French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is known worldwide as the man who introduced the concept of the "mirror scene." Another of his most notable works is of course the concept of “Other”. In an article titled “Being the Other Woman: Watanabe's Unrequited Love for Naoko in Norwegian Wood,” Giselle Carter (2017) applied Lacan's concept of the “Other” to study the novel's main character, the projection of “Other” by Toru Watanabe to another main character. character, Naoko. From his diary, Lacan defines desire as “a desire for self-fulfillment” and an important element for reaching the “Other”. However, this “Other” is not accessible to the Self so these attributes must be projected onto other living beings, such as a person. In this case, Watanabe relies on Naoko to unconsciously find his “Other”. Even though Watanabe's love is one-sided, he continues to seek comfort from Naoko who is clearly still clinging to the death of her boyfriend years ago. Carter also explained in his article that Watanabe's infatuation with Naoko had "distorted his self-esteem" (8) when he realizes that he spends most of his time thinking about her. Finally, she also emphasizes Watanabe's projection of the "Other" by stating that all this time, he has imagined his life with Naoko's presence even if it is one-sided. Even after her death, Carter explained that he still thinks of Naoko in the same way when telling their story. Although she has argued some examples from the novel, there are indications that these characters and events are better explained from a different perspective, for example Carl Jung's theory of individuation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay While Carter presented his arguments from the perspective of a Lacanian, JP Dil also revised the work of Murakami Haruki by applying Carl Jung's psychoanalytic theory of individuation. by doing an in-depth analysis of its archetypes. According to his thesis titled “Murakami Haruki and the Search for Self-Therapy” from 2007, he talks about loss, mourning and melancholy in his Chapter 1: The Search for Self-Therapy. According to him, Jung described that individuation carries the definition of becoming an "individual", because individuality celebrates our deepest uniqueness, which implies that we become our own Self. (50) He then expands on Jung's explanations, as many psychoanalysts have agreed that the best way to interpret unconscious material is through dreams. However, Jung believes that we can also extract this analysis from the observation of our active imagination. Building on Dil's thesis, Murakami advocates a certain style of writing where his characters are mostly written to explore the world freely. Therefore, this allows his works to be better interpreted within Jung's archetypes, as this further explores what Jung defined the collective unconscious. Dil further explains that as one goes on the quest to find one's Self in particular individuals, we are unintentionally influenced by our environment of place and time which will later contribute to who we are as an identity. He then concluded that the simplest way to understand how these complexes (archetypes) work is to consider them as part of our subconscious. According to him, these complexes are more like our secondary personalities which have life on their own. In conclusion, to achieve individuation, one must integrate oneself into one'sarchetypes to achieve individuation. Interestingly, Dil also points out that identifying too closely with archetypes could lead one to lose important attributes, and thus lose themselves. (63) Therefore, he suggests that one should make extensive use of their positive archetypes to avoid the loss of one's identity. Taking Jung's theory as a close reference, it is agreed that there are three important archetypes that must be analyzed in the process of achieving Individuation; Shadow, Anima/Animus/ and Self. Besides psychoanalytic studies, Norwegian Wood has also been analyzed from a French existentialist perspective. Based on James et al (2011), in their article "Tales from the Hard Side: A French Existentialist perspective on Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood", in which they applied Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist theory to explore the characters' struggles main. after all, they suffer significant losses, for example Naoko who suffers from depression due to her boyfriend's suicide after high school. Based on this theory, they conclude that Watanabe, Keiko and Midori managed to rebuild their lives according to existentialist principles while Naoko never recovers mentally and emotionally from the suicide death of her boyfriend, Kizuki, which leads to his suicide later at the end of the story. novel. Interestingly, in addition to simply explaining the inner struggles of the main characters, James et al also view Western rock music, such as the influence of the Beatles, as a liberating external factor that inspires the characters Watanabe and Midori, who both distant from Japanese. culture and tradition to free themselves from their depression and life's challenges, while Naoko, who is rather conservative, continues to do so long after Kizuki's death. Based on the three articles explained above, there are clearly opposing viewpoints to better analyze Murakami's works. first article "Being the Other Woman: Watanabe's Unrequited Love for Naoko in Norwegian Wood", Carter explains that Watanabe seeks sex with strangers in her attempt to seek connections with other people since death by suicide of his best friend, Kizuki, years ago. also experiences Naoko's unrequited love. While I agree that this is Watanabe's attempt to reach out, Carter merely analyzes the main character on the surface by describing his projection of the "Other" towards Naoko. However, if we place ourselves from the point of view of Jung's Individuation as Dil explains in "Murakami Haruki and The Search for Self-Theraphy" (2011), this will allow us to better discover the unconscious side of Watanabe by disintegrating its Archetypes. . For example, although he has many sexual encounters with other women, his heart remains loyal to Naoko. This is clearly seen when he drops everything just to see Naoko when she invites him to the sanotarium. This incident represents Watanabe's deepest dark desire, which can be identified as the Shadow. Second, Carter also explained in his article that Watanabe's infatuation with Naoko had "distorted his self-esteem." (8) Although, from a Lacanian's point of view, this could be a possibility. However, as stated by Dil (2007) from a Jungian's perspective, one must be intact with one's archetypes to reach the stage of individuation. If Watanabe hadn't learned what he knew now, he wouldn't be able to realize it on his own. In other words, his experiences of coming out of his loss are one of the tools that help him remain intact with his archetypes. Despite this, Carter (2017) has indeed presented a good argument to explain the character's behavior.