Author(s)

Liu Sha ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

Corresponding Author

ABSTRACT

Der Steppenwolf was written by German writer Hesse and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Lens of the book follows the mental transition of the protagonist Harry Haller, therefore, figuring out how he moves from self-destruction to self-integration becomes the key to understand the book. This article is going to discuss the causes of Haller's mental transition from the perspective of Freud's theory of personality. Through the analysis of ego, id and superego, this article argues that when Haller's superego judges the id and the ego is absent at the same time, the pain of being suppressed will point to a kind of self-destruction; When the id is gradually satisfied, those conflicts are temporarily put aside, and the pursuit of instinct goes beyond the persistence of death; When his ego returns and begins to reconcile the conflict among psychological personalities, his inner order is reconstructed and self-healing is completed.

KEYWORDS

CITE THIS PAPER

Liu Sha, From Self-Destruction to Self-Integration: The Protagonist's Psychological Transformation in Der Steppenwolf. Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2025) Vol. 8: 122-126. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2025.080218.

REFERENCES

[1] Li, S. Q. (2020). The Last Knight: A Biography of Hesse. Beijing: Huawen Publishing House.
[2] Chen, M. (2018). Therapy and the Transformation of the Self-World: Psychological Practice in Hermann Hesse’s Literature. Comparative Literature and Intercultural Studies (2): 106.
[3] Freud, S. (1920). A general introduction to psychoanalysis (J. Riviere, Trans.). New York: Boni & Liveright.
[4] Freud, S. (1961). The ego and the id. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (pp. 1-66). London: Hogarth Press.
[5] Hesse, H. (2012). Steppenwolf (D. Horrocks, Trans.). London: Picador.

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