"No Man Only Needs a Little Salary": A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Analysis of Willy Loman
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman describes the deterioration of salesman Willy Loman. Throughout his life, Willy desperately seeks the approval and validation of his employers, his buyers, and even his older brother, Ben, who is a mere figment of his memory. Though Willy is offered real and tangible love and “[idolized]” by both his sons, especially Biff, and his wife, they are unable to offer Willy enough love and acceptance to satisfy his insatiable desire to be “well liked” (1193). As the play progresses, Willy increasingly struggles to differentiate his present reality from the delusions of his past.
According to the principles of contemporary psychoanalysis, analyzing Willy’s early childhood relationships is useful in trying to understand Willy’s pathological need for love and acceptance. Throughout the play, Willy is frequented by the sound of his father’s flute which indicates that, even into adulthood, Willy remains haunted by his father’s abandonment. Willy admits that his “[d]ad left when [he] was such a baby” and that he “never had a chance to talk to [his father]” (1197). Willy’s inability to forge a meaningful relationship with his parents, particularly his father, prevented him from developing a healthy, functioning, and stable sense of selfhood, and this is likely the reason that Willy continues to feel “temporary,” even as fully-grown man (1196). A Brief Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory:
Before analyzing Willy’s psychological profile, it is important to define contemporary psychoanalysis and related terms. Rooted in Hegel’s theories concerning the necessity of the relationship between the self and other, contemporary psychoanalytics in the field of intersubjectivity theory argue that the self needs the recognition of the other in order to be healthy and functioning. “Recognition” can be understood as the affirmation of the existence and autonomy of “the self” by “the other.” Many contemporary psychoanalytic scholars use the term recognition and love synonymously. Psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin explains:
In order to become human beings, we have to receive recognition from the first people who care for us... [They are] the one[s] who [respond] to our communications, our acts, and our gestures so that we feel that they are meaningful. [Their] recognition of us makes us feel that vital connection to another being that is as necessary to human survival as food. (“The Bonds of Love: Rational Violence and Erotic Domination” 144).
The recognition, or love, provided (or withheld) during one’s early childhood caretakers has important implications for one’s psychological health of the course of one’s life.
Earlier forms of contemporary psychoanalysis typically focused on the relationship between the mother and infant in the development of the self, strategically rejecting any further discussion about the relationship between the father and child as a reaction to Freud's obsession with the role of the father. Recent scholars in the field will typically use the more nuanced word “caretaker” instead of mother in order to be more inclusive other important people in a child’s life. A grandparent, stepparent, adopted parent, foster parent, pastor, early childhood teacher, friend of the family, neighbor, or any other interested, actively involved, and caring adult can play an integral role a child’s development and sense of selfhood. I will be using the word "caretaker" throughout my work.
An important concept for our purposes is that contemporary psychoanalytics argue that neglect and abandonment are among the most psychologically destructive forms of abuse. Physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse is devastating to a developing psyche. However, these forms of abuse involve, at the very least, some amount of recognition of the boundary between the self and other, though that boundary is violated. In the cases of neglect and abandonment, the child does not receive the vital recognition of their selfhood which is necessary for a healthy and functioning psyche.
Analysis:
Though Willy’s father deserted his family, the text suggests that Willy still had an adult figure in his life that could have feasibly filled the role of nurturer in his life: his mother. And yet, Willy’s mother is only mentioned when Willy tells Ben that their mother “died a long time ago” (1196). Perhaps the reason that Willy’s mother is absent from is the story is related to Willy’s father leaving his family behind. Understandably, it is very common for the partner who is abandoned to develop significant psychological trauma of their own—this trauma typically manifests itself in the form of depression. Among other symptoms, depression inhibits one’s ability to connect with others. In terms of its effects on the caretaker/child relationship, a depressed caretaker is unable to emotionally provide the recognition that is necessary for her/his child to develop healthily. In a healthy caretaker/child relationship, the caretaker will recognize the child’s emotional state and respond accordingly to that state. This process, called “attunement,” is important to the child’s feelings of agency and sense of self. (This is one of the many reasons that postpartum depression is such a devastating mental illness.) Willy’s mother’s absence from the story very well might represent her emotional absence from Willy’s childhood.
Though Willy’s mother’s emotional absence certainly would have been incredibly harmful to Willy’s early childhood development, the absence of Willy’s father is far more prominent in both Willy's conscious (represented by his speech) and unconscious mind (represented by the flute). There is no way to say for certain why this is the case. Perhaps Willy is fixated on his father’s abandonment because his mother, like Amanda in Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie, constantly reminds her children of their father’s betrayal. Perhaps this reflects the psychological paradigms of Arthur Miller’s day which stressed the importance of the father-figure as opposed to the role of the “nurturer.” Regardless, we know that the absence of Willy’s father is problematic to Willy’s psyche because it prevents Willy from functioning in a healthy way. Because of his father's phsycial adandonment and because of his subsequent psychological abandonment, Willy likely had very few opportunities to gain recognition during his formative years.
As a result of neglect/abandonment, the child will often desperately seek the recognition first denied to them during childhood for the rest of their lives. For this reason, Willy’s father’s abandonment (and his mother’s emotional absence) is a contributing factor to his psychosis later in his life. Willy craves the recognition of others, and he attempts to gain this recognition though his work as a salesman. To Willy, being rich and “well-liked” will fill the emotional void left by his father. Willy’s destructive and unappeasable desire for fulfillment is poignantly demonstrated when he tries to explain the reasons for his affair to his son Biff. Willy pleads, “She’s nothing to me Biff. I was lonely, I was terrible lonely” (1216). It is very common for people who have experienced emotional neglect during their early childhood years to fill the void created by their negligent caretaker through adult sexual relationships in order to satisfy their longing for completeness and oneness with another person. This scene highlights Willy’s perpetual emptiness and the destructive effects of his pathological and endless need for acceptance.
Unfortunately, Willy is not able to achieve a status worthy of such recognition through his work, and the love and “idolization” of Willy’s wife and children are not enough to satisfy his intense psychological needs (1193). As a result, Willy must manufacture scenarios in which he gains recognition in his mind. Willy’s interactions with Ben as well as his other moments of recollection function as flashbacks within the narrative. However, the term “flashback” does not actually appear in Miller’s stage directions or anywhere else in Death of a Salesman. Willy’s “memories” might be better understood as delusional or hallucinogenic episodes that are symptomatic of a psychosis associated with delusional disorder.
[Psychosis is t]he inability to tell what is real from what is imagined. The main feature of delusional disorder is the presence of delusions--unshakable beliefs in something untrue. People with delusional disorder experience non-bizarre delusions, which involve situations that could occur in real life...These delusions usually involve the misinterpretation of perceptions or experiences. In reality, however, the situations are either not true at all or highly exaggerated. (“Mental Health and Delusional Disorders”)
Throughout Death of a Salesman, Willy exhibits the characteristics of a delusional disorder likely brought on by the chronic stress as a result of worrying that Biff will reveal Willy’s true self out of “spite”—that Biff will expose that Willy is a man who is just “a dime a dozen” (1217; 20). Early into his psychosis, Willy imagines that he makes more money on his trips than he actually does as well as claims that he is connected to important people like the mayor of providence. Eventually, his moments of imaginary recognition escalate into full-blown delusional episodes which negatively affect his wife and sons.
During one of his delusional episodes, Willy pleads to his older brother Ben,
Can’t you stay a few days? You’re just what I need, Ben, because I—I have a find position here, but I—well, Dad left when I was such a baby and I never had the chance to talk to him and I still feel—kind of temporary about myself.…[S]ometimes I’m afraid I’m not teaching [my sons] the right kind of—Ben, how should I teach them? (1197)
It is significant that Willy is desperately seeking the advice of an older male figure in this passage. It is also important that Willy worries that he is unable to provide for his sons because he lacked a proper relationship with his father. As Suzanne Juhasz explains, the early childhood relationship between parent and child is a template for “love and like,” “recognition and idealization,” “connection and separation,” and “power over and power shared” (“Towards Recognition Writing and the Daughter-Mother Relationship" 168). Willy’s lack of a father prevents him from having a “template” upon which to build a healthy relationship with his own sons and why he is eventually unable to separate his delusions from reality. Throughout his life, Willy searches for the love of his father through various means, but can never successfully fill the void he feels deep within his psyche. Not even his son Biff’s declaration of love for his father, inspite of his short comings, is enough for Willy. As Charley remarks at Willy’s funeral, “No man only needs a little salary” (1222).
Works Cited
Benjamin, Jessica. “The Bonds of Love: Rational Violence and Erotic Domination.” Feminist Studies 6.1 (1980): 144-74. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
Juhasz, Suzanne. "Towards Recognition: Writing and the Daughter-Mother Relationship." American Imago 57.2 (2000): 157-83. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
"Mental Health and Delusional Disorders." WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 13 May 2014. <http://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/delusional-disorder>.
Miller, Arthur. "Death of a Salesman." The Bedford Introduction to Drama. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. Fourth ed. N.p.: Bedford St. Martins, n.d. 1185-222. Print.