Hysteria In The Magic Toyshop

Week One:

Hysteria in The Magic Toyshop

The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter has many intense and strange characters. One could come up with many problems that each character faces but I will focus on Margret and what could be considered, her hysterical behaviours. Conversion hysteria is when a repressed psychological symptom becomes converted into a physical or behavioural symptom. In On Psychotherapy of Hysteria, Freud explained repression as the ego’s effort to keep bad thoughts and impulses out of one’s awareness and that it can be used as a way to not dealing with or avoiding something. Margret’s hysteria would have been caused by her relationship with her husband. When the reader first learns about her, her brother explains that; “Not

Some of the mobsters themselves could be considered narcissistic due to the basic characteristics of their job description of getting what they want no matter the price, the idea that their family is better than all others and that their life has more value than someone else. Narcissism is the excessive interest in one’s self. I am going to focus on Livia, the mother of Tony Soprano, the main mobster of the show. She puts her needs and thoughts before her son constantly even when she thinks she is acting or speaking with his best in mind. On his wedding day, she told his bride-to-be that Tony would soon be bored with her. After learning that Tony was thinking of putting her in a nursing home, she put a hit out on him to be killed. These are just two examples of how Livia acts throughout the series. People would think that Livia would suffer from narcissistic personality disorder where she believes she is the most important person and her opinion and voice is the only thing that matters. Her narcissistic acts causes many problems for Tony. The show features a lot of ‘over bearing’ mothers and selfish characters so Livia’s actions do not stick out as completely odd and unfair which they are. Week