Nature vs.Nurture: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Violence in the Secret History

Abstract

This study performs a psychoanalytic examination of violence in Donna Tartt's The Secret History through the paradigm of Nature vs Nurture that remedies a critical gap in scholarship that heavily centres on structural or Gothic elements. Utilising the Freudian, post-Freudian and Object relations theories, the study documented how inherited psychological pathologies of Thanatos subject of Henry Winter's Narcissism, trauma-based dissociation of Richard Papen, and failure of individuation of Macaulay twins predisposed the characters to moral collapse. The analysis showed that these intrinsic drives (Nature) were systematically licenced (by the external environment - Nurture) by the external environment (mostly Julian Morrow's amoral elitist pedagogy and the isolating Gothic environment). This environment served as a moral suspension mechanism that supplied intellectual justification for latent aggression. The major finding is that the two murders were just the inevitable result of this deterministic collision where the philosophical licence(Nurture) was wedded to the psychological drive(Nature). Richard's unreliable narration was translated into a clinical defence mechanism against trauma. The thesis comes to the conclusion that the novel is a profound commentary on the psychological fragility of humanity when allowed intellectual permission to manifest itself in collective violence and psychological ruin.