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Library's collection Library's IT development CancelThis study reveals the psychological complications of the Captain, the
main character of Strindberg?s The Father, which has been hailed as probably the
most powerful play of the naturalistic school. Regarding the gruesome tension
between the two main characters within the three acts, the Captain exposes much
more of his certain fear and paranoid attitude, as the effect of the lack of
gratification in his childhood, than the wife, Laura, who is verbally violent and
aggressively fighting for her own will over her husband. The tragic ending where
the Captain suffers from stroke triggers an intriguing question whether it is related
to his fear and paranoid attitude or not. Altogether, the thesis writer is interested in
inquiring what kinds of fixation and anxiety that the Captain undergoes and how
he finally withdraws from reality. Therefore, psychological approach with Freud?s
psychoanalysis is needed in dissecting the complexity of the mental condition of
the Captain. The Captain?s lack of gratification in childhood, which is conveyed
in his dialogue and regressive attitude, actually matches with one theory of
psychoanalysis called fixation. The fixation that the Captain suffers varies from
oral, anal, phallic, to Oedipal fixation. Furthermore, the tension that arises during
his quarrel with Laura has obstructed his fixations; this initiates the emergence of
reality and neurotic anxiety toward the women of the house and the paternity
doubt, rendered by Laura, in the Captain?s mind. The women have also blatantly
conquered the Captain?s ego by thwarting his ways of solving his anxiety, which
are sublimation and defense mechanisms, and setting him up without any choice
other than submitting to their will that later restrains the Captain in a straitjacket
as a mental patient. Since the Captain?s ego could not survive from the
overwhelming tension on the level of consciousness, repression, the last defense
mechanism, shuts his consciousness down, saving his ego away from any tension.
As a result, the Captain collapses on his nurse?s lap, of which the doctor diagnoses
that he has had a stroke.