Echolalia and the Lacanian Unconscious: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Rockaby

This article explores Samuel Beckett’s Rockaby through Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, focusing on the concepts of the mirror stage, desire, need, demand, language, and echolalia to examine the protagonist’s fractured inner world. The split between W, the corporeal woman seated on stage, and V, the recorded voice, is interpreted as a manifestation of the divided self, in which W represents the regressive self-associated with the Imaginary, while V signifies the alienated self-constructed within the Symbolic order. This division reveals the woman’s estrangement from herself and entrapment within memory, absence, and ambiguity. The article argues that W’s desire for recognition emerges from a lifelong lack of acknowledgment and connection, reflecting Lacanian desire as grounded in absence and shaped by unmet emotional needs. It further examines Beckett’s language, particularly repetition of words such as “blind,” as significant in expressing isolation, futility, and psychic fracture. In this context, echolalia is analyzed as a manifestation of unconscious desires and conflicts and as resistance to the demands of the Symbolic order. Through the interplay of Lacanian theory and Beckett’s theatrical language, this article offers a multifaceted exploration of subjectivity, desire, and complexities of the human psyche in Rockaby.

کلیدواژه ها:

Psycholinguistic ، Beckett ، Rockaby ، human psyche ، multifaceted exploration