Cat in the rain-a psycho-social analysis

Author: 
Anupama Chopra and Rajnish Raj

Aim: People believe that the story, “Cat in the rain” by Ernest Hemingway had theory of omission, which delves deep into the recesses of reader’s minds, stimulates their thoughts, and make them to seek answers by reflecting upon self. This story is analyzed from a psycho-social perspective.
Methods and Materials: The Plot, theme and characters of the story are taken as the template for things happening in objectivity. They acted as stimuli for the assessor to interpret the dynamic interplay of human interactions and communication. Transactional analysis (TA) techniques of strokes, hidden motives, moves, counter-moves and emotional trajectories deliberately left readers in lurch and create its everlasting impact on resolving their problems.
Results: The uniqueness of the story is that it can be used for personality assessment akin to projective TAT- test (Thematic Apperception Test). However, in TAT subjects responses are about ambiguous pictures and thus reveal thyself and others. It’s popularly known as the picture interpretation technique whereas Hemingway’s story is in written format requires basic level of education in reading, writing and understanding by the readers and creates picturesque form in their minds. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a form of depth psychology; the primary focus is to reveal the unconscious content of a client's psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension. However, Eric Berne’s Transactional analysis postulated three "ego states"- Parent, Adult and Child that differ from Freud's ego, id and superego, which focused on the mental processes involved for human interactions.
Conclusion: Hemingway’s writing technique and genre not only applied theory of omission but also transactional analysis for dynamic interplay of social interactions.

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DOI: 
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24327/ijcar.2017.7238.1107
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Volume6