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Library's collection Library's IT development CancelThe study deals with the psychological problems faced by Buffalo Bill, the
main character in Thomas Harris? masterpiece The Silence of the Lambs. In this
novel, this character has committed several unusual crimes by kidnapping
medium-built women and skinning all of these victims in order to make a vest
which he believes can alter him to be a true woman. Due to the remarkable plot of
The Silence of the Lambs mainly on the peculiarity of the character of Buffalo
Bill, this thesis aims to figure out what Buffalo Bill?s anxiety is and what his
efforts to overcome it are as seen in Thomas Harris? The Silence of the Lambs. To
reach the purpose of this study, psychological approach is applied, particularly the
theory of anxiety and defense mechanism by Sigmund Freud, to find out his
anxiety and his efforts to overcome it. It eventually turns out that Buffalo Bill
endures a great anxiety for the reason that he passed painful and hard times when
he was young and the fact that he is around the offensive environment. It ends up
with his unconscious building of a defense mechanism in order to overcome his
anxiety, such as identification, reaction formation and regression. Indeed, it
appears that Buffalo Bill?s anxiety and his ways to deal with this anxiety result in
his doing such crimes in the Silence of the Lambs.