A Kristevan Psychoanalytic Reading of Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child

This research paper is a psychological reading of Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child [1] in the light of Kristevan’sconcepts including ‘chora’, ‘semiotic and symbolic’ and ‘abjection.’ The paternal and maternal roles of parents intreating Ben, the retarded minded child, and indirect influences on other children are emphasized in dissolution of thefamily. Ben is biologically defective to go through natural orders of semiotic and symbolic stage and the early ejectionof Ben and the absence of father in his symbolic stage resulted in his struggle with biological and environmentaldeterminism. His prolonged deprivation due to parental negligence and mistreatment caused Ben to introduce himselfwith imaginary parents (John’s group members) and prepared the ground for latter constitution of a criminal group.The Ben’s fate, scattering of his siblings, and the parental roles were found to be the result of social expectations andideological latent policies that function like in a cyclic mechanism by producing cultural norms and receiving relatedoutputs (like Ben’s criminal group).

Keywords:

semiotic and symbolic , ‘abjection , chora , Doris Lessing , The Fifth Child , Kristeva