A psychoanalytic reading of Ahmed Saadawi's novel Frankenstein in Baghdad

Abstract EN

The characters in Ahmad Saadawi’s novel Frankenstein in Baghdad experience a state of psychic splits.

this paper aims, as the title promises, to provide a psychoanalytic reading of the novel.

it delves deep into the psyches of the characters to elaborate on how the characters suffer from psychic splits that rift each of the characters into two different people, this is applicable to almost all the characters in the novel.

foremost among these are brigadier Sorour Magid, Mahmoud al-Sawadi, Saidi, Hadi the junk dealer, elIshva and the what is its name.

each of these, among others, is psychoanalytically divided into two.

this turns out to be a phenomenon that engulfs almost all of the characters in the novel and can, therefore, be dubbed “collective unconscious”.

readers will, more often than not, see a profile of the characters.

through this reading of the novel, however, the two psyches of each personality are exposed and this provides a venue for better understanding of the novel.

psychoanalysis is the critical approach adopted.

the paper avails itself from the theories, concepts and ideas of such psychoanalytic critics as sigmund freud, jacques lacan and carl g.

jung.

the paper responds to the following three questions: how is a.

saadawi’s novel frankenstein in baghdad exposing of the state of psychic splits the characters, and the iraqi people at large, have been experiencing? who is the whatisitsname? to what extent can the overwhelming state of split identities, as depicted in the novel, be described, in c.

jung’s terms, as collective unconscious?