The conflict with the other in the Arabic novel

Cairo: «The Gulf»

The Egyptian General Book Organization has published the book “The Image of the Self and the Dialectic of Conflict with the Other” by Dr. Rasha Al-Fawal. The book is a critical approach from a psychological perspective in the Arabic novel, based on the fact that the concept of the self means the organized cognitive formation of perceptions of the self.

The novels on which the approaches were based: A State of Grief, by the writer Ahmed Ragab Shaltout, and Another History of Sorrow, by the writer Ahmed Sabri Abul Fotouh, and The Disappearance of Mr. Nobody, by the Algerian writer Ahmed Taybawi, and Texts of Cruelty, by the Emirati writer Basema Younis, and Sayedat al-Qamar, by the Omani writer Jokha al-Harthi, The Day of Emotional Stability, by the Egyptian writer Suhair Al-Masadafa, A Narrow Space, by the Iraqi writer Ali Fattah Saeed, Ghosts of Brussels, by the Egyptian writer Muhammad Baraka, and An Open Party of Illusions, by the Syrian writer Hosheng Ossi.

The self-image that the current studies of the Arabic novel seeks to discover is the real self that lurks in the depths of the characters of the fictional writers, because the search for the self-image is not a search for an individual self separate from the psychological group, and the historical periods that produced a group of different events and situations.

Likewise, the “other” that the “I” feels is more precisely “another me? It is the closest thing to what is called: the self-image, and if we assume that this image forms part of the general self-concept, it is called the virtual self-concept, which means a person’s view of himself, compared to the other in terms of form and behavior. We find that in one of the elements of its meaning that we are familiar with now, it indicates a person looking at him from himself and from others at the same time.

The image of the self can be sought in the emotions of the characters that are achieved through the overlap between the consciousness of the other and the consciousness of the ego, even if that overlap is in order to search for a common identity; Emotion is that other that resides within us, and without it we would not exist, and with it our existence would be fraught with dangers.

And because fictional writings are often based on monitoring life situations and events in which psychological forces struggle, as an attempt to shed light on the weaknesses and strengths of the characters, considering the human psyche full of contradictions directly related to the pressures of life; And because the “psychological conflict” and its mechanisms have such strength and attraction that it arouses the feelings of the recipient, and may have embodied his psychological suffering; Here it becomes clear to us that the inevitability of psychological portrayal of the “conflict with the other” dialectic in the novels under study stems from the writers’ realism and their ingenuity in revealing the psychological aspects of the characters, by observing the life circumstances surrounding them and their various motives, and thus interpreting their behaviors.

Studying “psychological conflict” and its mechanisms in literary writings from the perspective of psychological criticism requires the researcher to capture the psychological and historical moments that produced these writings, although Freud was one of the first to call for “the connection of the psychological world with the world of artistic literature,” which highlights the relationship of literary creativity psychology; This is because Freud’s psychological analysis of the literary phenomenon is based on the consideration of “meaning as a symbolic structure full of dimensions and has a special accuracy despite its distortion.” Although “Freud” believes that the personality consists of three forces: the ego, the superego, and the id, which is in constant struggle.

Freud went beyond this to the idea of ​​the collective unconscious, as he believes that “the cause of artistic creativity is the unrest of the collective unconscious in periods of social crises.” Psychological criticism appeared with him, which defined creativity in three factors: the social milieu and its history, the personality of the writer and its history, and language and its history.

And because the subject of psychological conflict and its mechanisms in literary works is one of the main topics that psychological criticism is concerned with; Dr. Rasha Al-Fawal’s interest in dealing with the novels under study focused on “esoteric connotations in the literary work, which may be influenced by the writer’s subconscious mind more than his conscious mind.”