Psychic Resoluteness: The Power to Rise Above Psychological Trauma

4/8/15

Text: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Critical Lens: Psychoanalytic Lens

After having read Toni Morrison’s deeply troubling novel Beloved, I was relieved to witness Sethe’s moment of rebirth that happens at the very end of the novel.  The psychological anguish that she encounters because of the traumatic experiences associated with being a female slave are passed on to the reader. For me, it seemed like there could be no possible chance for healing after what she had gone through. As Morrison carves a pathway into the deep recesses of Sethe’s subconscious, she leads readers to believe that there is no possible hope for Sethe to escape the incarceration of her mind and the hopelessness that she feels.

My only personal connection to Sethe’s experience seems to be this hopeless feeling that I have felt on rare occasions.  In fact, to be human, one encounters times of hopelessness which for some, like Sethe, seem insurmountable. However, Morrison reveals how, through the power of psychic resoluteness, Sethe is able to reach closure. Like Sethe, I have come to realize that to move past moments or periods of depression and feelings of hopelessness, I have utilized a similar type of psychic resoluteness.  The mental process that needs to happen is not something that can occur instantaneously and this is true with me much as it is with Sethe, as impossible as it is to make such a comparison.  For Sethe the process took most of her life.  Truly, it involves a determined discipline to push past the mental roadblocks put up by life or by our own flaws.

In the end, Sethe says to Paul D about Beloved, "She left me."  and then she tells him, "She was my best thing." In this statement Sethe is saying that she is no longer haunted by the images of her past and her dead baby and she explains that the reason  she had to murder her child was because she was her “best thing”.  To arrive at these statements she needed a lifetime of processing and psychic resoluteness. Paul D reveals this moment of redemption for Sethe’s  past, when he states the truth,  "You your best thing, Sethe. You are."  And while Sethe does not validate his words she shows that she hears him and she responds with “Me?” “Me?”.  I like to think that when she responds this way she is on the road to believing in herself and loving herself.