The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde expresses the parallel inspirations between Stevenson and Freud. Stevenson’s greatest literary influences were Edgar Allan Poe and James Hogg. In 1839, Poe wrote William Wilson and Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. In both of his novels, Poe addresses the ideas of dopplegangers and dualism, ideas also expressed in Stevenson’s novel. In 1824, James Hogg wrote The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Hogg’s novel also involved a character who had psychological issues. Even in the times of Hogg and Poe, fifty to sixty years prior to the publication of Stevenson’s novel, Freud’s theories were well known by these others and were incorporated into their writing. This pattern of writing …show more content…
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886, the peak of Freud’s findings, and wrote directly based upon Freud’s hypotheses at the time. Stevenson’s childhood struggles later became his inspirations. As a child, he had a chronic respiratory illness, but was very determined to become an author since he loved writing. Unfortunately, he became the outcast of his family because he did not continue their tradition of becoming lighthouse engineers. The pain that Stevenson suffered from his respiratory illness and rejection by his family is analogous to Dr. Jekyll’s pain in converting between himself and Hyde. For example, “The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded” (Stevenson 44). As a child, it was hard for Stevenson to cope with both tuberculosis and the fact that his family did not accept him. He was never able to overcome the pain he suffered as a child. He held these emotions with him throughout his life, and finally was able to show them abstractly in his novel. Like Stevenson, Freud and his family were outsiders. This was because the Freuds were Jewish, and they lived in a mainly Catholic …show more content…
Freud noticed that her symptoms would be repressed by talking about them. He called his treatments the “talking cure” which became the basis of psychotherapy. He also observed how the symptoms would appear again when she subdued her reaction in an uncomfortable situation. Creating a new method for doctors to use requires a certain amount of curiosity and perseverance, which Freud obviously had. Throughout this book, curiosity plays a role in the plot and ultimately, in the discovery that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the same person. On one occasion, Dr. Lanyon, a close friend of Dr. Jekyll, questions Jekyll’s reasoning behind his sending Lanyon a letter for him to do a favor: “But here I took pity on my visitor’s suspense, and some perhaps on my own growing curiosity” (Stevenson 39). This quote reveals how Lanyon, like Freud, is curious about an idea, and further became involved to find his answer. It is quite likely that many psychiatrists before Freud hypothesized about a talking cure for those with mental disorders, but dismissed it because it seemed too simple to work. Those who never experimented with the idea could never find out if it truly was a valid cure. Freud was the one who ignored its simplicity and conducted groundbreaking research using