The document provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of the short story "Fishing for Jasmine" using concepts from Sigmund Freud. It analyzes various symbols and imagery in the story based on Freudian ideas of the conscious/unconscious mind and repression of trauma. The main character Jasmine fell into a coma after being sexually abused by her father, representing her psyche's internal conflict and attempt to repress the traumatic memory into her unconscious mind. The document examines how Freudian theory can help explain Jasmine's unresponsive state and the psychological effects of her abuse.

1. A. K. Acal (BSE32)
A Psychoanalytic Approach to John Ravenscroft’s “Fishing for Jasmine”
Psychoanalytic theory is one of the most widely used literary theories nowadays, and
despite not being formulated for the sake of literature at first, this theory can still be helpful in
interpreting and uncovering the meaning not only of literary works, but also the thoughts and
dispositions of the author while writing and also of the characters involved in the story. This
approach has three main proponents who gave varied concepts which deal with psychoanalysis:
Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Carl Jung. Despite having certain differences when it comes
to explaining the idea of the conscious and the subconscious mind, they all agree on one point—
dreams and art (literature included) are some things people use to express their innermost desires
and fantasies.
The title of the story is already suggesting that the whole story will be full of imageries
related to fishing and to the sea. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic approach assumes that “every
human behavior is sexual” (Bressler, 1999). And because of this assumption, critics have devised
two forms of symbols—yonic symbols and phallic symbols. Phallic symbols symbolize the male
genitalia (the length exceeds the diameter) while yonic symbols represent the female genitalia
(fluid and concave). In literature, the sea is considered a stand-in for a yonic symbol, thus, the
imagery of the sea already tells the reader that the story will have something to do with the
female sexuality. The story starts with the nurse named Jasmine, visiting one of her patients, a
girl also named Jasmine. In the fifth paragraph, the nurse mentions that Jasmine (the patient) has
been “sea-damaged”—it can mean that she had an accident while she was in the sea, or her
symbolical “sea” or sexuality has been damaged. In Freudian theory, the male dominates the

2. female due to the penis, and women experience “penis envy” for they see it as something that
will give them power and dominance. Women are drastically affected by their lack of penis and
in some cultures, the penis is seen as a symbol of power (Thompson, 1941). One issue
surrounding the story will be the patient’s predicament due to the fact that she is a female. This
issue is later reaffirmed in the seventh paragraph, where she is described as a “truly beautiful
woman” that the people in the hospital start to “invent reasons to walk by” and “[drink] her in,
[feed] on her”. People approach Jasmine to quench their desires—people do this because they
see Jasmine as someone who is desirable, and their behavior around her is sexually-driven, just
like what Sigmund Freud proposed in his book “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”, humans are
driven by their libido in their every action, and any action that gives pleasure to someone can be
considered as satisfying the libido (or sexual drive) of that person—for example, eating can
already be considered as satisfying the libido if one finds pleasure in doing it. The people around
Jasmine satisfy their desires by looking at her, because it is the only thing they can do with her.
They transfer their sexual energy into an act that is societally acceptable, and in their case,
looking at Jasmine as they pass by her room. That act of transferring sexual energy to prevent
oneself from doing something improper and unacceptable is called sublimation.
Aside from the people in the hospital who find Jasmine alluring, another character is
mentioned to be someone who is feeding on her—her own father. In the eleventh paragraph, the
nurse narrates what happened to Jasmine two months ago, which involved her father and a
fishing boat. The father took Jasmine with him and rode the fishing boat and sailed for the sea.
Notice that the fishing boat can be considered as a phallic symbol because of its length, and the
sea is an established yonic symbol; hence, the father’s act of pushing the boat to bring it to the

3. sea may symbolize the act of penetration in a sexual act. It also foreshadows the events that
happened afterwards: Jasmine was sexually-abused by her father while they were on the boat.
The father tried killing Jasmine by throwing her body on the water and making it seem like she
drowned on her own, but when she took her body back to the shore, she was still alive and was
able to utter one word, “barracuda”, before she fell into a coma. Barracudas are known to be long
and ferocious fish who feed on their young. It can serve as a dominant phallic symbol that
subdued Jasmine, and also a symbolism for the father who took advantage of her daughter.
Jasmine’s father was not able to control his libido, so he looked for someone who can make him
release his pent-up sexual energy. The father was not able to control his id, so it made him abuse
his own daughter to pleasure himself. Another factor that might contribute to the father’s
lascivious actions is his own childhood as well—he was most likely attached to his own mother,
something Freud called Oedipus complex. The father then realized that he could not have his
mother for himself because of his own father. He let his desires rest in the unconscious, and
according to idealist F. W. J. Schelling and nature philosopher G. H. Schubert, the conscious and
the unconscious self deals with the “repressed aspects of one’s moral nature” and memories and
past. The father’s past attachment to the mother turned into a sexual desire not only for his wife
but also for his daughter.
After being violated, Jasmine fell into a deep coma, and even if two months had passed,
she is still unresponsive, as if she is already dead. Jasmine is experiencing neurosis—a mental
disease that involves symptoms of stress but the patient experiencing this can still have his/her
sense of touch with reality. The abuse makes her feel shame and guilt—two possible causes of
neurosis for female patients who experienced sexual abuse and resulted to a malfunctioning

4. super-ego (Lewis, 1971). Jasmine was abused by her own father, who disrupted her own sense of
morality; she expected that her father was supposed to protect (because it is what her morality
tells her) her but he ended up harming her and the event created a conflict in her super-ego.
Jasmine’s unresponsiveness then serves as her way of repressing the bad memories. She tries to
push the memory back to her unconscious mind, although she is still in contact with her reality,
which is why the nurse mentions in the last paragraph that she was waiting for Jasmine “to bite”
or to fight back because of what her father did to her. Jasmine experiences what is called
“trauma”, and according to a Freudian commentator Alasdair MacIntyre (1958), traumas
experienced by sexually-abused women in Vienna reveal to Sigmund Freud that “girls were
extraordinarily often seduced in very early childhood by older male relatives”. This is most
likely true in Jasmine’s case, and also to the nurse who is narrating the events in the story. She
share the same experience as Jasmine, but their story had two different outcomes—the nurse was
able to survive the bad experience she had, but conversely, Jasmine is deeply damaged by the
abuse that it ruined her life and left her conscious and unconscious psyche in conflict.
“Fishing for Jasmine”, in conclusion, primarily deals with the conflict sexually-abused
women experience in their psyche. It is an internal struggle for the patient because of a tainted
morality that disrupts the super-ego and a continuous battle between remembering abuse in the
conscious mind and repressing it to the unconscious. A reader who does not understand Freud’s
concept of psychoanalysis might wonder at first why Jasmine seems to be aware of what is
happening around her but remains unresponsive, but after deeper research and study, Jasmine is
doing a coping mechanism to herself to be able to handle the stress of her unpleasant experience.
The story also deals with the circumstances that might lead someone into sexually abusing

5. another person. It is not only strangers who can abuse women; also the women’s male relatives
can do such atrocious act. Little is known about the author, but his story can open a lot of minds
regarding the trauma sexual abuse inflicts on the victims.
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References:
 Bressler, C. E. (1999). Literary criticism: an introduction to theory and practice (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
 Ffytche, M. (2013). The foundation of the unconscious: Schelling, Freud and the birth of the modern
psyche. S.l.: Cambridge University Press.
 MacIntyre, A. (1958). The unconscious: a conceptual analysis. New York, NY: Routledge.
 Sigmund Freud. (n.d.). Retrieved March 03, 2017, from http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/#H5