A Psychodynamic Approach to Peter Stamm’s Novel to the Back of Beyond
Zennube Şahin YılmazPeter Stamm writes his works as a close observer of the individual by focusing on the individual’s inner world, behavior patterns, and relationships and by bringing more inner journeys to the fore. The author handles in great detail the thoughts, feelings, and reactions of the individual based on what they experience in their inner world. Therefore, his works have an aspect that is open to psychological questions, and this may also be due to the psychology and psychopathology training the author has received. Stamm chooses individuals who generally believe in a psychological sense that they are at the end of their lives, looking for ways out, wanting to make new beginnings, and totally surrendering or turning inward as his protagonists and uses these characters to actually causes his readers to look for psychological answers. Of course, these answers materialize through the choices the characters in this fictional world make, and the effects from those choices ripple throughout the novel, both within themselves as well as through those around them. The author creates representatives who try to resist the chaos created by the modern world or who symbolize an inbetweenness through their figures who are lost in this chaos. A representative example of this occurs in the novel To the Back of Beyond and thus will be discussed and evaluated here from Freud’s psychodynamic point of view, witnessing an inner journey by concentrating on the inner world. Stamm creates a psychological world in his novel and equips a main figure there, shaping this figure within the framework of his relationship with the people around him and his family. According to Freud’s psychodynamic approach, the character’s desires for liberation and to detach himself from his own life and struggle for years away from his family lead to a process that begins with the dominance of desires and impulses over the individual. From a psychodynamic point of view, the study focuses on how the unconscious field that directs the individual in this novel affects life and the paths on which it leads. The main figure suddenly decides to leave his home and family, and his endless wanderings in the mountains, plains, and forests turn into an inner journey in which the figure tries to find himself. This journey is naturally quite strikingly revealed through the detailed descriptions the author makes, and the figure is dragged from one place to another in this mysterious journey along with all his inner turmoil. From Freud’s psychodynamic point of view, this drift is embodied by figure’s instinctive movements and experiences in his inner world.
Peter Stamm’ın Uzağın Ötesinde Adlı Romanına Psikodinamik Bir Yaklaşım
Zennube Şahin YılmazYapıtlarını bireyin yakın bir gözlemcisi rolüyle kaleme alan Peter Stamm, bireyin iç dünyasına, davranış biçimlerine ve ilişkilerine odaklanarak daha çok içsel yolculukları ön plana çıkarır. Bireyin düşünceleri, duyguları, kendi iç dünyasında yaşadıklarından hareketle gösterdiği tepkileri yazar tarafından oldukça detaylı bir biçimde ele alınır. Bu yüzden yapıtlarının psikolojik sorgulamalara açık bir tarafı vardır. Bu durum, yazarın aldığı psikoloji ve psikopatoloji eğitiminden de kaynaklanıyor olabilir. Genel olarak psikolojik bağlamda hayatının sonuna geldiğine inan, çıkış yolları arayan, yeni başlangıçlar yapmak isteyen ya da tam tersi bir biçimde yaşadığı hayata karşı tepkisiz kalıp tamamen teslim olan ve içine kapanan bireyleri ana figür yapan Stamm, bu tarz figürleri ile aslında psikolojik bir cevap arayışına sürükler okurlarını. Bu cevap, doğal olarak figürlerin bu kurmaca dünyanın içerisinde yaptıkları seçimleri ile somutlaşır ve roman boyunca bu seçimin hem kendisinde hem de çevresindeki insanlarda yarattığı etki ile devam eder. Stamm, modern dünyanın yarattığı kaosa karşı direnmeye çalışan ya da bu kaosun içinde kaybolan figürleriyle arada kalmışlığı simgeleyen birer temsilci yaratır. Bu, arada kalmış temsilci örneklerinden biri de ele aldığımız Uzağın Ötesinde romanında yer almaktadır. Bu temsilciyi Freud’un psikodinamik bakış açısıyla değerlendirdik ve onun içsel dünyasına yoğunlaşarak içsel bir yolculuğa tanık olduk. Romanında psikolojik bir dünya yaratan ve bu dünyanın içerisinde bir ana figür donatan Stamm, figürünü çevresindeki insanlarla ve ailesiyle olan ilişkisi çerçevesinde şekillendirir. Karakterin özgürleşme arzusu ve bu arzunun onu kendi hayatından koparma derecesine gelerek ailesinden uzakta yıllarca yaşam mücadelesi vermesi, bireyi Freud’un psikodinamik yaklaşımına göre, arzuların/dürtülerin birey üzerinde hakimiyet kurmasıyla birlikte başlayan bir sürece götürmektedir. Söz konusu romanda da bireyi yönlendiren bilinçdışı alanın hayatı nasıl etkilediğine ve bireyi hangi yollara sürüklediğine psikodinamik bakış açısından hareketle odaklandık. Ani bir kararla evinden ve ailesinden ayrılan ana figürün dağlarda, ovalarda, ormanlarda yaptığı uçsuz bucaksız gezintiler, aslında figürün kendisini bulmaya çalıştığı içsel bir yolculuğa dönüşür. Bu yolculuk, doğal olarak yazarın yaptığı detaylı betimlemelerle oldukça çarpıcı bir biçimde göz önüne serilir ve figür, bütün içsel karmaşasıyla bu esrarengiz yolculukta bir yerden başka bir yere sürüklenir. Freud’un psikodinamik bakış açısından hareketle bu sürüklenme, figürün içgüdüsel hareket etmesi ve onun iç dünyasında yaşadıkları ile somutlaşır.
The Swiss author Peter Stamm got caught up in the dream of writing and took a break to do so. He spent long stays in the USA, France, England, Germany, and Scandinavia and gained a certain degree of notoriety with the publication of plays and radio theater between 1995-1997. In 1998, he published his debut novel Agnes and has also received a number of awards and prizes, such as the Honorary Gift from the City of Zurich twice (1988 and 2001), the Rauris Literature Prize in 1999, and most recently the Carl Heinrich Ernst Prize in 2004 (Eger, 2011, p. 1–2f). Peter Stamm is an important author who describes life by addressing the emotional depressions modern people experience and the contradictions with which they have to live. Stamm places surrogates in the world of the novel as representatives of compulsory daily lives. (Albayrak, 2017, p. 150) Peter Stamm is neither a psychologist nor an educator pastor; he doesn’t judge or condemn his characters but rather introduces and describes them. In so doing, he evokes different reactions in the reader, such as identification and distancing, as well as has the reader consider adopting a different perspective. Almost all stories have open endings, and sometimes with a certain chill. Stamm’s style of expression is unfussy, precise, and laconic, and he uses judgmental adjectives sparingly. Readers who want answers are prompted by the gaps in the books to look for them themselves and to work out constructive solutions to problems (Burger, 2013, p. 6). Peter Stamm presents his figures in a gripping narrative as individuals who want to escape from the problems of daily life and take shelter within themself, and anyone can take a part in these narratives. Because Stamm studied psychology and psychopathology and is a writer who knows human psychology closely, he also deals with his characters in this psychological world. Human being occur at the center of Peter Stamm’s works, and in his novel To the Back of Beyond, Stamm writes in great detail about the impulses, desires, and conflicts that shape human beings, handling them alongside all their desires and conflicts. According to the psychodynamic point of view, reasons exist behind each individual’s actions and behaviors. This causality is closely related to Freud’s principle of determinism and offers a number of ways to address background sources. Peter Stamm’s novel tells the interesting life story of a family in which one can evaluate some of the troubles in the figure’s spiritual world, as well as the problems in their mental world, based on Freud’s psychoanalytic system of thought, and these troubles can be seen as the reason behind the figure’s sudden decision to leave his home and throw himself into the mountains. One can’t help but see that he is overwhelmed by his environment. The novel mainly focuses on both the figure of Thomas and the relationship between him and the character of Astrid. In the meaninglessness of the monotonous life he lives, Thomas suddenly walks away from the home garden after spending the holiday with his family. Thomas hesitates for a moment, then leaves his house, wife, and children behind. The desire to be someone else or to give a different direction to his life suddenly removes him from his daily life and pushes him to different adventures. His sudden decision to leave his family can be seen as a defense mechanism that corresponds to his inability to live the life he wants as well as his boredom with the monotony. He always seeks to go further away from his family, with his only desire being to get away. Unable to live the life he wanted Thomas finds himself in different places when his suppressed desires suddenly erupt. Endless roads and living on these roads can be considered as an escape from the bored family life and a return to the self. The study discusses the figure of Thomas from Freud’s psychodynamic point of view. It reveals him to be lost in a routine life and to then embark on a journey in search of a new life, drifting from one place to another for days hungry and thirsty. This journey opens the door to the figure’s inner world, feelings, thoughts, comments, and reactions. The article also focuses on the character’s inner journey and the issues that, according to the psychodynamic approach, involve the instincts and desires that drive people toward a behavior or a situation.
