Psychoanalytic theory essay

The book Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko shall be used to explain how psychoanalysis is evident in the novel. It entails the journey of Tayo with an abandoned mixed blood from mental fragmentation describing the healing ceremony of the characters in the novel. Tayo cousin died in World War II making Tayo's life a miserable one. Tayo believes that he created a breach between a human being and the natural world resulting to drought in the Laguna. Carpenter argues that Psychoanalyses can no longer be seen to be psychotherapy but a voyage of self-discovery that is accompanied by the analyst of the sense of one thought, memories, dreams and behaviors (Carpenter 67). This caused him to have post-war trauma. These images brought about the repression. As indicated by Freud, that uncanny signals the presence of repression, and this can only come back in disguise and yet to be effective they must be able to elicit reactions similar to those memories they conceal (Carpenter, 81).

Tayo is traumatized by the image of his uncle and after the war come home to a ritual to treat his trauma though he his released by the doctor without him getting complete healing. Repetition is also another aspect that is eminent in the life of Tayo. This continued line of rituals eventually leads Tayo into feeling better and ends up going back to the reserve where he decides to group the mountain to look for his late uncle's herd of cattle. This definitely brings back the memories of the war and of his uncle who had gotten murdered in the Philippines. Freud indicates that some of these repetitions might take the form of descriptive details (Carpenter, 82). This is, for instance, the death of his uncle and that of Rocky his best friend are two events that seem recurrently repeated in his life.

Though the return home of Tayo with his death uncles cattle, makes him feel almost cured and the guilt of causing the drought that has hit the reserve due to a prayer he made while in the war and presumes to be the cause of the 6 year famine keeps coming back to haunt him "he damned the rain until the words were chant" (Silko, 12). He realizes that he won't stop and rest until he finds the spotted cattle; he should assume the "canyons and valleys… thick powdery black, the variations of the height and depth were marked by a thinner black color" (Silko, 114). Since the start, Tayo developed an association with the terrestrial and had no limitations which made him recognize that he ought to lean on the land and the other native individuals in the world he lived in.

His journey is openly related to the discovery of water and culmination of the famine. This brings out the memories of the prayer he had said: "He damned the rain until his words were chant" (Silko, 12). Freud indicates that paradoxically through the repressed memories are less permanent than causal forgetting; these memories have a habit of coming back (Carpenter, 70). This is through his quest to get acceptance from the society since he was born of men who were non-Indian, the drought that he presumes to have caused and has hit the Laguna hard and the death of his uncle Josiah. These memories of Tayo's past come back in the most dramatic manner and the events of his life which include the finding of his uncles spotted cattle, the drought in Laguna and the killing of prisoners during the war.

Work Cited Carpenter, S. The remembrance of things past: reading lessons and an introduction to theory. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.