THE NUCLEUS Issue 2 Spring 2024

GRANDIOSEDELUSIONS by Lillian Pao

Alice in Wonderland is commonly acknowledged as an allegory for the journey to self-understanding and self-actualization, and Alice’s imagination of Wonderland is also commonly interpreted as psychosis which is caused by schizophrenia (a mental disorder characterised by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thoughts, speech and behaviour). However, the novel was published long before the symptoms of schizophrenia (originally called dementia praecox) was considered a discrete mental illness in 1887. Although Alice’s ‘mad’ hallucination is a work of fiction, it is interesting to understand how such wild imagination can be reality for some people.

Zooming into a lesser-compared but nonetheless important character, the witty Caterpillar (also known as Absolem in the 2010 adaptation), who treats Alice condescendingly but helps her with discovering her identity in Wonderland, and his psychoanalytic interpretations. Many psychologists argue that by strongly believing that he is an oracle of Wonderland, having incredible intelligence and feeling superior over other Wonderlanders, as well as constantly smoking a hookah, the Caterpillar may be a symbol of addiction as well as delusion (a symptom of schizophrenia) -- specifically delusions of grandeur.