Disrupted Formation of I: Deafening the World

Freud believed that the primary years were the most crucial to the normative development of an individual. He concluded that any interruption or disruption of this process would cause serious neurosis. An example of this of symptom manifestation would be the child whose discovery of the pleasure of the genitals might later become extremely repressive or alternately extremely promiscuous. Freud believed that children were sexual beings from birth and that these stages, oral, anal and genital, were necessary for normal development. Freud theorized that children initially identified with the mother(er) figure and that the child’s sense of identity was intertwined with this figure. The child typically finds their physical and emotional needs met by this figure in the earliest phases of development. Because the mother is attentive to the father the child may either fear the father, or in most cases the young male child will eventually shift their attention seeking to their father who they emulate. This theory is known as the Oedipal Complex and Freud believed that it was a rite of passage in development and a necessary segue to establishing an adult identity.

The song "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam explores the issues of Freud's Oedipal Complex and Lacan's theories of the formation of I by exploring the story of a child' whose passage through these stages has been disrupted. The lines: "Daddy didn’t give affection/And that boy was something mommy wouldn’t wear” speaks directly to ideas Freud posited in the Oedipal Complex. In the song, Jeremy seeks attention/physical comfort from the mother figure, but is rejected. Jeremy then tries to gain attention from his father who also rejects him. In Introduction: Strangers to Ourselves: Psychoanalyses, Rivkin and Ryan document the importance of the creation of the identity by writing that “as each child grows and enters first family then society, he or she learns to repress those sexual impulses as well as an initially grandiose sense of self to the demands of life with others. (Rivkin 381).” This inability to bond appropriately with the parent figures in Freud’s proscribed stages causes an inability to relate and his eventual lashing (failure to repress sexual and aggressive impulses) out against society. The songs direct reference to the child’s action, “gnashed his teeth/and bit the recess lady’s breast” would indicate that the mother/child fractured or reached the ultimate disconnect resulting in the child’s oral fixation and misplaced sexual and aggressive impulses by way of gnashing the teeth and biting. The object of the biting further corroborates the idea that there is reaction formation in the very act of lashing out at the physical comfort of the breast which is what he ultimately desires.
Jeremy’s disrupted development is also apparent in his distorted, yet grandiose, image of himself as demonstrated by the child produced artwork – Jeremy’s artwork – self imagining himself as a victorious “King Jeremy” bathed in sunlight and master of all he surveys. In “The Mirror Stage” Lacan discusses the stagesof development for the perception of image – which begins as an extension of the motherer figure and gradually transforms from the specular I to the social I. Lacan states that the signifigance of the “moment that decisively tips the whole of human knowledge into mediatization through the desire of the other, constitutes its objects in an “abstract” which every instinctual thrust constitutes a danger, even though it should correspond to a natural maturation.” (Lacan, 445). Essentially Lacan argues that the child begins as a mirror image that mimics the mother, and morphs later into the Social I and later a Symbolic I figure. In the sogn Jeremy we can clearly see that the child’s development has been disrupted resulting in a fractured image or sense of identity. Socially Jeremy is viewed by peers as a “harmless little fuck” who has no ability to assert himself or makes needs and demands known. It is only when Jeremy is pushed through taunting and abuse into his symbolic vision of himself as “King Jeremy” regresses to the state of responding to the id exclusively, losing restraint and acting on primitive, instinctual desires and revealing the “madenss that deafens the world with its sound and fury” (Lacan, 445).

Works Cited


Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. "Introduction: Strangers to Ourselves: Psychoanalysis." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.


Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytical Experience." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.



Title: Pearl Jam - Jeremy lyrics


At home
Drawing pictures
Of mountain tops
With him on top
Lemon yellow sun
Arms raised in a V
Dead lay in pools of maroon below
Daddy didn't give attention
To the fact that mommy didn't care
King Jeremy the wicked
Ruled his world
Jeremy spoke in class today
Jeremy spoke in class today
Clearly I remember
Pickin' on the boy
Seemed a harmless little fuck
But we unleashed a lion
Gnashed his teeth
And bit the recess lady's breast
How could i forget
He hit me with a surprise left
My jaw left hurtin
Dropped wide open
Just like the day
Like the day i heard
Daddy didn't give affection
And the boy was something mommy wouldn't wear
King jeremy the wicked
Ruled his world
Jeremy spoke in class today
Jeremy spoke in class today
Try to forget this...
Try to erase this...
From the blackboard.

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