Literature and Psychology. XIX, No. 2, 1969: Toward a Psychoanalytic Reading of Beckett's Molloy, I. Barbara Shapiro. Pp. 71-86.

In the first of a two-part article on Beckett's novel, Molloy, the author's focus is on the text itself and the character of Molloy, not on the psychology of Beckett. She uses four main psychological themes as the center of her argument. First, there is the theme of Molloy's ambivalent attachment to his mother. This relationship—one of love and hate, need and denial of need—dominates the first part of the novel and determines the novel's over-all structure as a mother-quest. It also reveals Molloy's sexual preoccupation with his mother and his general fear of all women. Second is the theme of Molloy and Moran as psychological doubles. This theme is related to a third: the metamporphosis of Moran as one ego structure is replaced by another; hitherto unconscious elements of his experience become conscious. What evolves as Moran merges more and more with Molloy is a purely destructive, worthless sense of self. A good part of the unconscious material thus brought to light constitutes the fourth theme, the psychology of anality which clearly links the psychology of Moran with that of Molloy. The author comments on the symbolic nature of both characters' physical complaints (asthma, pain in the knees, progressive paralysis, loss of toes) and suggests that these complaints must be understood as conversion hysteria with all its attendant implications of unconscious conflict and maimed libido. This points back to Molloy's love-hate relationship with his mother and his consequent difficulty with all women.