Psychoanalysis of the Personality Development of Sun Wukong

PSYCHOANALYSIS OF THE PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT OF SUN WUKONG

By Wu Yisen

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the BA degree in School
of Foreign Languages, Guangdong University of Technology

May   2007

Acknowledgements

    My deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to Miss Hu Huifeng, my supervisor, for her ongoing encouragement and guidance. She has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. Without her consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present form.
    Also, I would like to take this chance to express my enormous gratitude to other professors and lecturers in School of Foreign Languages, especially Prof. Hui Xiaojuan, Prof. Xiong Rongbin, Prof. Peng Guiju, and Mr. Pan Guilin, for their kind guidance in my four-year study, which help me achieve success both in academia and, most importantly, in the course of self-improvement intellectually and mentally, which is the very essence of university spirit.
    Last but not least, my heartfelt thankfulness goes to my dearly-loved parents. They give me everything, materially and spiritually, which should never be taken for granted.

Outline

Title: Psychoanalysis of the Personality Development of Sun Wukong
Thesis statement: Sun Wukong’s personality development can be divided into three stages according to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory.

1.   Introduction
1.1   Brief introduction of Journey to the West and Sun Wukong
1.2   Brief introduction of Freud’s theory
2.   Sun’s character formation
2.1   First stage: Pleasure
2.1.1   Id
2.1.2   Life drive
2.2   Second stage: Rebellion
2.2.1   Ego
2.2.2   Anal stage
2.3   Third stage: Reason
2.3.1   Superego
2.3.2   Defense mechanism
3.   Conclusion

Abstract

    Journey to the West, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, is a mythological novel. It relates the amazing adventures of the Xuanzang, who travels west in search of...