says that most adult problems/issues are due to issues that happened to them when they were children. The untimely death of Humbert’s Annabel Leigh and their inability to have sex because of it is the internal conflict that Humbert is dealing with. Because he was never able to express his love for Annabel in a sexual manner, he has been forever affected. According to this theory, Humbert will forever be attracted to younger girls, since the object of his original desire was a young girl and he was never able to fulfill that desire. Freud also discusses the ideas of the “id”, “super-ego” and “ego”. According to him, the “super ego” describes the internal desires and wants of the human being, regardless of whether they are morally right or wrong. If they are morally wrong, Freud claims the subject will try to either rationalize their desires or be in denial of them. The ego, on the other hand, is more of a reflective aspect that weighs what the “super-ego” wants versus what is morally right. This idea is constantly found throughout //Lolita//. When Humbert describes his affinity for nymphets, he acknowledges that his desires are morally wrong and perverse. This would be an example of his ego taking over. However, Humbert also tries to justify his desires by either blaming his attraction to young girls on the nymphets themselves, or by saying that being a pedophile really isn’t that bad of a crime. This is found when he says, “the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital relation with a girl-child are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them” (pg 88). Although Humbert will admit throughout the book that his desires are wrong, he still feels the need to justify them with the reader and is in serious denial about the severity of the circumstances. One of the most pervading instances of psychoanalysis in //Lolita// revolves around psychosexual development and the “Oedipus Complex”. In Freud’s “Oedipus Complex” he claims that everyone has incestual desires (young boys with their mothers/girls with their fathers) and that people are constantly trying to repress this desire. According to Freud, Lolita would be a prime example of this. Because Lolita never had a father figure in her life, Humbert is the only other alternative. Since according to Freud all girls have sexual urges for their fathers (and are stopped due to the relationship between the father and the mother), the relationship between Lolita and Humbert makes perfect sense. Freud also claims that humans are "polymorphously perverse". This means that any object can become a source of pleasure for the person. In Humbert’s case, his only source of sexual pleasure comes from the “nymphets”. Humbert claims that he does not desire all little girls, only the ones that he claims are “nymphets”. These “nymphets” are described as “maidens between the ages of nine and fourteen who, bewitch travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human but nymphic(that is demoniac)” (pg 16). Here, Humbert distinguishes the young girls who are his obsession, as well as using his “super-ego” to rationalize that these girls are “demoniac”. H.H. is the quintessential example of the pillars of Freudian theory. Even though his desires are disgusting and abhorrent, the compelling way in which Nabokov writes the novel allows for the reader to want to gain more insight into the twisted mind of Humbert.