1984 from a Psychoanalytic Perspective

Abstract

This article aims to study the speculative fiction 1984 from the perspective of psychoanalysis, which has been used in the psychotherapeutic process since the 20^th Century. The results of the study revealed that the dictatorship caused people to live as machines. Winston, the protagonist, felt lonely, longing for the past, love, and privacy all the time. Also, the dictatorship had a mechanism to control the people, for example, creating an image of the leader as a representative of perfection to be the unifying focus for the whole country, and creating distraction that consisted of maintaining poor living conditions so that people became so preoccupied with their problems that they did not have time to think about bigger things. This was further done by controlling the thoughts and behaviors of the members of the outer parties and providing a space for people to release their frustrations. Finally, the state’s control put the characters in 1984 in a state of repression, and they had to have a mechanism to adjust their attitude, including Winston’s writing a note releasing grievances in a dream against members of the outer parties like Winston and Parsons, and behaviors that deviated from social conventions, such as Winston sleeping with a prostitute, mingling with the working class and possessing objects, while Julia secretly went shopping on the black market and had sex with any man who was compatible.