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   mrs-campbell Teacher
   High School - 11th Grade

   eNotes Editor

   Part of Freud's psychoanalytic theories focus on the fixation that children have with their parents, and how many of our deepest psychological disturbances and disorders stem from the anxiety and unhealthiness of parental-children relationships.  Freud seemed to assert that much of one's unhappiness and neurotic tendencies can be tied back to an unhealthy dependency and reliance upon parental figures.  So, in "Brave New World," Huxley completely takes out the parental factor by removing any concept of mother or father from children's lives.  Their entire society runs without the concept of our traditional nuclear family unit.  As Mustapha Mond puts it, the people

   "are plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about."

   As a result, they don't have the jealousies, passions, fights, and psychological unrest that normally, as Freud asserts, comes with those ties.  The society that exists in this book is devoid not only of close familial ties, but of all close, intimate, emotional attachments.  People hook up but don't talk deeply or commit.  People have lots of fun playing games but never make lasting ties.  Their world is filled with the now and the fun, not with the profound or the deep.  And, as a result, they are seemingly "happy,"--a drug-induced, manufactured, genetically produced "happiness."

   I hope that those thoughts help; good luck!

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/brave-new-world/essential-passages

   http://www.enotes.com/brave-new-world/themes

   http://www.enotes.com/general-introduction-psychoanalysis...

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   Posted by mrs-campbell on Tuesday August 11, 2009 at 6:47 PM