Robert Louis Stevenson’s Complex Quest for Identity

After reading Jefferson A. Singer’s psychobiography of Robert Louis Stevenson (RLS), I understood why such stories as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Treasure Island (1883) have stood the test of time with such universal appeal. We learn much more about why RLS’s classic works are so treasured after reading The Proper Pirate.

Singer shows us how the author’s works of fiction are in fact great psychological novels. In writing this psychobiography, Singer draws on the author’s voluminous writings as well as his own background as a clinical psychologist and researcher in narrative psychology. In particular, Singer focuses his clinical lens on the psychological conflicts RLS struggles with throughout his life and details how he works through them in his quest to define his identity. Writing provides Stevenson (1850-1894) the perfect outlet for working through his conflicts. What made his writing so appealing to readers for well over a century is that we, his readers, resonate with his identity struggles, his conflicts of everyday life.

In the early chapters of The Proper Pirate, we learn much about RLS as a child and young man. He was born in the late Victorian period in Edinburgh, Scotland in a well-to-do family. Often bed-ridden due to his respiratory problems, he had plenty of time to cultivate his rich and lively imagination. His parents, Thomas and Margaret, were devout Calvinists; they instilled in him a fear of being sinful. This fear was exacerbated by his nanny who exposed him to religious teachings that put the fear of God in him. She also exposed him to overly stimulating pirate

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stories that were both frightening and exciting at the same time. These early experiences related to pleasure, excitement, and sin made their way into some of Stevenson’s most notable stories, such as Treasure Island.

Stevenson often found himself in conflict with his father whose puritanical, self-sacrificing, and moralistic views collided with Stevenson’s leanings toward a bohemian and artistic life. Because of his father’s critical feelings about the arts, Stevenson was often filled with shame when he pursued pleasure through art, imagination, and fantasy. Singer suggests that Thomas’ strong ties to Calvinist beliefs led him to feel a deep sense of unworthiness and persistent shame, planting the seeds of shame for his son. Singer also notes that Thomas’ inhibited desires may have been due to sexual repression or his own literary ambitions, unrealized. Further fueling the tension between father and son was Stevenson’s refusal to become an engineer, following the family tradition. He didn’t feel at peace being financially dependent on his parents.

Singer’s book focuses on different periods of Stevenson’s life and follows him as he matures into a young man, pursuing a more bohemian life and rejecting religion, much to his father’s disappointment. As he struggles to reconcile the different sides of his personality—the side that feels connected to his parents’ world of respectability, piety, and honor and the side that wants to pursue a more artistic, adventurous, and sensual life—his thinking writing evolves. Over time, he becomes more independent as he pursues his passion of writing and the arts. He also pursues an unhappily married woman who eventually divorces her husband, marries him, and has three children with Stevenson.

The most compelling chapter in his book, “The Gothic Gnome and the Worm of Conscience,” focuses on Stevenson’s well-known book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this tale, he is able to write about the identity splits in his own personality in the form of two main characters who are really one, each one representing a different side of him. When Dr. Jekyll conducts a series of experiments, he unleashes his baser, more animalistic appetites onto Mr. Hyde, the part of himself he’d rather not see. In contrast is Dr. Jekyll, an esteemed doctor who is respectable and honorable. Dr. Jekyll, similar to Stevenson, had to repress his secret desires and sensual vices to maintain his dignified image.

Here, we see something like the phenomenon of repression going on, which Freud was able to flesh out in his theory. Other pre-Freudian concepts also seem evident. Freud’s theory of the id, ego, and superego appear in a more primitive form here. One might say Mr. Hyde’s id runs rampant. It would take some years before the ego makes its appearance to moderate the id’s appetites and the superego’s demands. Had he met with Freud, he would see there was another way out. Rather than reject those hated parts of himself, he might integrate them without feeling he’s a terrible and despicable person.

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In his symposium paper on artistic creativity, James William Anderson argues that the wellspring of an artist’s creative works draws from his or her most personal inner conflicts (“The Psychology of Artistic Creativity,” Clio’s Psyche, Vol. 18, No. 3, December 2011, 249-259). Anderson cites an excerpt in Tolstoy’s diary that captures the essence of this point: “Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul and which shows to people these secrets that are common to all.” Singer demonstrates how Stevenson, through his writing, bares his soul, shares his secrets, and takes tremendous risks to be who he is.

As Stevenson shows progress in life and in writing, he is able to break free from his father, financially and psychologically. Beyond defining himself, he lends a hand to help others, thus reaching Erikson’s stage of generativity. We see an increase in his involvement in causes beyond himself as he tackles societal issues, exposing hypocrisy in high society and exploitation of the lower classes. In his last years before his death at age 44, he moves his family to Samoa in the South Seas and becomes a spokesperson for and advocate of the rights of the native people who are exploited and discriminated against by the ruling class.

Overall, I was impressed by Singer’s deep well of knowledge and scholarship in writing this psychobiography. I also enjoyed his excellent skills as a writer, which made the reading about Stevenson’s life even more enjoyable.

The only thing I felt was missing was an exploration of possible connections between Freud and Stevenson, who were contemporaries. For example, I wondered if Freud read any of Stevenson’s work and, if so, was he influenced by them in any way? It seems to me that both were keen observers of human nature and came to similar views at roughly the same time. In fact, Freud held the view that artists, through their imagination, attained the same insights that he himself arrived at through scientific investigation. Freud wrote to novelist Arthur Schnitzler, “I have often asked myself in astonishment whence you could have taken this or that secret knowledge, which I had acquired through laborious investigations” (Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time, 1988, 317).

In The Proper Pirate, we see how Stevenson learns to integrate the splits within himself. His courage in exploring his conflicts and painful self-perceptions and working through them serves as a model for countless readers to do the same—to hold the magnifying glass closer to see aspects of ourselves we may not like but can still accept and, if we so choose, change as part of our journey toward growth and development.

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