Frankenstein, The Life Instinct, and the Three Gunas

Frankenstein, the Life Instinct, and the Three Gunas

            Mary Shelley's Frankenstein presents the quest of the human soul to express its eternal nature in the face of a reality that otherwise reflects only death, loss, struggle, and decay. While Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis and a staunch materialist, certainly agreed that reality seems to reflect the push of death toward extinction, he was never able to come to terms with the possibility of there being a greater push toward higher and higher expressions of life and wholeness. But with the appearance of transpersonal psychology in the latter half of the twentieth century (through the pioneering work of Abraham Maslow and Stanislov Grof), a different view of the human struggle with death and the will to succeed emerged. In this emergent view humanity was seen to be motivated by the evolutionary impulse toward greater and greater levels of wholeness. For quite some time it seemed as though these two views described two vastly different worlds. Yet, as Shelley's famous horror story illustrates, the impulse to life is always actively striving toward greater heights of expression, but is constantly beset by the lower, less-informed aspects of the human psyche. Shelley's characters reflect not simply a death impulse, but a life impulse as well. As such, this paper contends that Victor Frankenstein, out of a tilted desire to express his soul's innate immortality or life instinct, gives life to a creature whose appearance provokes in him the lower impulses of denial and revulsion, the expression of which in turn incite the revenge-impulse in the creature, concluding with both characters becoming overwhelmed by their lower impulses, unable to contact the innermost part of them that is capable of neutralizing and integrating the lower impulses.

            Mirroring Shelley's portrayal of the struggle between life and death, Freud viewed life experience as the juxtaposition of the life instinct (Eros) and the death instinct (Thanatos). The influence of the life instinct, however, he viewed as only secondary to that of the death instinct, which he saw as an inborn impulse to return to the inorganic state. As a result, Freud saw humanity's predicament as more or less meaningless, with the primary conclusion being merely a return to the inanimate. In this view, Shelley's two main characters are seen as reflecting this destructive tendency in an insane attempt to return to the void of nonexistence. In contrast to this view, however, transpersonal psychology sees the human psyche as being inspired by an innate motive force toward an existent goal; namely, to return to the original ground of Union with the Divine and all of creation. While this transpersonal view seems contrary to Freud's view, Joseph H. Pearl offers a resolution by relating that Freud's conception of the ego is, in the Hindu view, only the outermost being and not the innermost (or God-most) part of the human psyche. From this standpoint the soul is seen as subliminally (or inwardly and unconsciously) understanding its nature as essentially immortal and beyond the touch of death. This idea seems to shed light on the nobler intentions of Shelley's dubious hero: the energetic principle behind Frankenstein's drive to create life, as abominable as it may have later seemed to him and as perverse as its expression may have been, was his soul's inner knowledge of its own immortality. In this view, toward the latter half of life, as death approaches, the true being (i.e., the innermost being) is more likely to begin its emergence. Further clarifying this position, Pearl states that,

. . . That which Freud labeled the death instinct is a manifestation of the thinning of the outer crust, i.e., the break up, or death, of the self-centered personality. That which Freud labelled [sic] the life instinct is a manifestation of the inner light shining through, which it does increasingly as the outer crust thins. Thus, the two basic instincts are seen to be not in opposition to one another but, rather, different aspects of the same underlying tendency. (14)

            Yet the inner being, in all its striving for this outward expression of its secret freedom, must confront the outer being's self-absorbed resistance to genuine psycho-spiritual growth. In Hindu literature, such resistance to change and personal evolution is said to be symptomatic of two of three motive forces active in most of humanity. The lowest of these, tamas, is the principle of unconscious drives, limited in capacity, and inclined toward apathy and resistance. This principle can be readily witnessed as active in both Frankenstein and the creature: as Frankenstein indulges his inborn fear-impulse to reject the creature in response to his (i.e., the creature's) foreboding countenance, the creature likewise succumbs to the revenge-impulse and vows to make sure Frankenstein shares in the misery which only an outcast can suffer. The effect of tamas in both of these examples is that personal responsibility is refused again and again. Both characters are consistently presented with opportunities to surrender resistance, yet refuse. As a consequence, Frankenstein dies in a state of tamasic apathy and the creature departs the scene as discontented as ever, unwilling to relinquish his self-righteous sense of resistance to injustice. The other influence behind the creature's self-justified violence is rajas, the second of the Hindu principles of human motivation. The lowest expression of rajas, the one which the creature exhibits bountifully, is still inclined toward resistance and conflict, but does so with an action that is much more obsessive, brutal, and antagonistic than that of tamas. Its higher expression emerges as the incessant striving for greater knowledge, achievement, and freedom. Both characters display this principle as well, even though it is overpowered by both the tamasic and lower rajasic principles in the end. Frankenstein's initial intense focus on the genesis of his creation and the creature's drive to develop his mind (through the reading of such great pieces of literature as John Milton's Paradise Lost, for example) are both manifestations of the higher form of this principle. The tamasic and rajasic principles, then, are the first successive gradations of a tumultuous mind in development.

            The third principle, sattwa, the highest of the three, is not to be confused with the highest of all possible levels of being (often referred to as moksha, radical freedom, union with God, or enlightenment). As a means of further developing the turbulent mind, the Eastern scholar and philosopher Sri Aurobindo, whose literary legacy has served as much of the foundation for transpersonal psychological theory, stated that, "To develop the sattwic part of our nature, a nature of light, understanding, balance, harmony, sympathy, good-will, kindness, fellow-feeling, self-control, rightly ordered and harmonized action, is the best we can do in the limits of the mental formation, but it is a stage and not a goal of our growth of being" (654).  Seeing this development as impeded by the tamasic principle, Aurobindo developed a theory of the unconscious (which he termed the "subconscious") similar in many ways to that of Freud and Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, neither of whom had he ever studied. From the Aurobindian transpersonal view, then, the ordeal with which both Frankenstein and the creature are faced can be seen as their opportunity to relinquish the inflexibility of the tamasic and lower rajasic principles, thus making way for the higher development of the sattwic mind.

            In the end, however, the lower principles consume the minds and emotions of the novel's main characters, never allowing a lasting glimpse of a higher, liberating reality. Aurobindo was quite aware of this domineering tendency of the lower principles in the underdeveloped mind, and thus counseled his students to first make conscious contact with the innermost being before working with the unconscious. Regarding Aurobindo's emphasis on this aspect of working with the unconscious, Michael Miovic writes, "He recommends this approach because the psychic being (and the higher planes of consciousness) have [sic] more power to illuminate and alter ego functioning than mental willpower and analysis do" (113). The basis for the failure to develop the sattwic mind's capacity to harmonize and unify ostensibly disparate information into a seamless whole is seen to lie in the action of the lower principles. The resulting experience of the world is expressed as a duality, a self-imposed ignorance of the underlying unity of all of existence, the by-product of which emerges as conflict, struggle, rage, depression, isolation, and violence. The transpersonalist view subsequently sees both Frankenstein and the creature as victims, in a very real sense, of the great illusion of separation into which all of humanity is born. David R. Hawkins, distinguished psychiatrist and collaborator with Nobelist Linus Pauling, confirms this view when he writes, "Arbitary selectivity results in a positionality, which is a point of view that artificially polarizes the oneness of Reality into seemingly separate parts" (182). Shelley's Frankenstein can therefore be viewed as dramatizing the impulse of the life instinct to overcome death and realize the soul's immortality and essential freedom, while being ultimately hindered from doing so through the inhibiting action of the lower, impulsive, duality-based principles of motive force within the human psyche. Such limited perceptions and the resulting base impulses can and often do create a "horror story" out of a life that is essentially whole and complete.

Works Cited

Aurobindo, Sri. The Life Divine. Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1990.

Hawkins, David R. The Eye of the I: From Which Nothing Is Hidden. Sedona: Veritas, 2001.

Miovic, Michael. "An Introduction to Spiritual Psychology: Overview of the Literature, East and West." Harvard Review of Psychiatry 12.2 (2004): 105-115. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Paul A. Elsner Library and High Technology Center. Mesa Community College. Mesa, AZ. 29 March 2007.

Pearl, Joseph H. "A Reconciliation of the Freudian and Humanistic/Transpersonal Views of Human Nature." Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal 12.1 (1984): 11-15. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Paul A. Elsner Library and High Technology Center. Mesa Community College. Mesa, AZ. 29 March 2007.