Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs

Jame Gumb (the name was a mistake on his birth certificate but he insisted on being called Jame) was the son of a woman who was a failure in her attempt to establish herself in a career as a model or actor. Following her failure she went into "an alcoholic

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and he was driven by "a wish to recreate the form and presence of his dead mother" (Grixti 92). Others have argued that Gein's extreme hatred of his mother and abuse by his father reflected a humiliation that was transferred "into a later quest for power" (Hale 19). Gein was also remarkably meticulous in his approach to preserving skins and body parts -- a prominent feature of Gumb's behavior. These examples filled out many of the horrifying elements in Gumb's character. But the psychological explanations of his behavior, while they are rather diverse, appear to have been derived largely from classical psychoanalytic theory which treated paranoia as a narcissistic disorder. Such disorders were judged to be the result of fixation in early development "during which the self is its own love-object" (Rycroft 577). But later theorists believe that the over-estimation of the self that is a prominent feature of paranoid delusional states is "a compensatory reaction to humiliation in infancy and childhood" (Rycroft 577). As originally developed, the psychoanalytic theory of paranoia was based on Freud's analysis of the case of Daniel Paul Schreber. Schreber's extreme paranoia was susceptible to extensive study because Schreber w
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1972
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)