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Psychological Analysis of Young Goodman Brown

Most of the works can be analyzed by one of the three critical approaches: traditional, formalistic or psychological approach. When it comes to Young Goodman Brown (by Nathaniel Hawthorne), I think that psychological approach is the best one to use. The story is all about the three components of our unconscious (id, ego and superego) and the constant battle among them.

It is true that psychological approach has its flaws. It was criticized unjustly for those flaws. The greatest limitation lies in its "aesthetic inadequacy." It also suffered because many critics of this approach tend to push their thesis overboard. However, the other two approaches have inadequacies of their own. The formalistic disregards the sociological and historical aspects of the related work. The traditional neglects the structure of the work itself. We could easily use the historical and the moral approaches, but we cannot get inside of the story and analyze it.

Young Goodman Brown is a perfect character for the psychological approach. One can examine his mind and the three components of the unconscious. All three of those are represented in the story. Id is the one that stands out. In the beginning, Brown's id wins a battle over ego and superego when Young Goodman Brown decides to leave his wife Faith in order to meet the Devil. Even though he fears his actions, Goodman Brown goes along with his plan. He wants to fulfill his inner desires (or as Freud calls it: the pleasure principle) no matter what. It is interesting that Freud identifies the id with the Devil himself. Hawthorne uses Young Goodman Brown who is driven by his id to get to the Devil.

Once Brown encounters the Devil in the forest, he starts to get to his senses. The psychological approach analyzes this occurrence as the emergence of the latent unconscious (Freud calls is the preconscious). I was shocked when I read that Goodman Brown resembles the Devil. "In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man" (383). Young Goodman Brown was surprised to hear that his moral tutors and his family worship the Devil. His id, through the wish fulfillment of his dream, is driving him to satisfy his earthly pleasures. He wants to see what drives them all to turn against the Church, but he also wants to stay away from the Devil (this scene represents another conflict between the ego and the id). This picture very much resembles the Bible where Adam and Eve decide to disregard the order and eat the fruit. Finally, his ego prevails and he decides not to go any further. He says: "Friend, my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the Devil when I thought she was going to heaven. Is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her" (380). But once he finds out that Faith is going to join the Devil's worshippers, Brown decides to get her back. He goes and reveals himself by screaming: "Faith! Look up to the heaven and resist the wicked one" (386).

The next thing Young Goodman Brown remembers is the deserted forest. Hawthorne knew enough about human psychology and presented Goodman's encounter with the Devil as a wish fulfillment through a dream. It turned out that our "hero" did not know whether it was a dream or not. It changed him drastically. He could not live the rest of his poor life in peace. He could not sing the holy psalms without hearing the songs of the Devil worshippers. Many years after Hawthorne wrote this story, Siegmund Freud was able to propose and prove his theory of wish fulfillment through the dreams.

Even though Young Goodman Brown is a holy man, there was a repressed wish inside of him (id) that wanted to "eat the forbidden fruit" (in other words to explore the unknown). This wish came to him through a dream and changed the rest of his life dramatically. The story shows us one of the possible outcomes after the id and the superego get on the battlefield. It is a sad story about a man whose id prevailed and destroyed him from the inside.