Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

January 17, 1978. MARY SHELLEY'S "FRANKENSTEIN": CONSIDERATIONS OF A SECOND CHANCE IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. Wayne A. Myers, M.D.

Dr. Myers studied three characters from Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein—the monster, Victor (the creator of the monster), and Walton (the purported narrator)—and refers to them as the "primary composite character" to be analyzed in terms of both oedipal and preoedipal motivations and defenses. He suggested that in the progression from the preoedipal to the oedipal phase of human development, a second chance is offered to the individual to revise prior pathological resolutions of early traumatic experiences. After beginning with an overview of Mary Shelley's life and a brief summary of previous psychoanalytic and literary studies of Frankenstein, Dr. Myers discussed those revisions in the life of Mary Shelley and in the life of the "primary composite character" which bear on the relationship of the actual character of Shelley to the "primary composite character."

The monster is seen as the unwanted baby who develops into an aggressive murderer because of preoedipal trauma. Thus the monster commits parricide in the oedipal sense after the preoedipal trauma. Mary Shelley had lost her mother when she was ten days old and a mother surrogate when she was three years old. The character of Victor is seen as a second way of dealing with the same conflicts. Victor idealizes his early life, using the mechanisms of denial and undoing. His mother also dies, but she leaves a surrogate. Dr. Myers sees a parallel between Mary Shelley's attempts to fuse with her dead mother and Victor's bringing life out of lifeless material. Victor resembles Freud's "exception" who believes he can avoid superego restrictions because of the severity of his early traumata. Victor is also seen as using the mechanism of "splitting" (in Kernberg's sense) as a method of neutralizing aggression. Noting Victor's extreme ambivalence toward the monster and his use of a