Contact: William S. Burroughs’s philosophy of love

Abstract

The present psychobiography took up the three main psychoanalytic conceptions of love to illuminate the psychological development of famed experimental writer William Seward Burroughs (1914–1997). The study found evidence of all three concepts of love in the subject’s life strategies: (1) Love as cathexis was present in Burroughs’ fascination with centipedes and other vermin that appeared in his dreams and which symbolised, in part, his terror over early childhood traumas as well as his concomitant struggle to integrate sex with intimacy. (2) Love as eroto-philiac fusion was observed in Burroughs’ unstable and even exploitative relationships with others. This tendency was most salient in Burroughs’ abortive attempts to seduce straight men, as well as in his failed efforts to be a traditional husband and father. (3) Reparative love became the subject’s primary mode of interaction late in life. The study showed that, in his declining years, Burroughs was able to overcome partially the maladaptive strategies of his early life through his numerous pet cats, upon whom he projected aspects of his past romantic partners and friends.

Keywords:

• William S. Burroughs
• psychobiography
• fin-de-siècle science
• object relations theory
• philosophy of love

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The male pronoun is used here to avoid broaching the tangled question of Freud’s theory of female psychosexual development, often called the female Oedipus complex. For Freud, female development culminates in penis envy, and the latter is resolved in puberty as a supposed acceptance of sexual passivity, with the vaginal canal as the primary source of female sexual pleasure. For a revision of Freud’s notion of a female Oedipus Complex, see Kulish & Holtzman, 2008.

2 According to Freud, what is bound is “freely flowing cathexis,” which the psyche’s processes inhibit and transform into “quiescent cathexis” (Freud, 1920, p. 30). However, by extension, we may say that the psychic binding allows the psyche to situate itself vis-à-vis a memory by inhibiting the primary process, which is not deliberative.