PSYCHOANALYSIS OF IDENTITY

This study explored the psychological dimensions of identity and social demarcation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives through the lens of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. The research investigated how gender, religion, culture, and trauma interact to shape and suppress individual identity within patriarchal Nigerian societies. Using a qualitative analytical method, the study interpreted both novels as narratives of psychological repression and gradual self-recovery, where silence became both a symptom of trauma and a path toward liberation. In Purple Hibiscus, Kambili Achike’s identity is fractured by her father Eugene’s religious authoritarianism, forcing her into silence, fear, and repression. Freud’s theory elucidates her internal conflict between the id’s desire for freedom and the superego’s moral constraints . In contrast, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives presented Bolanle, an educated woman trapped in a polygamous household, whose infertility and trauma symbolized the intersection of psychological pain and social exclusion. Her repression, rooted in sexual violence and patriarchal expectations, evolved into defiance as she reclaims agency through self-awareness and truth-telling. The analyses demonstrated that both Kambili and Bolanle navigated identity crises shaped by familial control, gendered oppression, silence, and trauma, yet both achieved psychological rebirth through acts of resistance and voice reclamation. The study concluded that identity in these texts is not static but continually reconstructed through the negotiation between inner desire and societal constraint. Using Freudian psychoanalytic perspectives, this research contributes a new interpretive model to African feminist and postcolonial literary studies—revealing how silence, repression, and trauma operated not merely as forms of subjugation, but also as precursors to self-realization and liberation in contemporary Nigerian fiction.