Parental Influence in Sharp Objects and The Silent Patient
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1208.17Keywords:
parenting, traumas, psychosocial, social influencesAbstract
This article employs Erikson's theory of psychosocial development to explore parental involvement through personality development in select novels. Parent-child relationships pose the most important need for a child's development. Children learn to understand the world around them only through parenting / care. Gillian Flynn’s The Sharp Objects and Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient are one of the modern thrillers of the current period. Here, both the authors paid the utmost attention in creating the characters with the postmodern details that makes the readers grasp the trauma faced by the characters. The female protagonists in the novels are found to face trauma created by their own parents. Here it brings out the importance of the parents guiding their children in order to appear as a better version in the eyes of the society and to self. Parents/caretakers become the anchor of every child out here. It also emphasises the value of a developmental systems perspective, in which parents and caregivers are structurally and functionally fused in a multidimensional system that includes biological, social, and historical areas of organisation. As the protagonist's horrific experiences demonstrate, diversity is a major substantive element of parenting behaviour.
References
Addison, J. T. (1992). Urie Bronfenbrenner. Human Ecology, 20(2), 16-20.
Arnett, J. J. (2017) Life stage concepts across history and cultures: Proposal for a new field on indigenous life stage. Human Development. 59(5):290-316.
Banaji, M. R., & Gelman, S. A. (Eds.). (2013). Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us. Oxford University Press.
Batra, S. (2013). The Psychosocial Development of Children: Implications for Education and Society — Erik Erikson in Context. Contemporary Education Dialogue, 10(2), 249–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973184913485014
Belsky, J. (l984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development, 55, 83–96.
Bornstein, M. H. (2013). Handbook of parenting: Volume 2 Biology and ecology of parenting. Psychology Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1999). Environments in developmental perspective: Theoretical and operational models. In S. L. Friedman and T. D. Wachs (Eds.), Measuring Environment Across The Life Span (pp. 3–30). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Cherry, K. (2021, July 18). Understanding Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development. Verywell Mind. Retrieved August 18, 2019 from, https://www.verywellmind.com/erik-eriksons-stages-of-psychosocial-development-2795740
Dictionary, O. E. (2004). Retrieved October 14, 2020 from, http://dictionary.oed.com.
Dunkel, C. S. & Harble, C. (2017). A review of measures of Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development: Evidence for a general factor. Journal of Adult Development 24(1): 58–76.
Erikson, E.H. (1963). Childhood and Society. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity youth and crisis, New York (WW Norton) 1968.
Flynn, G. (2007). Sharp Objects (Reprint ed.). Crown
Ford, D. H., and Lerner, R. M. (1992). Developmental systems theory, an integrative approach. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Frosh, Stephen. (2003). Psychosocial Studies and Psychology: Is a Critical Approach Emerging?. Human Relations. 56. 10.1177/00187267035612005.
Hoare, C. H. (2002). Erikson on development in adulthood: New insights from the unpublished papers. Oxford University Press on Demand.
Hossain, M. A. (2021). Exploring the Concept of Containment, Childhood Development and Silence in Alex Michaelides‟s Novel The Silent Patient: A Psychoanalytic Critique. International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, 05(05), 319–324. https://doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2021.5517
Janet, P. (1904). L'amnésie et la dissociation des souvenirs par l'émotion. F. Alcan.
Kakar, S. (1968). The human life cycle: The traditional Hindu view and the psychology of Erik Erikson. Philosophy east and west, 18(3), 127-136.
Lerner, R. M. (2002-a). Concepts and theories of human development (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Michaelides, A. (2019). The silent patient. New York: Celadon.
McLeod, S. A. (2013). Erik EriksonPsychosocial stages–Simply psychology. Simply Psychology.
Montemayor, R., & Eisen, M. (1977). The development of self-conceptions from childhood to adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 13(4), 314.
Newcomb, A. F., Bukowski, W. M., & Pattee, L. (1993). Children's peer relations: A meta-analytic review of popular, rejected, neglected, controversial, and average sociometric status. Psychological Bulletin, 113(1), 99–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.113.1.99
Nijenhuis, E., van der Hart, O., & Steele, K. (2010). Trauma-related Structural Dissociation of the Personality. Activitas Nervosa Superior, 52(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03379560
Pulman, A., & Taylor, J. (2012). Munchausen by internet: current research and future directions. Journal of medical Internet research, 14(4), e115.
Richard, D. E. (2019). Episodes of Depression: Existential Feelings and Embodiment in 'Sharp Objects'. NECSUS.
Rolls, E. T. (2018). The brain, emotion, and depression. Oxford University Press.
Rudnytsky, P. L. (2013). The psychoanalytic vocation: Rank, Winnicott, and the legacy of Freud. Routledge.
Sharp Objects | Kirkus Reviews. (2006, October 10). Kirkus Reviews; www.kirkusreviews.com. Retrieved October 18, 2021 from, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gillian-flynn/sharp-objects/
Shoukat, L., Arshad, K., & Azam, S. (2021). A Psychoanalytic Analysis of the Character of Theo Faber in Alex Michaelides Novel Silent Patient. Journal of Social Sciences Review, 1(3). https://doi.org/10.54183/jssr.v1i3.18
Townsend, N. W. (2000). Male fertility as a lifetime of relationships: Contextualizing men’s biological reproduction in Botswana. InC. Bledsoe, S. Lerner, and J. I. Guyer (Eds.), Fertility and the male life-cycle in the era of fertility decline (pp. 343–364). New York: Oxford University Press.
Wachs, T. D. (1992). The nature of nurture. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Wachs, T. D. (2000). Necessary but not sufficient: The respective roles of single and multiple influences on individual development. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10344-000
Winnicott, D. W. (1947). Hate in the countertransference. London: Tavistock.
Winnicott, D. W. (2013). The child and the family: First relationships (Vol. 6). Routledge.
Widick, C., Parker, C. A., & Knefelkamp, L. (1978). Erik Erikson and psychosocial development. New Directions for Student Services, 1978(4), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.37119780403.
