The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Psychology? Manly Friendship?

When reading this, I couldn’t help but constantly think about a few things. The first thing I thought of was desire, and how that played a role in Jekyll. Desire is what led him to make the potion and drink it.”I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity. But the temptation of a discovery long since prepare my tincture.” Desire was the core problem that caused this situation. There is more to the story than just man versus nature, this passage is discussing the problem with too much desire. Many things in this story talk about Jekyll being the good and Hyde being the bad, at the end though I was left with the thought that all humans are both good and bad. Those two things naturally belong to people, and it's how we act and how much bad we let out that matters. Trying to change that as Jekyll did caused imbalance, and often when people do more bad things they are even more tempted to do worse. This could be why Hyde eventually took over Jekyll. “The evil side of my nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than the good which I had just deposed.” This is because he spent all his life being a pretty good man, but that bad side will get stronger the more you let it out. It makes sense that the fear that is written into this passage was one of man versus nature. It’s that fear that we all have some secret, or some bad side of us that is just asking to come out. It's like when someone wins something instead of you, we all have that feeling of despise towards that person, and feeding it would make it worse. This is exactly what Jekyll did. “I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by the strange immunities of my position.” In this case, internally, he has been both man and nature all along. Feeding that nature caused him to become so much worse, to the point of murdering someone. According to Gregory Jantz who has written many books on this subject states “What is damaging is the denial of one aspect of our personality when we are functioning under another. When we're calm, we cannot deny we get angry. When we're happy, we cannot deny we get sad. When we're patient, we cannot deny we get impatient. When we deny certain aspects of our personality is taken to the extreme, we experience fragmentation.”

 What is very interesting though is the lack of women in this passage. I spent a great deal of time thinking about this. There are many points to this reading, but one I hadn’t picked up until recently is the interesting bond between men. Mr. Utterson seems like a very concerned friend who only wanted the best for Jekyll, going as far as damaging Jekyll’s property to make sure he was ok. Mr. Utterson uses that code of silence that connects men to make sure that Jekyll stays out of danger when he finds out that Jekyll doesn’t want anything to do with Mr. Hyde anymore. Friendships like this between men are important to see, even now in 2019. According to Timothy Wegner, “The amount of hidden social pressure that exists on how a man should interact and be in friendship may be one of the primary sources in why many young and old men do not have deep relationships with other men.” So seeing this is great representation for male friendship. Often nowadays we don’t see that level of care of men with other men, and I was delighted to realize how sweet they were to each other.

Work Cited

“Jekyll In Public, Hyde at Home? Our Fragmented Selves.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hope-relationships/201307/jekyll-in-public-hyde-home-our-fragmented-selves.

Wenger, Timothy. “Male Friendships, Their Importance, and How to Develop Them.” The Man Effect, The Man Effect, 29 Apr. 2018, themaneffect.com/thejourney/male-friendships-their-importance-and-how-to-develop-them.