Le Guin’s Shadow & the representation of the ‘Double’ in ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’.
Does Le Guin’s representation of Ged and the Shadow draw on Freudian theory?
Rarely when presented with the question of authorial intent do we have such a clear and definitive answer from the author as Ursula K. Le Guin offers regarding the question of her influences on the writing of A Wizard of Earthsea. Regarding whether Le Guin drew on Freudian or Neo-Freudian theory the answer is definitively, No. Le Guin herself claims so in an article published in Science Fiction Studies: “A Freudian might plunge in none-the-less… but what will he find? Jung’s Shadow! (As I found it: having never read a word of Jung when I wrote the book. Horrible, horrible!)” (Le Guin, SFS, 45) This response however does not mean that all readings through the lens of Freudian or Jungian psychology are without value; as I intend to demonstrate with an analysis of A Wizard of Earthsea, breaking down the Freudian and Neo-Freudian (specifically Jungian) imagery at its heart, why I believe A Wizard of Earthsea draws more heavily on Jungian than Freudian ideas, and discussing why it remains relevant despite authorial intent.
Ordinarily, I do not subscribe to the ‘Death of the Author’ theory in which an author’s intent is laid aside in the critique or analysis of a text. Le Guin, however, is a special case. Due to her prolific exegetical writing, one may think this is a contrarian’s gambit. But as Le Guin’s exegetical oeuvre expanded, so too did the number of contradictions. In response to the academic writings regarding her work in the years following A Wizard of Earthsea’s release, Le Guin firmly denounces the notion that her work is directly informed by Freud or Jung and presents individual ideation as the solution to the similarities between her work and these preeminent psychoanalysts. The argument — or accusation that asserts otherwise, in some instances (McNeally, 17) — is dismissed firmly with the following quote: “God! did I really think all that?-The answer is, No. I didn’t. I did think some of it. The rest of it I felt, or guessed, or stole, or faked, or intuited…” (Le Guin, SFS, 44), a riposte that a Jungian would perhaps attribute to the Collective Unconscious. (The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, 42–54). Le Guin continues the previous quote to elucidate her methods of ideation and arrive at her completed piece “through humbler and obscurer means, involving (among others) imagery, metaphors, characters, landscapes, the sound of English words, the restrictions of English syntax, the rests and rhythms of narrative paragraphs.” (SFS, 44). Here is where the attentive reader will interrogate Le Guin’s claims that she ‘never read a word of Jung’. If this was truly the case, then I suspect someone dictated these pages to her. A likely source is her father, Alfred Louis Kroeber, who in 1915 underwent psychoanalytic treatment from Freudian disciples Drs Jelliffe & Stragnell and who in 1920 and 1923 conducted an active practice as a lay psychoanalyst at the University of California, Berkley (Burnham, 6; A.L. Kroeber, 300). The likelihood of Le Guin having no awareness of these psychoanalytic concepts given her father’s personal association with Freud and Jung is vanishingly small. To strengthen this point, Kroeber was known to have shared correspondence with Freud throughout his life, as confirmed in Theodora Kroeber (Mother to Ursula Kroeber Le Guin) in 1970 with her book “Alfred Kroeber: A Personal Configuration”. (T. Kroeber, 102) In the face of this, it would be a poor critic who does not treat Le Guin’s statement with some level of scepticism.
With the question of authorial intent set aside, one may now interrogate Le Guin’s assertion of independent ideation with an analysis of thematic content in her work with Jungian philosophy. In addressing similarities between Le Guin and Jung in A Wizard of Earthsea such as Taoist imagery, Dualism, and achieving and maintaining equilibrium, Le Guin states: “The central image/idea of Taoism is an important thing to be clear about, certainly not because it’s a central theme in my work. It’s a central theme, period.” (Le Guin, SFS, 45). We see this exemplified in Ged’s meeting with the Master Hand on Roke:
“But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow…” (Le Guin, Earthsea, 67)
Here the Master Hand is channelling Jungian philosophy and denotes a clear break from the Freudian ideologies in the articulation of the kind of magic that the wizards of Ea perform, Changing. Where Jungian psychology integrates one’s components with an attempt to heal and better the individual via a rebalancing or reconciliation of their psyche, Freud’s psychoanalytic method lacks a definitive endpoint; content to merely make the subject aware of their illness and achieve recovery via cathartic release or awareness. Where the patients of Jungian Psychology may achieve a measurable and quantifiable overcoming of their shadow via integration, a Freudian patient lacks any such measurement — however intangible that may be. Le Guin’s reconciliation matches the process of integrating one’s Shadow far more closely, in particular the epilogue that tells us directly that Ged will go on to accomplish many great deeds and become Archmage of Roke. With this dualistic reconciliation of two halves of one laid bare, it is an uphill battle to argue that the Freudian theory contributed more significantly than Jungian ideas in Le Guin’s writing. That being said, Le Guin was an avid student of the Tao, producing a version of the Tao Te Ching in 1997. Indeed, the evidence would in my opinion point to the contrary, that A Wizard of Earthsea is considerably more Jungian, or rather Taoist, in execution.
According to Liang, Jung was an avid study of Eastern philosophies including several Chinese Taoist philosophy classics, in particular in his later life. As a result of these studies, Jung solidified his concept of synchronicity — a concept he had changed the exact definition of several times throughout his career (Coward, 477) — after becoming intimately familiar with the ‘ineffable Dao’ (749). With both Jung and Le Guin drawing from the same spiritual philosophy, it is little wonder so many parallels manifest between the two and may add validity to Le Guin’s claim of Jungian ignorance.
Jung’s shadow is defined as “A moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality,” (Aion, 8), and bears intimate similarity with Ged’s Shadow. The Shadow increasingly resembles Ged throughout the book (Le Guin, Earthsea, 206, 238), as Ged approaches the point of confrontation. In chapter 7 of A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged, our mageborn protagonist and former apprentice of Ogion, flees Oskil to his home of Gont where Ogion, who once banished the essence of the Shadow that pursues him from his home, resides (Le Guin, Earthsea, 34–35). In the scene following Ged’s return, Ogion offers Ged an ultimatum: He must confront the Shadow or be consumed by it. After this interaction Ged resolves to become hunter, rather than hunted, and in turn, the Shadow begins to more closely resemble him until his eventual encounter and re-integration of the Shadow; completing Jung’s individuation process and reintegrating himself. In a 1975 article The Child and the Shadow Le Guin quotes Jolande Jacobi in stating that: “The child has no real shadow, but his shadow becomes more pronounced as his ego grows in stability and range.” (The Child and the Shadow, 143). This development from Ged’s first encounter with the shadow being ‘formless’ and only assuming human shape that could be mistaken for his aspect (Le Guin, Earthsea, 244), after he had realised and accepted his potential and failings. It is little wonder that many in the arts versed in the use of psychoanalytic theory as a method of dissecting texts see these Eastern themes manifesting in Jung’s psychoanalytic approach. The process of Individuation is such that the oppositional forces within oneself are brought into equilibrium. In the reconciliation of Ged and the Shadow, we see that Ged’s inner equilibrium is restored in a manner too similar to Jung’s individuation process to avoid comparison.
It is worth noting here that there is no equivalent to the completion of the individuation process within Freudian theory, contributing to my argument that it is Jungian and not Freudian ideas that influenced the writing of A Wizard of Earthsea. Freud notes in letter ‘342 F’ his displeasure with Jung and the Neo-Freudian generation that succeeded him, (Freud & Jung, 538–539) in large part due to the processes of reconciliation that were developed atop his work. On this, Jung notes: “The result of the Freudian method of elucidation is a minute elaboration of man’s shadow side unexampled in any previous age.” (Jung, The Practice of Psychotherapy, 63) without offering a more definitive explanation of the Freudian curative endpoint. Where in the Freudian method, one’s Id is an amorphous collection of repressions, Jung adds specificity in the Shadow, which may manifest more specifically and in more forms. By using the Shadow’s tactics and engaging in its relentless pursuit across chapters 8 through 10, Ged reconciles this part of himself; in part becoming the monster he fears and recognising its nature within himself. This critical step is key to the process of Individuation that Jung elucidates in Aion (275), in which he writes: “I use the term “individuation” to denote the process by which a person becomes a psychological “individual,” that is, a separate, indivisible unity or “whole.” By reintegrating his Shadow, Ged is once again whole.
Ged’s shadow contains both Freudian and Jungian ideas in its composition as a monstrous entity. When witnessing the Jungian Shadow, one will naturally see elements of Freud’s Uncanny Double manifesting beneath the surface. Freud and Jung agree that the Shadow / Superego is a repressed component of the ego. Freud defines the Double in Das Unheimliche (or The Uncanny in English) as a “creation that belongs to a primitive phase in our mental development” (143). With this in mind, we can see the similarities between Ged’s Shadow and the Uncanny Double. The Shadow first emerges from an attempt to interfere with the equilibrium between life and death, inarguably one of the most significant differences in state there is. In this first attempt in Ogion’s home (Le Guin, Earthsea, 34–35), he banishes the ‘shadow of a shadow’ as he calls it when appealed to by Ged for aid (Le Guin, Earthsea, 195), which manifests as a ‘shapeless clot of shadow’ and becomes increasingly human as Ged gains understanding of it. Freud describes the term ‘uncanny’ (unheimliche) as: “everything that was intended to remain secret, hidden away, and has come into the open.” (Freud, The Uncanny, 132). This matches elements of Ged’s shadow in its appearance and use as a horrific figure, but not as closely as the themes explored with a Jungian reading of the Shadow. It gains increased sentience and definition as Ged approaches it and understands what it is he is truly chasing. It is quintessentially the distorted manifestation of his responsibility. It is worth noting once again that as a disciple of Freud, Jung’s Shadow is inclusive of these Freudian ideas as well.
In summary, we simply cannot be certain whether or not Le Guin took inspiration from Freudian or indeed Jungian teachings. It is entirely possible that her own explorations into Taoist philosophy led her to the same conclusions as Jung. Given her claim that she had ‘never read a word’ of Jung — a claim that after discovering her father’s practice of Psychotherapy between 1920–23 and frequent correspondence with Freud — I am highly sceptical of. It would be quite astonishing if Le Guin did not at least bear a familiarity with Freud, I am hesitant to believe Le Guin as an honest auto-biographer. In principle, I do not believe in the ‘Death of the Author’ and assert that authors should be believed when reflecting exegetically. In the case of Le Guin however, the depths appear too murky and the mists of time too dense to ascertain the truth. One may speculate that she made this assertion in Science Fiction Studies in an attempt to dissuade what she perceived as unfair criticism of her own work at a time when she was breaking into a male-dominated market. One may also speculate that Le Guin simply changed her mind, having those thoughts more thoroughly documented than usual due to her prolific exegetical writings. The definitive answer of whether Le Guin borrowed from Freudian theory in A Wizard of Earthsea is a question we will likely never have a conclusive answer to, but that doesn’t discredit the value of psychoanalytic analysis on the work.
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