Don Quixote: Freud and Cervantes

We have focused this paper on an attempt to examine the process occurring in the transformations which Alonso Quijano undergoes when becoming Don Quixote as an expression of his disturbance, and the evolution at work during his travels to dissipate his grandiose narcissism by means of a cure of humiliation which makes him humble and able to recognize dependence and internal conflicts, finally culminating in the working through of the depressive position and the resolution of the prior schizo-paranoid phase just before his death. The disturbances of Alonso Quijano begin when he is faced with the anxieties provoked by approaching old age and death. The internal conflict over not-worked through mournings may lead to making reparations and to the stimulus of creativity and towards maturity. Badly resolved, it progresses to involutive psychosis which may result in psychotic destruction. Cervantes creates a 'hero' whom he treats in humorous and tragicomic ways, a hero who rises regressively from his unresolved Oedipus conflict, and with the traits of a grandiose self and with the need to 'repair' the projected image, deforming reality and at the same time being slowly obliged to take it into account.