A psychoanalytic reading of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from frommian perspective

This study of Conrad?s Heart of Darkness aims at a psychoanalytic reading of the relationship between Marlow and Kurtz, the two main characters of the novel, and the role of civilisation and nature duality play a great role in determining the fate of Marlow and Kurtz in the light of Frommian theory.The first chapter presents a detailed exploration of the milestones of Conrad?s life as well as his struggle for survival. Living within a Modernist milieu, Conrad investigates the situation of man in this world and also questions the meaning of life. As the representation of Conrad?s perception of Western civilisation and reality, varying critical considerations, Freudian psychoanalysis included, of Heart of Darkness will be discussed to prepare the ground for application of Frommian psychoanalysis to the novel.The second chapter is an examination of Fromm and Frommian psychoanalysis. Attention is focused on the revised form of psychoanalysis after Sigmund Freud?s psychoanalysis and what Fromm himself has to say on the nature- man relationship, the nature of the individual and effects of civilisation on the individual.The third chapter consists of a detailed reading of the novel from a Frommian psychoanalytic perspective. This reading explores the unconscious reasons in the psyche of Europeans, for their colonialist attitude and degradation in Congo. Kurtz?s primitivity and violence is explained as a narcissistic behaviour, in Frommian terms, that represents the need to turn back to the security of the mother?s womb. The idea of horror expressed by Kurtz at the end of his voyage to the dark realms of the human psyche, reflects man?s loss of unity with nature in the modern world, his limitation by the impositions of the society and social institutions, and their repression on the human unconscious.