CONSTANTINE THE PHILOSOPHER UNIVERSITY

IN NITRA

HUMBERT’S PEDOPHILIA IN Lolita FROM THE

PSYCHOANALYSIS POINT OF VIEW

Jana Chrenková 2017

3AjSpb
 Introduction

More than 50 years ago, Vladimir Nabokov created his most notorious novel –

Lolita - that has been the subject of criticism and censorship since its first publication.

Before being a published, Nabokov himself said that four American publishers rejected

Lolita because they were shocked, and their refusal was „based not on my treatment of

the theme but on the theme itself, for there are at least three themes which are utterly

taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned.” (Nabokov – Lolita, p. 314) He

also continues with „publisher Z said if he printed Lolita, he and I would go to jail”

(p. 314).

He therefore turned to Olympia Press, a publishing house in France, which had the

reputation of printing “dirty books”. After all, the book was published in 1955. (Corbin

Curtis, June 29, 2016)

As Vickers (2008) claims, Lolita became a huge and immediate success, and received a

lot of favourable reviews, even thought New York Times accused it of being a „highbrow

pornography“. (p. 51)

Olsen (1995) also reported that it is surprising that even nowadays, Lolita is still

banned from many high schools. (p. 30) On the other hand, despite having this

problematic and unfriendly topic, it still remains enormously interesting to scholars,

students or any other readers. (p. 73)

The novel itself became controversial for its scandalous subject matter - pedophilia

and also for humanizing the pedophile.1

1
Available at: http://lolitaandcensorship.weebly.com/the-controversy-of-lolita.html
 However, before we want to judge the main character Humbert Humbert, first we

should take a look to pedophilia and its meaning. Pedophilia is a „psychosexual disorder

in which an adult has sexual fantasies about or engages in sexual acts with a
2
prepubescent child of the same or opposite sex.“ (The Editors of Encyclopedia

Britannica, January 28, 2015) The word pedophile basically means a “lover of children”,

although they are often called as child molesters. (Holmes and Holmes, 2009, p.110)

In the novel, Humbert speaks about the pedophiles in order to defend them by saying

„majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet moaning, physical

but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive,

timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically

harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, […] we are not sex fiends! We do not rape as

good soldiers do.“ (58).

Nevertheless, many pedophiles only desire to have relationship, which would be

physically consummated, and only few of them actually do it and touch a child. (Brice,

September 7, 2012) We can also observe it in a book where Humbert portrayed

pedophiles as an

„unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in

the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a

nymphet.“ (58)

Pedophilia can be attributed to some traumatic experience from their childhood since

in many cases pedophiles have been molested as children. (Cochran and Cole, May 10,

2010) Therefore, Humbert’s pedophilia can be analyzed by using the Psychoanalysis

2
Article: Pedophilia:Psychosexual Disorder;
available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/pedophilia (cited on: 27.3 2017, 23:49 CEST)
theory because it is able to explain what was exactly in Humbert’s mind since Sigmund

Freud, a developer of this study, claims that most adult problems are due to issues, which

happened in their childhood. (Rush, April 26, 2010)

Thus, the aim of this essay is to analyze Humbert’s childhood by using the

Psychoanalysis since traumatic effects, which he experienced in the past, could probably

shape his personality and affect him to such an extent that he became a pedophile. In

general, pedophilia is considered as something immoral in our society but if someone is a

pedophile it does not mean that it is his fault since it is disorder and it is not by a choice.

The main focus will be on the traumatic childhood memory since the Freud’s work

depends upon the unconscious, which is closely related to the memory and has strong

influence upon our actions. (Barry, 2002, p. 96) Furthermore, as Rivkin and Ryan (2004)

argue, the unconscious is a repository of repressed desires, emotions and memories,

many of which have to do with sexuality and violence. (p. 389)

Hence, we could see the reason why Humbert is being a pedophile and how his

traumatic events from his childhood could affect his mental health.

Analysis

Humbert was born in 1910 in Paris. His mother died when he was three years old, so

his father and his aunt Sybil took care of him. He was a happy child until he became a

teenager. When he was at the age of 13, his father went to Italy (even though we do not

know for how long) and then sent him to a boarding school which led Humbert to

loneliness, as he himself claims:

 „[…]I had nobody to complain to, nobody to consult.“ (19)

Even this experience could affect him at some point since „trauma can seriously

disrupt important aspects of child development that occur before the age of three

years.“3 Thus, it certainly affected Humbert‘s behaviour because children depend on

their parents.

Moreover, because of the death of his mother and his father’s leaving, his

opportunity to know about sex education was limited. Although Humbert stated in the

novel that:

„Later, in his delightful debonair manner, my father gave me all the information he

thought I needed about sex.“ (19)

But at the time when he really needed him, his father was not there for him. Freud

also reported that the attitude of parents towards sexuality can plays a significant role in

the development of adolescent and form his or hers sexual attitude.4

By the absence of his parents, he had no one to whom he could share with his

confusion about sex. Thus, when he met Annabel, she probably fulfilled his loneliness

and he got love from her, the care that he needed and was missed from his parents. When

he met her, he was 13 years old and he loved her so much as well as she did. Hence,

when she shockingly died, he experienced so traumatic event that from that moment, he

never loved any woman about the same age as him again.

Since then, he was only attracted to young girls around the age of 14 because the

object of his desire was a young girl and he was unable to fulfill his desire with Annabel

3
Article: Trauma and children - newborns to two years;
https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/trauma-and-children-newborns-to-two-years
(cited on: 29.3 2017, 16:06 CEST)
4
Article: Understanding normal development of adolescent sexuality: A bumpy ride;
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477452/ (cited on: 29.3 2017, 15:16 CEST)
since they never consummated their relationship. (Rush, April 26, 2010)

It’s clear that Humbert experienced traumatic event related to grief, which according

to Freud, is a prototype and perfect example of an affective fixation upon something that

is past, and, like the neuroses, it also involves a state of complete alienation from the

present and the future. (Hedtke and Winslade, 2004) It shaped his behavior and

personality into the extent that he only desired for teenage girls or as he called them

“nymphets”. Humbert even admitted what impact had Annabel’s death on him:

„I also know that the shock of Annabel’s death consolidated the frustration of that

nightmare summer, made of it a permanent obstacle to any further romance throughout

the cold years of my youth.” (8)

Since he had a little knowledge about sexuality, he was confused with his feelings

towards Annabel that is shown in the quotation below:

„[…] that the rift in my life began; or was my excessive desire for that child only the

first evidence of an inherent singularity?” (8)

So Humbert did not know whether his feelings are normal or not because he thought

that his desires was too excessive and since his desire was never fulfilled, it was hard for

him to let her go and stop thinking about her. He lived under the shadow of Annabel and

he even saw her in Lolita when they first met, saying:

„I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with

Annabel.” (8)

As it was mentioned above, the unconscious is a repository of repressed feelings,

desires or memories, and Annabel was still in his mind; thus, he pictured Lolita as the

same girl with Annabel.

 „It was the same child—the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple

bare back […]I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side [...] I saw again her

lovely indrawn abdomen […]” (p. 25)

He thought that he found his Annabel again and he found her in Lolita because he

saw in her a resemblance with Annabel. Additionaly, Freud argues „it also happen that

persons may be brought to a complete standstill in life by a traumatic experience which

has shaken the whole structure of their lives to the foundations, so that they give up all

interest in the present and future and live permanently in their restrospections.” (Martz,

2010:19)

Thus, this explain that Humbert’s pedophilia lies on his traumatic event because he

still stands in the place where he was 13 years old, so he has attraction only to girls who

are not older than 14.

Additionaly within Humbert’s psychoanalysis, Freud also discusses the idea of

“super-ego”, which according to him, it „describes the internal desires and wants of the

human being, regardless of whether they are morally right or wrong. If they are morally

wrong, Freud claims the subject will try to either rationalize their desires or be in denial

of them.“5 (Rush, April 26, 2010)

We can say that Humbert’s desires are morally wrong. Humbert himself

acknowledges it; however, he also tries to rationalize them by claiming that being a

pedophile is really not a bad crime and tries to portray himself in a better light when he

noted that

5
Article: Psychoanalysis of Humbert in Lolita
https://modernamericanfiction.wikispaces.com/Psychoanalysis+of+Humbert+in+Lolita (cited on: 29.3
2017, 17:47 CEST)
 „no killers are we. Poets never kill.” (p. 58)

More, he also tries to defend himself by giving example of other cultures that permit

sexual relationship between father and his daughter as we can see it below:

„Among Sicilians sexual relations between a father and his daughter are accepted as a

matter of course, and the girl who participates in such relationship is not looked upon

with disapproval by the society of which she is part.” (p. 98)

Conclusion

The main purpose of analyzing Humbert’s pedophilia by using Psychoanalysis is to

find out whether traumatic events that occurred in his childhood could affect his

personality into being a pedophile. Humbert’s fixation on young girls is derived by his

grief and traumatic event when Annabel died. Freud’s theory about grief can perfectly

explain that Humbert’s pedophilia actually happened because this traumatic event made

his sexual desire stuck in the time when the event happened, and that is at the age of 13.

The fact that his mother died, his father was not around when Humbert needed him, and

Anabel passed away could be the reason why Humbert became a pedophile, so it is

actually not his own fault.

To conclude, the themes such as obsession, incest or pedophilia still remains

controversial in our society since they deal with an important issue and describes things,

which happened before and still happen today, and we should not close our eyes before
the truth and the reality as it is. Lolita in some way serves as a warning, for both parents

and teachers, as we can already note it in the Pretext of the book. It is up to reader to

interpret this book and to decide whether Humbert is truly a pedophile or just a victim of

his disorder.

In my opinion, I do not consider Lolita as an erotic or an obscene novel but anyway; it is

still controversial because of this unusual love affair between middle-aged man and his

12 years old stepdaughter. Having said that, I am not blaming him for what he is, since a

person who is suffering from some disease or disorder, is unable to control his own

actions.
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