A psychoanalytic expedition into the dark core of the ... - JPCS

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies 

ISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic) 

A psychoanalytic expedition into the dark core of the enlightened mind 

Asif Ali Akhtar 

Abstract 

There are different ways of reading Heart of darkness and the has has been analysed as 

such. However, one way of reading it is to employ Freudian pasychoanalysitcal 

techniques in order to learn the precise nature of the collective pathology of the Modern 

European mindset in the very terms through which it began to understand its own 

psychology. By doing so, it will be helpeful to underatnd if Kurtz was an individual or 

not. If he was not, then the next task is to find out how much typical Euroean-colonial 

mind he actually reflected in his dealings and lording it over with the natives. 

Keywords: allegory; colonial; ego; psychoanalysis; psychopathology; superego 

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness presents, in the story of an expedition, a metaphor for the dark 

colonial workshop in the periphery which ‘produced’ the age of Enlightenment in Europe. Though 

Conrad's work is peppered with all sorts of psychological tropes, as well as other allegorical devices, 

one way to read this novella is as a narration of a journey into the Western colonial mindset. Often 

times the collective delirium set into motion at the very high-point of imperialism is typified by terms 

such as neurosis or psychopathology. Though it might be problematic to directly superimpose the 

psychic development process of an individual organism onto the sociological progression of an entire 

species, Sigmund Freud, known for doing considerable groundbreaking work on mental illnesses such 

as neurosis, also conducted an historical survey of the epochal project of civilization that has spanned 

A psychoanalytic expedition into the dark core of the enlightened mind,’ Asif Ali Akhtar 

JPCS Vol 3, No 1, 2012 

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the better part of the development of the human species in Civilization and its Discontents. If used to 

reread Conrad’s metaphorical language of the tale of Kurtz told through Marlow’s voice, Freud's 

analysis might prove useful in psychoanalyzing the modern mind of the Enlightened European. As the 

19 th century European literary novel meets early 20 th century psychoanalytic theory, this encounter 

might reveal to us the precise nature of the collective pathology of the Modern European mindset in the 

very terms through which it began to understand its own psychology. Though a tempting prospect, in 

order to avoid the danger of superimposing a structural coherence onto a literary narrative, this essay 

will not attempt to undertake what could be called a Freudian reading of Conrad’s novella. It will, 

however, try to tease out some Freudian themes within this work of fiction. It is hoped that a 

psychoanalytic exploration would enable the excavation of some of the darker secrets that lay hidden, 

repressed in the neuroses and psychoses that raged within the enlightened mind of modernity. 

It would be obviously problematic to attribute dynamics of the Freudian psyche onto the lives of actual 

individuals, but insofar as Heart of darkness is a work of fiction, it might afford us the luxury to 

examine is as a specimen representative of the topography of the modern European mind. Given that 

most of the narrative is a long drawn out confession on part of the main narrator named Marlow, the 

monologue could be read as an outpouring of the repressed conscious (and here we might imagine a 

psychoanalyst seated among his silent audience). The metaphor of the exploratory expedition which 

might represent the colonial project as a whole could also be read as a kind of self-exploration of the 

darkened contours of colonial psychology. Moving one step further from Marlow's confessional 

monologue, if the novella as a whole were to be considered as a transcript of the modern mind, then the 

characters that we find therein might be taken as representing psychological constructs that might relate 



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to one another within a Freudian framework. Excavating the mental-landscape of the narrative in this 

manner might allow us to better understand (and possibly diagnose) the complexes and their interplay. 

As a starting point for our psychoanalytic expedition we would have to take Marlow's narrative voice 

as the internal voice of the Freudian 'ego'. In this regard, Marlow's voice is the voice of organized and 

reasonable cognition. As the unnamed protagonist of the novella describes him, in terms of his own 

yarn-spinning monologues, as someone who sought “the meaning of an episode” not at the core of the 

narrative, “but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze”. 

While we don't know a lot about the character of Marlow at the onset, we learn more about him as his 

monologue continues. In a way, he can also be read as a representation of the imperial subject, aspiring 

to be posted as a colonial officer in some far off land, and looking to pursue a fruitful career in a 

trading company. 

As his tale begins, we are transported, suddenly, from the river Thames to the very heartland of the 

'dark continent'. And as we are told by Marlow at the very onset of his narration, the tale is not about 

“what happened to [him] personally”, rather it is about how he came to find Mr. Kurtz, the only other 

prominent character in the narrative, at the “farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of 

[his] experience”. He purports to be telling the tale so that those present may begin “to understand the 

effect of [the experience of finding Kurtz] on [him],” as the incidents he recounts would “throw a kind 

of light on everything about [him] -- and into [his] thoughts” (this is a statement that would excite the 

ears of our hypothetical psychoanalyst seated among the audience). 



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At the beginning of his journey, Marlow, who we have so far identified as the 'ego' of our 

enlightenment psyche first encounters the persona of Kurtz as a sort of mythical figure, almost a legend 

in his own right. Kurtz is initially introduced as a “remarkable person”, a high-ranking administrator in 

charge of a successful trading post in the ivory country. Immediately, we find that Marlow is gripped by 

a strange curiosity about Kurtz as he begins inquiring from everyone he encounters about this 

exceptional man. One of the officers he meets early on describes Kurtz as a kind of prodigy, and “an 

emissary of pity and science and progress”, a kind of “higher intelligence” representing a “singleness of 

purpose” in the service of “the cause entrusted to [them] by Europe”. While playing out Kurtz’s 

mythical progression through the ranks of the company that would follow in the recent future, the 

officer likens Marlow's prospects to those of Kurtz – a possibility towards which Marlow seems to 

secretly take a fancy. 

At that point, Marlow admits to carry on the pretense of being influential simply so that it might later 

be helpful to Kurtz, as someone he had not known personally, but was only a conceptual figment in his 

own mind. As he bursts on to confess, almost accosting his listeners, in one of the more introspectively 

revealing parts of his monologue: “[h]e was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any 

more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am 

trying to tell you a dream...” It would appear through this outburst of Marlow that Kurtz had already 

taken a significant spot in his self-image. He goes on to express some curiosity in Kurtz and how he 

“would climb to the top after all and how he would set about his work when there”, a progression that 

Marlow, as part of the trading company, might himself be gazing at with aspiration. 



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Gradually, Marlow begins to become more and more obsessed with Kurtz, rather, the idea of Kurtz that 

was beginning to colonize his mind. He becomes “rather excited at the prospect of meeting Kurtz very 

soon” as he gets recruited to lead an expedition to go and rescue a sick Kurtz from the heart of the 

African jungles, he begins obsessing about meeting Kurtz to the extent that he starts seeing visions like 

Kurtz authoritatively presiding over “a boat with four paddling savages”. Soon Marlow begins to 

fantasize about prospects of discoursing Kurtz on various issues, and his voice begins to resound within 

his imagination. Marlow suggests that he would begin “arguing with [him]self whether or not [he] 

would talk openly with Kurtz”. Here we find him, as the ego-protagonist, beginning to consider 

whether Kurtz “was just simply a fine fellow who stuck to his work for its own sake” in likening the 

role of Kurtz to himself, he might be contemplating his own ego-ideal. It would appear at this point of 

the journey the figure of Kurtz begins to take on the overarching role of the Freudian 'super-ego', 

hierarchically placed above in a resounding position of infallible authority. 

“Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world” ruminates Marlow, 

the journey in his own mind takes the shape of a passage to the very primordial depths of 

consciousness. As the figure of Kurtz presides over his own thoughts, the whole journey seems to 

become focused on Kurtz himself, as if Kurtz was that hidden core, the great ideal that was being 

sought out. The steamboat that Marlow is navigating then seems to become the very metaphor for 

enlightened consciousness rowing through the contours of an all-too-primitive mind. Within the 

unconscious depths of this journey, a peculiar kind of ancient tribal aura begins to pervade, punctuated 

by maddening drum-rolls echoing from behind curtains of trees. Suddenly, the wandering explorer's 

mind takes the shape of “a prehistoric earth, … an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet”. 



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Navigating through this unknown and ancient planet, Marlow would “pick out a tree a little way ahead 

to measure [their] progress towards Kurtz”, as if he represented the very core of this unfamiliar world, 

and the ultimate goal of their own expedition. 

Much like the Freudian super-ego, Kurtz “presented himself as a voice”, a voice inside Marlow's own 

head. And as Marlow reaches unfamiliar psychological territory in obsessing about Kurtz as the object 

of desire, and at the same time, his own ego-ideal, he also starts to delve into self-doubt on how his 

whole journey could be based on “the sole purpose of talking with Mr. Kurtz” this inner strife drives 

him to a symbolic emotionally pronounced gesture where he flings his shoes off the boat on which he's 

sailing to find Kurtz. As the dark and wild jungles of his own unconscious mind begin to take a deeper 

hold on his thoughts, his self-imagined idea of Kurtz also begins to take on a haunting appearance, 

encountered in visions where “the wilderness ... had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his 

veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some 

devilish initiation.” Soon Kurtz begins to take on an aspect within the thoughts of our ego-protagonist 

such that he has to “to account to [him]self for … the shade of Mr. Kurtz” that he had become 

preoccupied with. 

It is only at that point in the journey when Marlow encounters the Russian underling of Mr. Kurtz that 

he begins to realize the real extent of the disturbing state of his own ideal. After hearing about the tribal 

impulses that had taken hold of Kurtz, Marlow is driven to declare that Kurtz must have gone mad. 

Even before his actual encounter with Kurtz, Marlow had become aware of the fact that Kurtz had lost 

all restraint and no longer had any restraint over his primal instincts or the “material” drives that had 



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taken over his sensibilities. The figure of Kurtz seems to have lost the lofty space it once occupied in 

Marlow's imagination, and was quickly becoming dissolved in the primordial unconsciousness that 

reigned supreme in the jungles of the 'dark continent'. Marlow considers that “the whisper [of the 

wilderness] had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within [Kurtz] because he was hollow 

at the core. . . .” Not only had Kurtz suddenly become hopelessly ungrounded, but had apparently also 

imploded. No longer could Kurtz be represented by the well-defined psychological construct of the 

super-ego, he had devolved into something darker, a more primordial self. 

So how does the ego-protagonist eventually encounter the sickly and grotesque figure of Kurtz? First 

he visually captures the sick Kurtz, literally disrobed, as his “covering had fallen off, and his body 

emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding-sheet”. Then he finally comes to hear the voice 

of his despair, as he mocks the very idea of saving him, clearly in the grips of a delusional state. 

Marlow had undoubtedly already cast his lot with Kurtz's, and soon saw himself sidelined by his crew, 

and at this point he admits: “I had turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who, I was ready to 

admit, was as good as buried. And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave 

full of unspeakable secrets”. 

When Marlow finally physically catches up with Kurtz, deep in the thickness of the jungle, he finds 

him completely devolved to a near-bestial state, crawling on all-fours. And when he rises he encounters 

him as an “unsteady, long, pale, indistinct, like a vapor exhaled by the earth”. The figure who had taken 

hold of Marlow's own mind as the resounding super-ego had clearly dissolved into the primal desires, 

caught in the grip of instinctual impulses, “the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness -- that seemed to 



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draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of 

gratified and monstrous passions” would more closely approximate the state of the Freudian 'id' than 

the 'super-ego'. Completely in the realm of an elusive tribal reality, Marlow finds himself disgusted by 

his own ideal who is suffering from delusions of a kind of imperial self-grandeur. This is the point 

when the ego is confronted with the absurdity and ultimately repulsive truth of its own ideal. This is the 

point of trauma – the neurosis of the self-image. 

Of course the Freudian idea of 'repression' abounds in this analogy. Apparently the very tribal cultures 

that Kurtz had earlier written about suppressing had eventually overturned his own mental state, and 

ultimately re-emerged to completely take hold of Kurtz's own being. The fact that this experience was 

traumatic for Marlow himself becomes evident in him suppressing its contents for a year after Kurtz's 

death. And even when he does encounter Kurtz's widow, he does not dare to utter the truth, rather 

preferring to repress its disturbing and rather horrific contents. No doubt, the repressed contents would 

come out later, such as the unprovoked monologue that is poured out to the audience on the Thames 

River. If this narrative is analyzed as the ego in pursuit of its ego-ideal, and eventually coming to 

encounter it as an oppositional devolved presence is read in terms of the European colonial experience, 

then the enlightened European colonial consciousness could only be read as a neurotic self-invested 

endeavor into the very dark depths of insanity. 

Biography 

Asif Ali Akhtar hails from Lahore, Pakistan and is currently based in New York City where he is 

studying Political Theory at the New School for Social Research. Apart from writing fiction, he also 

contributes to various news publications and blogs. 

References 



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Conrad, Joseph. (1989). Heart of darkness. New York: St. Martin's Press. 



Freud, Sigmund. (1961). Civilization and its discontents. New York: W. W. Norton. 

Meyers, Jeffrey (2001). Joseph Conrad: A biography. New York: Cooper Square Press. 

Moore, Gene M. (Editor). (2004). Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness: A casebook. New York: Oxford 

University. 

Mudrick, Marvin (Editor). (1966). Conrad: A collection of critical essays. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 



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