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Dimond 1 Never Let Me Go Psychoanalytic Critique Although facts about the life of an author cannot often be found in a work of fiction, authors have a tendency to write stories based on their life unconsciously. Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of many award-winning science fiction books, very obviously not based on anything in his life. This psychoanalysis will attempt to show Ishiguro’s unconscious writings. Psychoanalysis was first invented and used by Sigmund Freud, a famous Austrian neurologist. Freud claimed that psychoanalytic investigation would open gateways to the unconscious mind, paths within the mind that had not yet been explored.
It was on this idea that Freud based the foundation of the psychological investigations of his patients. He invented the techniques of using “free association “and “the taking cure”. Freud claimed that the use of free association, or relating and thoughts and feelings, would help the patient to learn more about their own thoughts and feelings, thus helping them to make sense of them. He used the talking cure to help his patients talk through their problems and free their unconscious mind and the stream of emotions that were trapped there.
He believed that freeing the unconscious mind from repression would help patients to talk and work through their problems personally, even without the help of a professional. He believed that this release from repression, which would cause psychosomatic retardation, was necessary for humans to function normally. Freud’s taking cure is known to be the basis of psychoanalysis. Kazuo Ishiguro, born in Nagasaki, Japan, but moved to Surrey with his family as an infant. He wrote many novels taking place in Japan, although he had only lived there for a short amount of time.
It is my belief that this separation from his home, though his Dimond 2 continuation to write and think about it sparked the central idea of Never Let Me Go. In the novel, students are raised like cattle to be nothing but “donors”, slaughtered for their vital organs in order to save the real human race. These students, who are treated as if they are sub-human, continue through their short-lived lives without a clue as to what the real world, the world of “humans”, has to look forward to. They go throughout their life unaware of where they come from, or whom they came from.
They know nothing about their past, only what their future holds. Although Ishiguro was not raised to be a donor, his work of fiction seems to directly relate to an identity crisis within him. Although Ishiguro was raised in England, he wrote stories whose plotlines took place in his country of birth. Ishiguro admits to not knowing much about his home, and his writing about his home is a work of fiction. In a 1990 interview he said, “If I wrote under a pseudonym and got somebody else to pose for my jacket photographs, I’m sure nobody would think of saying, ‘This guy reminds me of that Japanese writer. ” Although I personally did not find much in the novel that seemed to relate to Ishiguro’s unconscious mind, I do believe that his writing style, which relies on unanswered questions, correlates with his feeling of not knowing his origins well. Just like the donors, who seemed to take pride in their donations near the end of the novel, Ishiguro seems to take a lot of pride in his birthplace. Works Cited: 1. “Biography of Edward Albee. ” GradeSaver. N. p. , n. d. Web. 8 Aug. 2011. ;http://www. gradesaver. om/author/edward-albee/;. 2. Procter, James. “Kazuo Ishiguro. ” contemporarywriters. N. p. , n. d. Web. 10 Aug. 2011. ;http://www. contemporarywriters. com/authors/? p=auth52;. 3. Norton, Rictor. “Folklore and Myth in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia ??????????Woolf? ” Gay History and Literature. Ed. Rictor Norton. N. p. , n. d. Web. 8 ??????????Aug. 2011. ;http://rictornorton. co. uk/albee. htm;. 4. Delahoyde, Michael. “Psychoanalytic Citicism. ” Critical Theory. N. p. , n. d. Web. 12 Aug. 2011.