This study argues that there is a pattern of metaphor in Beowulf which follows the pregenital psychological development of a male child, according to psychoanalytic theory. Beginning with the Scyld Scefing episode and focusing on the three monster segments, I show that the poem contains a compelling unconscious story of the traumas and conflicts of the oral and anal stages of male psychological growth. My argument is primarily based on the theories of psychoanalysts Melanie Klein and Erik Erikson, but I also draw upon the works of Sigmund Freud, Karl Abraham, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Bruno Bettelheim and Heinz Kohut.; I use their theories to look at the characters, events, settings, imagery, and word meaning of the text as representative of the psychology of one evolving male pregenital self. From this perspective, none of the characters and events of the story are seen as depicting real or fictional people or events; rather, they are metaphors for the differentiated and undifferentiated dimensions of the internal psychological struggles of a male child. For instance, I see Scyld Scefing as a metaphor for the psyche of a newborn infant when he is at one with the mother.; This demonstration of an overall pattern of child development reveals a coherence to the poem that includes more elements in a more elegant way than are accounted for in other theories of unity. Furthermore, this perspective radically transforms our understanding of how gender works in the poem. Beowulf is about masculine experience told from a masculine point-of-view which, at the same time, reveals the powerfully feminine or maternal. In the pregenital stages of growth, the child's psyche is inexorably intertwined with and subject to his experience and perceptions of his primary caretaker. The poem, although masculine, is not a story of patriarchy, but of matriarchy; it is the story of the power of the mother over the pre-oedipal son, the dependence of the son on the mother and the rage and anger associated with the stages of development and separation from the paradise of the preambivalent unitary dyad.
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