Emily Mullins

ENG 308

Critical Interpretations Paper

4-15-09

Psychoanalysis of Love and Sexuality

in The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Charlie, the letter-writer and first-person narrator in The Perks of Being a Wall-

flower, is a keen observer of human nature. He deals with his own deeply engrained set

of psychologic issues that he also has trouble defining. Most of Charlie's problems stem

from a trauma readers and Charlie do not realize nor understand until the end of the

novel; this trauma is one of sexual molestation, loss, love and misinterpreted intimacy.

The psychoanalytic aspects of this novel seem to often find their way back to a sexual

and psychological experience in some way. Lois Tyson, author of Critical Theory Today,

remarks that "our sexuality is part and parcel of our identity" and this identity has a

close connection to our sexual identity (Tyson 24). She also mentions that "the origin of

our sexual being is in the nature of the affirmation or disruption of our sense of self that

occurs in childhood" (Tyson 24). Both in life, and in this novel by Stephen Chbosky, an

honest depiction of a hyperbolized life experience, sexuality is one of the most consistent

and clearest measures of our general psychological state. Charlie has difficulty compre-

hending and defining the sexual relationships he witnesses and experiences, whether

they involve love, friendship, or both. The relationships he observes and participates in

aids readers in being able to see into Charlie’s inner dilemmas and core issues, as well as

those readers are perhaps dealing with in their own lives.

 Chbosky's novel covers different forms of sexuality including homosexuality,

physical abuse in relationships, rape, masturbation, molestation, and the psychological

ramifications of these experiences on Charlie and the other characters he observes from

his position as a wallflower. Charlie has difficulty defining and separating love, platonic

love, and sexual love due to his unconventional thinking, core issues that stem from his

repressed memories of a sexual violation, as well as his observations of the friends and

family who surround him. He often struggles with the meaning of sexuality, and wheth-

er sexual activity equals love. His trouble with these definitions and associations is par-

tially due to his unconventional view of love, sex and relationships. This can also stem

from his family dynamics, as “we are each a product of the role we are given in the fam-

ily-complex” (Tyson 13). Often the issues people have are results of how we might per-

ceive our place in the family and how we react and/or fall into a self-definition. Charlie

has a very unique family, but also not one that is very obvious or overly generous with

love. Charlie remarks how he has only heard “I love you” four times in his entire life,

three from his family. Since Charlie is so generous with his feelings, and wants everyone

around him to be happy and feel loved, it may be difficult for him to not always have

these feelings reciprocated.

In the novel, Charlie sees his sister stay with a boyfriend after he hits her; he sees

a rape at a party and a secret homosexual relationship, a part of human sexuality he has

little knowledge of; and he also experiences an unrequited love and a girlfriend who de-

sires validation as a sexual object. Each of these experiences and understandings,

however destructive to his view of love and sex, develop Charlie's preoccupation with

sex, as well as his anxieties surrounding it. Charlie is anxious in situations in which his

core issues are in play. His unconscious knowledge of the reason why is what makes him
anxious. In this way, “anxiety always involves the return of the repressed: I am anxious

because something I repressed--some painful or frightening or guilty experience--is re-

surfacing, and I want to keep it repressed” (Tyson 17). There are psychological differ-

ences in individuals and Charlie finds it difficult to strike a balance between destructive

and nondestructive behavior, of which he is sometimes aware of, but cannot accurately

describe the feelings he has or why he acted or responded in such a manner. His de-

structive behavior is caused by his own self-esteem issues and his instability in terms of

his social behavior and frame of mind. He is never quite sure the best path to take nor

the right decision to make. He wants so much to be honest and loyal and for the people

around him to be happy, but he often finds himself alone, unhappy, and unable to figure

out where he had gone wrong, or what he had misunderstood. Often this goes back to

the “origins of the unconscious,” or the psychological history that begins in childhood

experiences in the family, and the patterns of behavior that are “destructive in some

way” (Tyson 12). These patterns of behavior reveal the existence of a significant psycho-

logical difficulty that has probably been influencing him for awhile without him knowing

it. In Charlie’s case, this is very representative of the unconscious psychological issues

he had not dealt with throughout most of the novel. Charlie says, in reference to his cur-

rent girlfriend Mary Elizabeth, that, "sex things are weird, too. It's like after that first

night, we have this pattern where we basically do what we did the first time" but

"everything is rushed. Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be, but it doesn't feel

right" (Chbosky 130). Charlie cites low self-esteem as the potential reason for Mary

Elizabeth's desire for sexual attention, but "everything can't be self-esteem, can it"

(Chbosky 130)? Tyson defines the core issue low self-esteem as “the belief that we are

less worthy than other people and, therefore, don’t deserve attention, love, or any other
of life’s rewards. Indeed, we often believe we deserve to be punished by life in some way”

(Tyson 16). Tyson also explains that these core-issues are often interrelated, or that hav-

ing one can lead to having another. For example, Mary Elizabeth has low self-esteem,

but she also has a fear of intimacy she replaces with meaningless sexual encounters as a

desire to feel worthy and wanted.

Charlie, who is already someone who thinks about things to the fullest extent and

processes occurrences in very unique ways, finds love and sex confusing. Based solely on

how the people around him interact in relationships, and how he is exposed to relation-

ships, sexually and otherwise, Charlie sees love as simply wanting the other person to be

happy. He tells Sam that he realized he loved her when he "thought that you being sad

was much more important to me than Craig not being your boyfriend anymore. And if it

meant that I would never get to think you that way, as long as you were happy, it was

okay" (Chbosky 200). He has a constant need for everyone around him to be happy,

even people in the world he doesn’t know. When picking out his music choices for

Patrick’s present, Charlie writes that he “hopes the people who wrote those songs are

happy. I hope that they feel it’s enough. I really do because they made me happy”

(Chbosky 63). Love to Charlie also comes in the form of friendship. Sam and Patrick are

his good friends, friends who readers can see, through their observations and feelings

for Charlie, truly care about him. However, because Charlie so desperately wants to

make everyone happy he will do things he is uncomfortable doing. This relates back to

his self-esteem issues, and the correlation with that issue to a fear of abandonment.

Charlie, in some ways, feels unworthy of love, which leads him to expect he will be aban-

doned by the people he loves. For example, Charlie, in one instance allows Patrick to

kiss him even when he didn't want him to. When asked about why he let Patrick kiss
him, he answers, "'I was just trying to be a friend'" (Chbosky 201). He wanted so badly

for Patrick to remain his friend, that he allowed him to do something he was uncomfort-

able with.

Sexual behavior is, in this novel, very much a product of the environment and

culture Charlie observes and experiences, as well as from his lack of knowledge about re-

lationships and sex, and all that is associated with the two. His friend Sam sees Charlie

struggling with the rules of proper sexual conduct, stemming from his lack of knowledge

of the rules of normal social conduct. Sam tells Charlie that "It's like you're not even

there sometimes. It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone. [But] what

if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's

lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love" (Chbosky 200). She tries to teach him

about what girls want from boys and this leads to a sexual experience between the two,

one Charlie puts an end to fairly quickly. He doesn't quite figure out immediately why he

stopped their romantic and sexual encounter, but his repressed memories begin to

slowly come back in the form of dreams. He starts to "feel like what [he] dreamt about

[Aunt Helen] last night was true. And [his] psychiatrist's questions weren't weird after

all" (Chbosky 205).

Charlie, who readers begin to understand was sexually molested by his Aunt

Helen, had repressed those uncomfortable memories, and only when a similar sexual

encounter began to occur did those memories start to climb their way back to his con-

scious mind. Repression, as defined by Tyson, is representative of Charlie’s selective

memory, how his memories are modified or almost completely forgotten so that he

won’t feel overwhelmed by these memories (Tyson 15). As incestuously victimizing as

this experience was as a young child, Charlie's conscious memories may allow him to be-
gin to deal with this trauma and to self-actualize to become a fuller individual. This may

also give Charlie a potential for growth and to see beyond his circumstances and the

lives happening immediately around him. “The acknowledgement and working through

of repressed experiences and emotions” can help him to alter the effects of a wound only

when we relive the wounding experience (Tyson 15).

In terms of sex and love, Charlie had hardly been given many shining examples,

but even so, he got to experience romantic thoughts and relationships, extreme emo-

tional feelings, and successful friendships. He had for so long "repressed, or driven from

[his] conscious mind, shameful thoughts that, then, become unconscious" (Billig 1). In

the novel, repression became the 'centre' to which all the other elements of psychoana-

lytic thinking are related (Billig 1). Charlie understood attraction and had his own defin-

itions of love, but he also had difficulty seeing the difference between love and friend-

ship, and love and sex, matters that are very central to Charlie's thoughts and feelings,

and to the novel's themes. Perhaps Charlie only needed to uncover the root of his misun-

derstandings and unique associations of sex, love and relationships to begin to heal and

understand that there truly is nothing wrong with him.

In some ways the reader is unable to find real conclusive evidence to the cause of

Charlie’s myriad issues, but through his honest narration we see a study of the psycholo-

gical and sexual human condition, as well as Charlie’s feelings about his own sexuality

and relationships. Tyson poses the psychoanalytic question of "what conscious and un-

conscious meanings and purposes [do Charlie and other characters] express or enact in

[their] sexuality?" (Tyson 24). Certain characters seem to use the love another has for

them as a substitute or as a replacement for love from someone else; others use sex to

validate themselves as a sexual object; others avoid sexual encounters altogether; and
still others feel uncomfortable expressing themselves in sexual ways. A few suggest the

cause may be a "fear of intimacy--if I get too close to someone I will lose myself or be

emotionally harmed" (Tyson 25). Tyson also explains that a fear of intimacy is often a

“effective defense against learning about our own psychological wounds because it keeps

us at an emotional distance” (Tyson 16). Although Charlie is very emotional and be-

comes close to certain people, he experiences this fear, either because he subconsciously

or consciously feels he may be abandoned, like when Sam and Patrick go on vacation

and he feels very alone, or because the anxiety he has surrounding his relationships

makes him feel uncomfortable, like he is different from the people around him. He no-

tices this because of how much he feels and the power and range of the emotions he

shows, and how everyone notices him, but accurately defines his limited interaction and

thoughtful nature as a “wallflower.”

Works Cited.

Billig, Michael. Freudian Repression: Conversation Creating the Unconscious. United

Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. New York: POCKET, 1999.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today, A User-Friendly Guide. 2nd Ed. New York: Taylor

and Francis, 2006.