Jekyll and Hyde: the relation of opposites in the psyche

Abstract

Published in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde precedes the constitution of psychoanalysis by more than a decade and nonetheless formulates with rare precision the problem of the divided subject. This article examines Stevenson's narrative as a literary model of psychic splitting, confronting it with three theoretical lineages: the Freudian, centred on repression, the uncanny and the death drive; the Jungian, centred on the shadow, the persona and individuation; and the Kleinian, centred on object splitting and the paranoid-schizoid position. The procedure is that of a narrative literature review of a theoretical-conceptual nature. It is argued that Jekyll's fate does not follow from the existence of an evil part, but from the attempt to resolve ambivalence by separation rather than integration, and that Hyde's progressive autonomy accurately figures what clinical work describes as the return of the repressed. It is concluded that organising psychic life into two mutually exclusive currents, neglecting one of them, does not suppress conflict: it displaces it into increasingly ungovernable forms of expression.