Lewis, Freud and Orual
Posted: Nov 27, 2018 1:24 pmI've heard C.S. Lewis described as the intellectual opposite of Freud but some of the psychology in C.S. Lewis' book, Till We Have Faces, strikes me as sort of Freudian.
Freud believed that people suppress parts of their personality that horrify them so that they don't even know they exist themselves. Orual, the main character of Till We Have Faces, is insulted by the suggestion that she is jealous of her better looking sister. But a careful reading shows that she does harbor jealous feelings towards her even though they aren't her only feelings. Orual also dreams about her sister being her enemy and Freud believed that dreams were an expression of unconscious desires and fears. (I'm not an expert on Freud-I don't even agree with his ideas-so my summary is probably a little inaccurate BTW.)
Does anyone know anything about Lewis' interaction with Freud's ideas? Did he originally disagree with them but came to agree with them by the time he wrote Till We Have Faces? Or did he agree with them originally but came to disagree sometime after he wrote Till We Have Faces?
Freud believed that people suppress parts of their personality that horrify them so that they don't even know they exist themselves. Orual, the main character of Till We Have Faces, is insulted by the suggestion that she is jealous of her better looking sister. But a careful reading shows that she does harbor jealous feelings towards her even though they aren't her only feelings. Orual also dreams about her sister being her enemy and Freud believed that dreams were an expression of unconscious desires and fears. (I'm not an expert on Freud-I don't even agree with his ideas-so my summary is probably a little inaccurate BTW.)
Does anyone know anything about Lewis' interaction with Freud's ideas? Did he originally disagree with them but came to agree with them by the time he wrote Till We Have Faces? Or did he agree with them originally but came to disagree sometime after he wrote Till We Have Faces?