Paranoid psychosis in patriarchal culture: Jedan razoren um (A devastated mind) of Lazar Komarčić

• Main Author: Ahmetagić Jasmina M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Serbian Culture Priština, Leposavić 2019-01-01
• Series: Baština
• Subjects: lazar komarčić (1839-1909); jedan razoren um (a devastated mind); duplicate; paranoid psychosis; discomfort in culture; mirror stadium; identity
• Online Access: https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0353-9008/2019/0353-90081948015A.pdf

In the novel Jedan razoren um (A Devastated Mind) (1893) Lazar Komarčić, by using himself of the motive of duplicate, enters a Serbian prose the description of paranoid psychosis. Due to twin's similarity of the two protagonists Steva and Velja, it comes out first Velja's shaky feeling of identity which activates defence mechanisms characteristic for paranoid psychosis: splitting of the self and projected identification. Komarčić despite the sudden disease outbreak with the protagonist, managed to display consistently a paranoid progression: from suspicion to the mystery of pursuit, paranoid delusion which is obviously in contradiction with the facts. The psychotic cleavage of hero is considered in the context of mental disease representation in patriarchal milieu, and in this context Velja's paranoid psychosis is manifested as the solution in the situation in which the rejection of values imposed by the closed ones would be equalized with the break of the important cultural prohibition. On the other hand, Steva is to be found between two simultaneous but contradictional requests which the culture throws it out in front of him: from one side, there is the necessity of entrepreneurial activity which would enable friend's treatment in the beginning, and from another side, the necessity of silence, which means the protection of Velja's reputation as long as possible. Culture, that, lakanovski said, symbolic order of the great other, is the assigned space in which the rule of silence was written on something which disturbed it. Komančić's novel testifies on the pattern masculinity in culture change: from heroic masculinity saturated with national feeling, which is personified by the generations of grandfathers and fathers toward reflexive, melancholic intellectual of civic type, which is personified by Steva and Velja, the second one without necessary mental force to resist the cultural pressure, and first of all the one which acts from inside, form hero's being itself shaped by the culture.