Stephen’s neurotic self-estrangement: A case study of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Introduction

Self-estrangement, according to the theory of alienation developed by Melvin Seeman (1918–2020), refers to the hostility and detachment that an individual demonstrates in response to other people and society as a whole. A network of ‘positive social relationships provides a source of support, meaning, and guidance which can influence long-term trajectories of health outcomes’ (quoted in Umberson and Montez, 2010: 56), while the lack of this sort of bond can instigate estrangement from society. Karen Horney (1885–1952) categorizes the notion of self-estrangement within her concept of psycho-neurotic trends, arguing that neurotic people can be classified in three groups: those who ‘move away from others’ (taking on a detached personality); those who ‘move against others’ (taking on an aggressive personality); and those who ‘move towards others’ (taking on a compliant personality). According to Horney, a major feature of a detached personality ‘is estrangement from the self, that is, a numbness to emotional experience, an uncertainty as to what one is, what one loves, hates, desires, hopes, fears, resents, believes’ (2013 [1945]: 74). In line with Horney’s idea of neurosis, Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, presents a detached personality, situating him in Horney’s first category of those who ‘move away from people’. Although the heroes of coming-of-age narratives are essentially always neurotic – an inherent and relatable aspect of modern life – the diagnosis of Stephen as neurotically detached helps us perceive the reasons for his social isolation, as well as how he successfully evolves into a promising artist. This process of evolution involves moments of uncertainty, guilt, doubt and suffocation, as well as ecstasy, joy in living each moment and finally, the courage to break through the nets. He is persistently portrayed as an outsider, separate from the family and society in which he lives, connecting with no one and seeking solitude and isolation at every turn:

A vague dissatisfaction grew up within him as he looked on the quays and on the river and on the lowering skies and yet he continued to wander up and down day after day as if he really sought someone who eluded him. (p. 67)

His neurotic personality – which originates from the uncertainties and frustration born of his family, society and religious beliefs – triggers his intellectual and artistic development by leading him to prefer his own aspirations over compelling social commands. The primary reasons for Stephen’s self-estrangement, which initiates his enlightenment and creativity in art, are thus rooted in his need for perfection and self-sufficiency and his struggle with constraints in life.

Stephen’s pursuit of perfection

Neurotics are provoked by the gap between the idealized and perfect image of the self and the less-than-perfect reality. This creates deep anxieties about imperfection and an obsessive drive for perfection. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce portrays Stephen as an ‘ambitious, rebellious, and cultural critic hostile to his native Ireland’s naïve convictions in religion, language and family’ (McAdams, 2016: 1). In these ways, Stephen shows himself to be a philosopher of the future ‘who will escape nihilism by creating his own identity and his own meaning through art’ (McAdams, 2016). Per Horney’s concept of neurosis, Stephen moves away from people and maintains an emotional distance from them due to his strong need for perfection. He struggles to express himself as a person with great abilities that make him different from and even superior to his peers. To demonstrate this, he backs off from social customs and immerses himself successively in school, family, religion and art. Regarding the dichotomy between Stephen’s aesthetic ambitions and social inadequacies, James Naremore (1976) asserts that ‘even in his later “artistic” phase Stephen is continuing to react against what he regards as “common and insignificant” reality, continuing to pare his fingernails above what he no doubt feels are the base and dirty aspects of life’ (p. 121). Stephen wishes to escape into the pure and free air of art, though

until he recognizes that no life is completely isolate, until he learns to accept and properly criticize his actual experience, he cannot be a poet or even a mature individual [. . .]; in other words, Stephen’s theories are an elaborate defense mechanism, a withdrawal from life. (Naremore, 1976: 122)

It is clear that Stephen’s detached personality originates in his anxieties about securing his self against societal hostilities. Joyce uses Stephen’s detachment to illustrate the journey that the artist must take to achieve adulthood. Therefore, Stephen’s pursuit of perfection can be understood as having three aspects, including a sense of superiority over others, rejecting artistic conventions and moving away from the common settlements of social institutions.

Stephen’s sense of superiority is the first indication of his pursuing perfection, but it results in his self-estrangement and makes his personality neurotically detached from other people. This has been recognized by critics. His early memories at Clongowes,

where his sensitive, artistic nature sets him apart from the other fellows playing sports and behaving as ordinary, rough schoolboys[,] speak of social discord that over the course of the novel develops into an overriding attitude of disregard for others on the basis of his own sense of intellectual superiority. (Sewerin, 2014: 12)

Although it is easy to point out Stephen’s numerous other flaws, most of them are related to his age, as the title of the novel implies. While he is impulsive, sensitive and highly emotional, these traits are characteristic of many adolescents of his age. His actual incongruity comes about in the later chapters of the book, where we can perceive his excessive pride and self-importance. Throughout the story, it is obvious that Stephen is special, but his self-awareness of this quality creates his most serious challenge. In everything Stephen does – whether it is devoting himself to religion in Chapter 4 or to art in Chapter 5 – he views himself as superior to his peers and even mentors: ‘This can be said of Stephen, who feels superior and finds it hard to care for others, even for his own family’ (Litz, 1966: 72). Ironically, it is Stephen’s excessive pride that leaves him ‘peculiarly vulnerable to the promptings of the director who initially approaches him by praising the young man’s piety and good example’ (p. 140).

Moreover, Joyce confirms that Stephen is not drawn to the priesthood because of his devotion to God, but because of the prestige and power associated with it. This air of superiority remains with him as he becomes a university student and begins mastering his artistic talent. In Chapter 5 of the novel, he is still ‘aloof, outside the circle, different from other persons of his acquaintance’ (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 145), and he constantly expresses his differing ideals in conversations and arguments with his peers in which he often teases them for their beliefs. In his argument with Davin, for example, Stephen challenges Davin’s patriotism and belief in the Irish nationalist movement on the grounds that he is above all the problems and issues with the country. Of his many flaws, Stephen’s cardinal weaknesses are his pride and insecurity, two qualities that may seem contradictory, but both clearly manifest in his actions and thoughts over the course of the novel. Through Stephen’s interactions at school, we realize that he views himself highly in comparison to his classmates; in addition, in his challenges to piety, his insecurity regarding religion develops into disillusionment. Having been born into the Catholic faith, he feels a need to be part of the church to the extent that he considers the priesthood, only to shift away gradually from what he sees as a repressive life towards one in which he can experience the beauty and essence of life and express these experiences in the form of art. Before discovering his artistic vocation, all he seems to know is that he disagrees with his people and surroundings. Even as he attempts to follow a humble, selfless path of Catholic devotion, he finds that

[t]o merge his life in the common tide of other lives was harder for him than any fasting or prayer, and it was his constant failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul, at last, a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts and scruples. (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 164)

Avoiding common artistic conventions is a second sign of Stephen’s pursuit of perfection. An artistic convention is a method or style of conveying or portraying something in art which is publicly followed. To reject a society’s artistic conventions involves a sort of degradation of public understanding. To achieve perfection, Stephen struggles to move away from traditional artistic conventions. He believes that he should distinguish himself from others in several ways (e.g. in art). Stephen’s observation of inferior artistic knowledge in his school fellows makes him confident enough to criticize the school dean’s perception of aesthetics (Zimbaro, 2014: 46). During their conversation, Stephen reveals the marked difference between the ‘practical arts’, which the dean represents, and the ‘liberal arts’, which Stephen admires. Here, Joyce uses a metaphor of ‘light’ (the lamp symbolizing enlightenment). We can see that Stephen’s figurative approach to aesthetics is superior to the dean’s limited, literal views of the subject. It is comical that Stephen’s continued attempts to clarify his views further confuse the dean. Nonetheless, Stephen has an opportunity to differentiate between his own aesthetic use of language and the language that is used in the ‘literary tradition [. . .] of the marketplace’ (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 250) – that is, what is taught by the dean. Stephen perceives the dean’s scholastic limitations and pities him for his uninspired but faithful service to his order. He realizes that a university education cannot adequately prepare someone like himself to attain unique aesthetic ideals.

To further examine Stephen’s neurotic ideas about art and the nature of the artist, Joyce creates a scene between Stephen and Lynch, using Lynch as a sounding board in response to whom Stephen can articulate his philosophy of aesthetics. However, it does seem strange that Stephen would choose to speak so earnestly and intimately with Lynch. Lynch’s impertinence in response to Stephen’s thoughts, childish pranks and unpolished comments make him an unlikely confidant for Stephen’s evolving philosophy of aesthetics. Joyce thus presents the issue of artistic conventions as another tool which Stephen can use to increase his pride in his extensive knowledge. This artistic uniqueness separates Stephen from others and causes him to develop a neurotically detached personality.

Steering clear of social institutions with compulsory regulations and ideas is the third reason for Stephen’s pursuit of perfection. A social institution refers to a group of people who join together in pursuit of a common goal. An individual may consider rejecting the conventions of a social institution due to the desire to attain perfection beyond that which others in that institution have achieved. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, despite Stephen’s great sense of self-importance, he still shows a neurotic degree of insecurity, especially in terms of his religious morality. In Chapter 4, Stephen makes every effort to keep himself morally pure: Even ‘his eyes shunned every encounter with the eyes of women’ (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 163), an action reminiscent of the Old Testament’s Job. However, unlike Job, Stephen’s actions derive from a lack of confidence in his newfound faith. Stephen is so afraid that even the slightest glance at a woman will trigger his old habits that he denies himself the right to look at women at all. However, by the end of the novel, Stephen finds that most social and religious philosophies – including the disagreeable ideas of nationalism, supplementarity and religion – meddle in his personal life and serve as obstacles to his evolution and discovery of his vocation as an artist; accordingly, he makes every effort to leave them behind.

The Catholic Church has been a point of emphasis in Irish nationalist fights against British colonial pressure and Irishness and Catholicism were often taken as synonyms in this context (Akca, 2008: 51; Belanger, 2001: 22). The nationalistic activities proclaiming Irish identity were undoubtedly of Gaelic–Catholic origin. Nonetheless, Irish nationalism is itself split on religion. On one hand, characters like Dante Riordan assert that Irish national identity is attached to the Catholic Church. Riordan argues that a priest has duties to direct his people on political and moral issues, as with Charles Parnell’s disgrace, where a popular nationalist leader was denounced for his adulterous affairs. Individuals like Mr Casey and Simon Dedalus, on the other hand, claim that Catholicism has been frequently disloyal to Irish nationalism and must no longer meddle in political affairs. Affected by these arguments during his childhood, Stephen, in a conversations with his friend Cranly, criticizes his identity:

My ancestors threw off their language and took another [. . . T]hey allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. No honorable and sincere man [. . .] has given up his life and his youth and his affections from the days of Tone to those of Parnell but you sold him the enemy or failed him in need or reviled him and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I’d see you damned first. (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 170)

Stephen first confirms his Irish identity by referring to ‘my ancestors’; later, he refers to past Irish people as ‘they’, indicating that they have been disconnected from him over time (Babaee and Montashery, 2011: 128). He develops a perception of his career as an artist that is devotedly connected to his alienation from his country:

I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can. (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 208)

Furthermore, Stephen presents himself in a supplementary role and creates occasion to state his identity and interpretations in ways far different from the dominant ones. Stephen rebels against existing Irish intolerance and oppressive morality: ‘When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight; you talk to me of nationality, language, religion; I shall try to fly by those nets’ (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 206). As Stephen cannot modify any immoralities in people or society, he therefore leaves them all for good.

The Church itself as a social institution is another serious area for Stephen to avoid. Its lessons appear to go against Stephen’s liberated intellectualism. He deeply appreciates the human body and beauty in general, which is considered unacceptable in a Catholic family. Catholicism still retains some influence on Stephen, however. Although he ultimately becomes a nonbeliever, he fears the probable righteousness of the Catholic Church. In spite of this fear, Stephen ultimately decides to live self-sufficiently and without any restrictions, even if his choice leads him to hell. Stephen tends to liberate himself from what Derrida called ‘logocentrism’, which at heart views the world as a notion (logos). For example, the religion that describes the world to us stays out of the world. Stephen tries to decentralize the world from centres like religion and comes to an awareness that the Church, in contrast to common interpretation, is a metanarrative that has no place in his life.

Stephen’s decision to leave his family and country behind to become an artist at the end of the novel suggests that Joyce recognizes the artist as a necessarily isolated figure. To satisfy his neurotic need for perfection, Stephen turns his back on his community, refusing to accept the institutional, political and religious constraints that the community pushes upon him. This struggle originates in his neurotic personality and desire to achieve perfection and the freedom of individuality. Accordingly, Stephen’s excessive feelings of superiority to others and pride in his own ideas over social conventions regarding the definitions of nationalism and religion cause him to neurotically adopt a detached personality.

Stephen’s claim to self-sufficiency

Self-sufficiency denotes the ability to support oneself without outside assistance. To be neurotically self-sufficient, an individual must demonstrate resourcefulness and strength: ‘Because he is driven always to assert himself as the strongest, shrewdest, or most sought after, he tries to develop the efficiency and resourcefulness necessary to being so’ (Horney, 2013 [1945]: 67). To perform well and maintain his detached personality, Stephen struggles to become self-sufficient; to do so, he needs to rely on his own resources, which must be highly developed. Stephen’s detachment thus involves an almost desperate desire for privacy. He usually appears brooding, dark and troubled and spends most of his time in solitude, to such a degree that sharing an experience like walking along the beach or speaking with his work colleagues disturbs him. After successfully achieving self-sufficiency, he first leaves his home and then his country. To realize his self-sufficiency, Stephen neurotically introduces himself as a resourceful person, desires total privacy, thinks about his own benefits, feels the need to be considered an adult and enjoys sexual affairs.

Resourcefulness is the first requirement for Stephen’s self-sufficiency. The ability to act efficiently and inventively, especially in complicated situations and in response to problems, makes an individual resourceful. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen explores every aspect of knowledge related to art and society to demonstrate his resourcefulness, questioning religion, politics, nationalism, socialism, individualism and art (although he may not have realistic solutions to these issues). The reason that Stephen leaves his country – and what he perceives as the problem of his society – is the effect of religion, education, politics and colonialism on Ireland’s state of affairs and the destiny of the Irish people. Stephen experiences a need to move away from the bonds of Irish nationalism and Catholicism, both of which threaten his pursuit of a literary career. Furthermore, his ideals and views are dissimilar to those around him, which leads to unsuccessful communication, understanding and empathy with others; he feels distanced from people while also experiencing a certain intellectual growth through this painful social alienation. Likewise, his desire to win every discussion at his college makes him ignorant in the eyes of others. In this way, misunderstandings between Stephen and the people around him cause serious disconnection between them.

Second, Stephen thinks more of his own benefit and believes that he is resourceful enough to bring up advantageous points for himself. Joyce reveals Stephen’s neurotic problems through his selfishness in response to his peers and other people in society. In an argument over a petition against a play, Stephen’s classmate MacCann asks Stephen to sign the petition, which Stephen does not want to do. A confrontation arises between Stephen and MacCann, and the other students gather round to see what will happen:

– Next business? said MacCann. Hom!

He gave a loud cough of laughter, smiled broadly, and tugged twice at the straw coloured goatee which hung from his blunt chin.

– The next business is to sign the testimonial.

– Will you pay me anything if I sign? asked Stephen.

– I thought you were an idealist, said MacCann. (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 196)

Stephen and MacCann’s argument escalates, and Cranly plays the peacemaker. Stephen disengages from the conversation. As the three leave the crowd, Stephen attempts to be more polite to MacCann, saying that his signature is unimportant. MacCann responds by saying essentially that Stephen is a good person but should think more about other people. Stephen believes that signing the petition is of no use, while most of the other students disagree. However, Stephen still needs others to follow him, though he has no better solution to the problems at hand. This selfishness escalates Stephen’s neurotic personality and self-estrangement from society. Frustrated with the people around him and his society, he chooses to leave them rather than finding any solution.

The struggle to maintain privacy is the third component of claiming self-sufficiency. ‘Privacy’ refers to the status of being apart or hidden from other people. Neurotics, who move away from people to fulfil their needs, have a heightened desire for privacy. They can often appear to be aloof and unapproachable and feel discomfort in most social situations. The neurotic is ‘like a person in a hotel room who rarely removes the “Do Not Disturb” sign from his door’ (Horney, 2013 [1945]: 77). Stephen’s need for privacy is clear enough that his friends are aware of it. Cranly, the humanitarian to whom Stephen confides the ‘tumults and unrests and longings in his soul’ (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 219), is frightened of the sense of loneliness that Stephen welcomes and even accepts as an essential part of an artist’s life. Cranly warns Stephen about the dangers of alienation and faithlessness, urging him to reconsider his decision to leave Ireland. Although all people in a specific time from childhood experience different phases of loneliness and alienation, Stephen welcomes his status as an outsider because he believes that an artist must be detached from the world and remain at an isolated vantage point. Joseph Buttigieg (1987) argues that Stephen uses his isolation to manipulate his external reality and form coherent fictions:

In order to describe his own position to himself he has to objectify his being; his mind, in other words, no longer remains earthbound; it hovers high above the whole of creation by ridding itself of its temporality, and when it looks down it sees its own embodiment. (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 138)

As Stephen’s deliberate estrangement necessitates some sort of detachment, Joyce presents Stephen’s status as both socially and self-inflicted. In his privacy, Stephen discovers his belief that, as an artist, he can lead Ireland to a brighter future; however, within this vision, Stephen betrays his isolated self-image. Leading Ireland requires engagement with the community, rather than alienation. Joyce reveals that solitude and privacy enable Stephen to rest in contentment and wander among new thoughts and ideas. He spends most of his time living in privacy, which he enjoys because he finds that it facilitates his perfectionism. Stephen believes that he needs privacy to improve his theories, such as the theory of aesthetics, and for his artistic personality to flourish. However, the more time he spends alone, the crueller and more neurotic he becomes, since he cannot think about the condition of others and still maintain his privacy.

Fourth, the sense of adulthood is another serious reason for the need for self-sufficiency. Adulthood typically implies the state of being fully mature; in addition, it is a clear precursor of self-sufficiency. Stephen needs to be considered an adult to demonstrate his self-sufficiency and achieve perfection in his life. In moving away from his family, vows and moral conventions, Stephen’s attempts to prove his own independence and self-sufficiency. The joy of adulthood is well defined early in the novel when Stephen is supposed to dine with adults for the first time in his life. This experience, which is supposed to be Stephen’s formal entry into adulthood, is in reality a source of political, religious, vengeful and noisy arguments that end in violence and quarrels. In this shocking development, Stephen learns disheartening information about the adults in his family, particularly his father. In confronting the fall of his childhood heroes, the ideas of an artist’s individuality and independence are strongly developed in his mind (Epstein, 1971: 51). Stephen is exposed to an unprecedented circumstance that abolishes his father’s insuperable status (Pierce, 1992: 17). Moreover, the declining balance of income and expenditure in the Dedalus family motivates Stephen to see his father as an ordinary person rather than a hero.

Finally, to move away from any constraints and fully enjoy the freedom of adulthood, Stephen explores his sexuality with prostitutes, not to exhibit promiscuity but to assert the need of an artist to experience life in all its aspects. Stephen exhibits the restlessness and unpredictable mood swings of a typical adolescent, compounded by feelings of strangeness and, most of all, by persistent feelings of sexual urgency. As part of his rebellion against his father’s oppression, Stephen begins to seek out sexual affairs and prostitutes: ‘His blood was in revolt. [. . .] He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin’ (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 113). Eventually, these wishes for sex are satisfied in an encounter with a prostitute in Dublin, which brings about a new intellectual enlightenment for Stephen. His newfound sense of sexuality is so alien to him that he initially fails to recognize it. This experience marks the end of Stephen’s innocence and the beginning of his search for life’s deeper meaning. Therefore, Stephen’s sexual activity functions as a sort of objection to social pressures and his father’s oppression.

In sum, resourcefulness, the need for privacy, selfishness, sense of adulthood and sexuality are the factors necessary for Stephen to become a self-sufficient artist. To prove any of these factors, Stephen desperately seeks greater dissimilarity between him and other people. However, Stephen’s enlightenment has a more positive aspect in leading him to question his perfectionism and identity. As a result, he experiences self-estrangement and detachment as a possible means to develop his aspirations and artistic power.

Stephen’s constraints in life

Constraints normally signify the limitations applied to something or someone. Constraining one’s life psycho-neurotically can lead an individual to alienation and self-estrangement – for example, Stephen wishes to impose narrow limits on his life so as to feel less attached to others. In other words, he intends to restrict his life to gain greater benefits from individuality and solitude. In addition to Stephen’s need for perfection and self-sufficiency, Joyce shows that he needs to tighten the borders of his life to minimize the pressure he feels from other people and society. Horney proposes that ‘detached personalities must avoid all constraints, including timetables and schedules, long-term commitments such as marriages or mortgages, and sometimes even the pressure of a belt or necktie’ (p. 123). Stephen’s avoidance of other people and even any social commitments that might affect his growth creates for him a limited life. In this narrow and restricted life, though becoming more alienated, he can successfully achieve perfection and self-sufficiency. Therefore, boundaries in relationships, social constraints and the sense of escape are the three factors that bring about Stephen’s need for limitations in his private and public life.

First, the deliberate restriction of a relationship (i.e. the state of being connected to other people) normally arises from the neurotic need to give narrow constraints to one’s life. The experience of creating intentionally restrictive relationships with other people suggests a person’s estrangement. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen abandons his relationships with others, including his family, to achieve his needs. He loves his mother yet eventually hurts her by rejecting her Catholic faith. Taught to revere his father, Stephen cannot help but see that he is a drunken failure. Unhappy as a perpetual outsider, he lacks the warmth to engage in true friendship. ‘Have you never loved anyone?’ Cranly asks Stephen, to which Stephen replies ‘I tried to love God [. . .] It seems now I failed’ (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 301). The strong desire that eventually unites these contradictory feelings in Stephen is his overwhelming urge to become an artist. At the beginning of the novel, we see him as an infant artist who sings ‘his song’. In due course, he expands that song into poetry and theories of art. At the end of the novel, he has made art his religion, and he abandons family, Catholicism and country to worship it.

Regarding his relationships with his friends and classmates, Stephen, growing frustrated, attempts to move away from them to limit his relationships to those which provide benefits to him. Davin’s unimaginativeness and his thick-skulled Irish patriotism cannot inspire him. However, Stephen trusts and respects Cranly so much that he is willing to share all of his sadness and happiness with him. Cranly’s intelligent and sensible questions help Stephen to understand himself. However, Stephen realizes that, in terms of their nationalistic viewpoints, Cranly belongs to Ireland in a way that Stephen does not; at this point, he realizes that their friendship will inevitably end. Temple, like other friends, is also quite irritating to him, sometimes self-deprecating but often abrasive or pretentious. Stephen then moves away from his friends, as he finds them an obstacle to his pursuit of freedom and perfection. Therefore, it is understandable that Stephen’s sense of disconnection from other people or the desire to restrict his relationships may result from his sense of estrangement from society.

Social constraints can be self-imposed on account of a desire to limit life’s boundaries. Generally, social constraints describe what people feel they must or must not do because of others’ perceptions. Despite his desire to avoid politics, Stephen constantly ponders Ireland’s position in the world. He concludes that the Irish have always been a subservient people and subject to outsiders. In his conversation with the dean, Stephen realized that even the language of the Irish people belongs to the English language system. Stephen’s perception of Ireland’s subservience has a great influence on his development as an artist, making him determined to flee from the bonds that his Irish ancestors accepted. As we see in his conversation with Davin, Stephen feels it essential to emerge from his Irish heritage as his own person, free from the shackles that have traditionally confined his country: ‘Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made?’ (Joyce, 2003 [1916]: 252). Like Joyce himself, Stephen realizes that his own wishes and demands cannot be satisfied in any of the institutions surrounding him, not even in Ireland, and decides to establish his own identity as a writer somewhere else. Joyce shows that, through rejecting social constraints, Stephen seeks freedom and a life without boundaries to help him develop his wishes. Stephen finally decides to reject all imposed social bonds and goes to live freely as an artist. His reactions against constraints, while creating his self-estrangement from society, facilitate his growth in the world of art. After interrogating his country’s language and history and rejecting unsatisfying institutions, Stephen chooses escape as a tool for his freedom.

Third, the sense of escape, according to Horney, proves a neurotic individual’s need for constraints in life. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen’s three major limiting factors – due to lack of mutual understanding – include his country, people and religion. He believes that the Irish people are disloyal and always betray their leaders and feels that the Irish let outsiders control them. In addition, as mentioned above, the teachings of the Catholic Church go against Stephen’s independent spirit and his contemplation of beauty. Another reason for Stephen’s escape is that he cannot tolerate social conventions and commitments. This lack of patience for others’ beliefs and ideas makes Stephen more alienated and frustrated in society. Moreover, the Dedalus family produces a sense of frustration and guilt in Stephen that he can no longer stand. He also wants to escape his father’s ineptitude, which has caused the family serious economic problems and forced them to move several times. Stephen, who sees himself as helpless in finding a solution to any of these conflicts, decides to escape his country to pursue his life in a new place where he can develop his desired identity as an artist.

Erich Fromm (2006) argued that

freedom from the traditional bonds of medieval society, though giving the individual a new feeling of independence, at the same time made him feel alone and isolated, filled him with doubt and anxiety, and drove him into new submission and a compulsive and irrational activity. (p. 89)

In a similar way in early twentieth-century Ireland, Stephen considers himself a priest of art and, despite his fears of going to hell, he is determined to escape this impression too. He is certain that he will pursue a life as an artist under any circumstances. Moreover, the idea of escape is presented as a metaphorical allusion to Stephen’s myth. For Stephen, his school is a maze of corridors and Dublin a maze of streets. Life places riddles for Stephen at every turn, as he searches for answers. For example, he contemplates a flock of birds flying free above him at the steps of the library and wishes that he could be similarly free (Heller, 1995: 54). Here, he makes his ultimate declaration of flight from the suffocating and confining world. To show Stephen’s need to move away from a disagreeable society and its people, birds frequently appear to him prior to his escape, signalling that it is finally time to escape to freedom and reality. Thus, he leaves his father, mother, friends and country in the hope of creating a new identity, rooted in reality, based upon his artistic and intellectual ideas.

Conclusion

In sum, according to Horney’s theory of neurosis, a person who moves away from other people is known as a neurotic person with a detached personality. This psychoanalytic problem, which is normally reflected in the individual’s behaviour in response to others and society, needs an appropriate solution; otherwise, it may remain a frustrating and disappointing point of the personality. The needs for perfection, self-sufficiency and deliberate constraints in life make Stephen psycho-neurotic and self-estranged. However, the consequences of this neurotic personality lead Stephen to think about his freedom and artistic aspirations in life, rather than following frustrating social dictates and commands. By the end of the novel, Stephen finds a solution and effectively overcomes his neurotic needs to a great extent by liberating himself from the social restrictions and leaving Ireland to pursue his calling as a successful artist. In this way, Stephen’s neurotic personality, which is expected to be a problem for him, instead ultimately triggers a new, successful life.