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The character of Meursault in Albert Camus' novel is analyzed in terms of the diagnosis and dynamics of alexithymia as described by Joyce McDougall in her book, Theaters of the Mind The murder committed by Meursault can be understood as unconsciously motivated by the desire to make an emotional connection to his father, a man he says he never knew, and who is mentioned in the book only once.
In his Translator's Note to The Stranger (Camus, 1989), Matthew Ward recalls an observation that Camus recorded in his notebooks: "[T]he curious feeling the son has for his mother constitutes all his sensibility" (p. vii). Meursault's feeling for his mother certainly typifies his feeling for all the other characters in the book, as well as for life in general-a monumental indifference, a genuine absence of feeling, and a paralyzing incapacity to experience any person, act, or fate as meaning anything. Quite apart from the existential reading of this work as saying something about Everyman in an indifferent, meaningless, Godless universe, the character of Meursault provides an uncanny portrait of a particular form of psychopathology that can be described dynamically, both in terms of his unconscious motivation to become a murderer and, more generally, in terms of how and why affect of any kind is so forcefully and systematically rejected from his consciousness.
Meursault does not lie-he simply does not feel. For that reason he disturbs people, enrages them, makes them question his humanity. With Marie, who loves him, it hurts to hear that whether he loves her or not does not really matter, but that he probably does not (p. 41). With the lawyer assigned to defend him, his indifference to anything, including God, provokes irrational rage. "Do you want my life to be meaningless?" the lawyer shouts at him. "As far as I could see," Meursault remarks, "it didn't have anything to do with me, and I told him so" (p. 69). To the judge and jury that tried him, his indifference condemned him to death. What I would like to do first is to associate specific details of Meursault's behavior to the diagnosis and dynamics of alexithymia as described by Joyce McDougall in her book, Theaters of the Mind (1991). I would...