FROLLUM
A Jungian Reading of LotR

Précis by Dr. Jeff Spivak

Lord of the Rings is a riveting book. The tension, however, does not come merely from the uncertainty of whether or not Frodo would survive an encounter with one or another evil monster. The real tension, one would argue, comes from the uncertainty of whether or not Frodo himself would be corrupted into a monster by the evil he encounters. Would he end up another Gollum, with whom he becomes inseparable, or worse still another incarnation of Sauron, whose ring becomes inseparable from his finger?

Tolkien’s trilogy is not a simplistic good-vs-evil story. What elevates it to the level of psychological non-fiction is the fact that, at the final critical juncture, our hero succumbs to the draw of evil and finds himself incapable of casting the ring into the fire. Thus, Frodo emerges from the depths of Mount Doom with an uneasy enlightenment: evil is not reserved for obviously unpleasant beings – in fact, he, an ordinary, decent hobbit, has within himself a potential for malice that would rival that of an orc, and that he is exceedingly lucky to retain his human face.

This deeply traumatic experience is the making of Frodo: an innocent, carefree Shireling returns having lost a finger and having gained the truth about himself. Having left as a nice guy, Frodo comes back as a wise man. LotR is a growing-up story.

Among the psychologists, the notion of dualism of human nature is associated particularly with Carl Gustav Jung, one of the founding fathers of the discipline in the early decades of the 20th century. For Jung, every child is born with the common human psychological blueprint, the so-called Collective Unconscious, the map of the possibilities and prospects for psychological development. This map, which contains the full potentiality for both good and evil, in the infant becomes a vast and undiscovered Self.

As the child develops, the Self increasingly refracts into the conscious and subconscious parts: the socially acceptable traits become established as the conscious Ego, while the unacceptable traits become repressed into the subconscious Shadow. The person grows into a nice guy, whose outward Hobbit personality keeps the lid on the vast subterranean Gollum part of his psyche, the dark cavern filled with nightmares, sadistic urges, fantasies of rape and impulses to murder. Needless to say, the Hobbit can survive only by denying the repressed Gollum: “I can’t believe that Gollum was connected with Hobbits, however distantly… what an abominable notion!” Tolkien, appropriately, begins his tale with Frodo noticing his own Shadow for the first time, and refusing to acknowledge it with genuine indignation.

The problem, of course, is that Gollum, “a slimy creature”, remains regardless, and is liable to escape. In dreams, when caught off guard, tired, tempted or stressed, conscious control lapses and Gollum comes out to menace Hobbit with neurosis, or guilt, or depression, or outright violence. Being a nice guy is a superficial and insecure business.

Given the above, it is no surprise that the Jungian path to psychological integrity, the so-called “individuation”, is a process of drawing the Shadow out into the light of conscious awareness and coming to terms with its existence. In LotR, Frodo’s journey above all is a journey of individuation: it is a tale of Frodo’s progress from denial, to wishing Gollum dead, to putting up with him, to finally recognising Gollum as his inseparable antithetical twin. It is at this point that the dichotomy between the Ego and the Shadow gets resolved, Frodo reaches individuation and Gollum disappears as a separate entity. Frollum returns and finds that he is no longer at home in the innocent, carefree Shire – he has to go and dwell with the weary Elves.