Psychoanalytic Look At The Great Gatsby

One area of human behavior explored in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that has important implications for psychoanalytic criticism is found in the romantic relationships portrayed in the novel. Indeed, even for readers not viewing the novel through a psychoanalytic lens, one of the most memorable qualities of the book is the force and endurance of Gatsby’s love for Daisy, the emotional magnetism which, for many fans, renders The Great Gatsby one of the great American love stories.

For a psychoanalytic reading, however, the interest created by the romance between Gatsby and Daisy lies not in its apparent uniqueness but in the ways in which it mirrors all of the less appealing romantic relationships depicted, those between Tom and Daisy, Tom and Myrtle, Myrtle and George, and Nick and Jordan, and thereby reveals a pattern of psychological behavior responsible for a good deal of the narrative progression. As we shall see, this pattern is grounded in the characters’ fear of intimacy, the unconscious conviction that emotional ties to another human being will result in one’s being emotionally devastated. This psychological problem is so pervasive in the novel that The Great Gatsby’s famous love story becomes, through a psychoanalytic lens, a drama of dysfunctional love.

Perhaps the clearest indication of fear of intimacy in the novel lies in Tom Buchanan’s chronic extramarital affairs, of which Jordan became aware three months after the couple’s wedding.

Dividing his interest, time, and energy between two women protects him from real intimacy with either. Indeed, Tom’s relationships with women, including his wife, reveal his desire for ego gratification rather than for emotional intimacy. For Tom, Daisy represents social superiority: she’s not the kind of woman who can be acquired by a “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” like Jay Gatsby. Tom’s possession of Myrtle Wilson, whom Nick describes as a sensuous, smoldering woman with an immediately perceptible vitality, reinforces Tom’s sense of his own masculine power, which is why he brings her to fashionable restaurants where they are seen by his male acquaintances and why he introduces her to Nick so soon after their reunion at his East Egg home. In fact, Tom’s interest in other women is so routine that Daisy has come to expect it.

Daisy’s fear of intimacy, though as intense as Tom’s, is not quite as immediately apparent. Indeed, her marital fidelity, until her affair with Gatsby, and her distress over Tom’s involvement with Myrtle might suggest to some readers that Daisy desires emotional intimacy with her husband.

However, the history of Tom and Daisy’s relationship suggests psychological motives that point to a different interpretation of Daisy’s "delight" in her husband. It is obvious that Daisy didn’t love Tom when she married him: she tried to call off the wedding the evening before when she’d received an overseas letter from Gatsby. In fact, her behavior upon receiving his letter suggests that she married Tom to keep herself from loving Gatsby, to whom she had gotten too attached for her own comfort: she got drunk for the first time in her life, and

Why else would she marry Tom, when she obviously preferred Gatsby, who she believed was from much the same strata as herself? Yet just three months after the wedding she seemed obsessively fond of her new husband. What happened in this short time to change Daisy’s attitude so dramatically? Given Tom’s compulsive pursuit of women, it is probable that by the time he and Daisy arrived in Santa Barbara, Daisy already suspected him of infidelity. This would explain why she seemed so distracted whenever Tom was out of sight. She had good reason to fear that, if he wasn’t with her, he might be pursuing another woman, as she believes he was doing. Rather than hate him for such mistreatment, however, Daisy fell head-over-heels in love with him. Although such a response may not seem to make sense, it can be explained psychologically.

In psychoanalytic terms, a woman who falls in love with a man suffering from a severe fear of intimacy probably fears intimacy herself. If she fears intimacy, nothing can make her feel safer than a man who has no desire for it. Upon learning that Tom’s interest did not focus exclusively on her, such a woman would have become very capable of loving him intensely because he posed no threat to her protective shell: he wouldn’t have wanted to break through it even if he could have. And this is just what we see in Daisy’s changed attitude toward Tom, though she certainly wouldn’t use this language to describe her feelings, and it is very unlikely that she was even aware of her psychological motives.

For both Tom and Daisy, fear of intimacy is related to low self-esteem. If Tom were as emotionally secure as his wealth and size make him appear, he wouldn’t work as hard as he does to impress others with his money and power. Daisy’s low self-esteem, like her fear of intimacy, is indicated in large part by her relationship with Tom. Falling so much in love with a man who was openly unfaithful to her suggests an unconscious belief that she doesn’t deserve better. Furthermore, Daisy’s insecurity, like Tom’s, frequently requires the ego reinforcement obtained by impressing others, attempts at which we see in her numerous affectations.