Abstract:This essay focuses on the repeated idea, what Romantic-era philosophers called a “ruling passion” and we might call ruminative obsession, in Mary Shelley’s seminal text. While scholars have contributed valuable psychoanalytic readings of Victor Frankenstein’s various obsessions, these readings do not square with the ways the Romantics conceived of the mind-brain. Therefore, this paper examines Shelley’s descriptions of Victor and, to a lesser degree, Walton, alongside Romantic-era religious and medical texts. In doing so, I argue that Frankenstein reflects upon and attempts to understand the emerging psychological concept of obsession by examining the implications of David Hartley’s theory of associationism, whether in the context of religious or scholarly “enthusiasm.”

中文翻译：

---

玛丽雪莱的科学怪人中的可怕想法

摘要：本文关注的是玛丽雪莱开创性文本中重复的思想，浪漫时代的哲学家称之为“统治激情”，我们可以称之为沉思痴迷。虽然学者们对维克多弗兰肯斯坦的各种痴迷提供了有价值的精神分析读物，但这些读物与浪漫主义者对心脑的构想并不相符。因此，本文考察了雪莱对维克多的描述，并在较小程度上考察了沃尔顿，以及浪漫时代的宗教和医学文本。在这样做的过程中，我认为弗兰肯斯坦通过检查大卫哈特利的联想主义理论的含义，无论是在宗教还是学术“热情”的背景下，反思并试图理解新出现的痴迷心理概念。