Albert Camus' The Stranger: Somatopsychic Regulation, Personal Responsibility, and Impending Execution as a Paternal Scene

Abstract

This article examines Albert Camus’ The Stranger through the somatopsychic functions of Meursault’s precision, literalness, sensory fixation, and repetitive movement. These functions are understood as active modes of regulating internal tension and preserving cohesion. The analysis follows their changing role from his mother’s funeral and his everyday life to his relationships with Marie and Raymond, the act of murder, the trial, and the anticipation of his execution. Under the stable conditions of everyday life, practical sequences, literal thought, and sensorimotor rhythms bind internal excitation while limiting its connection with emotion, desire, the consequences of action, and the presence of the other. On the beach, heat, blinding light, bodily distress, and the disruption of Meursault’s familiar regulatory functions reduce the processing interval between excitation and action. This somatopsychic transformation illuminates the conditions within which the murder occurs without turning it into a mechanical outcome. Meursault returns while armed, knows that he can leave, fires the first shot, and then fires four more times. Psychoanalytic understanding therefore remains inseparable from his personal responsibility.