The Defense Mechanisms of Moll Flanders : A Psychoanalytical Essay

Abstract: The essay analyzes how and why Moll Flanders’s childhood created mental and emotional patterns that would come to shape her personality and affect her behavior. The analysis will use psychoanalytical theories by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to discern what defense mechanisms and desires Moll developed in childhood and how these presented themselves throughout her life. The essay concludes that she has a fear of abandonment and intimacy and that she uses denial and sublimation to repress anxiety and guilt. Moll’s core desire is to find stability, which is why she continuously strives for financial security due to equating money to comfort and safety. She sublimates her unconscious desire to replace her childhood caretakers and her repressed fears of annihilation by finding new men to take care of her. However, Moll’s unconscious keeps causing her to repeat negative behavioral patterns which trap her in cycles of fortune and misfortune.