EXPOUNDING CARMEN STERNWOOD'S MADNESS AND CRIMINAL INSTINCT THROUGH PSYCHOANALYTIC LENS

This paper employs Sigmund Freud and Slovoj Zizek's theoretical frameworks to examine the psychological aspect of Carmen Sternwood,a major but frequently ignored character in Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep (1939).Freud's tripartite model of the psyche —id, ego, superego— is used to understand Carmen's unpredictable criminal conduct, violent impulses,and sexual urges.It reveals a fractured personality motivated by primordial Want and free from moral restraint.At the same time,Carmen's psychopathy is seen as a sign of suppressed social dysfunctions,namely related to gender,class,and power,using Zizek ideas on fantasy,ideology,and the Real.Carmen is shown by this multidisciplinary psychoanalytic method to be a symbol of the moral degradation that lies underlying patriarchal capitalism,as well as a mentally. The study reframes Carmen as a tragic symptom of a severely defective symbolic system, rather than just a femme fatale,by viewing her madness as a collision between personal tragedy and ideological suppression