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Attachment, Social Disorganization, and Trauma Beneath the Iceberg—An Analysis of Grenouille of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Yi-Chen Chen1 and Ya-Huei Wang2*
1Department of Applied Foreign Languages, Chung-Shan Medical University, Taichung, 402, Taiwan
2Department of Medical Education, Chung-Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, 402, Taiwan
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Abstract:
It has been proven that secure parental attachment can help children regulate their emotional arousal effectively. Those who do not have a safe and healthy relationship with their caregivers to receive protection may suffer from attachment trauma in childhood, which may lead to negative effects on their personalities and interpersonal relationships. Moreover, while growing up in the context of social disorganization, with no peer or community support, children may lose their attachment to the community and hence display some deviant behaviors. To understand how the interconnections among attachment, trauma, and social disorganization may bring some negative impacts on children’s development and devastate their interpersonal relationship with the outside world, this study aims to use Süskind’s novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer as a case study and examine how the protagonist Grenouille, an unwanted and unloved orphan, gets involved in the murder of twenty-six young girls with an unsurpassed wondrous scent. The study uses Satir’s iceberg theory as the overarching framework, underpinning the theories of attachment, social disorganization, and childhood trauma, to guide the analysis of both the observable behaviors and concealed emotions, desires, and inner selves of Grenouille. This involves examining multiple layers of the model, such as coping mechanisms, feelings, feelings about feelings, perception, expectations, yearnings, and self-understanding.
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Keywords: Iceberg theory; Attachment; Social disorganization; Childhood trauma; Anxiety
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Received:December 22, 2023; Revised:January 15, 2024; Accepted:January 29, 2024; Published:February 27, 2024
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*Corresponding author; e-mail: yhuei@csmu.edu.tw
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Citation:Chen, Y.C., & Wang, Y.H.(2024). Attachment, Social Disorganization, and Trauma Beneath the Iceberg—An Analysis of Grenouille of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. International Journal of Social Sciences and Artistic Innovations, 4(1), 11-19. https://doi.org/10.35745/ijssai2024v04.01.0002
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Copyright: ©
2024
The Author(s). Published with license by IIKII, Singapore. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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