A Comparative Analysis of Mental Health, Nature, and Sustainable Well-being through the Lens of Fredrik Backman

Abstract

This paper provides a comparative literary analysis of four novels by Swedish author Fredrik Backman: A Man Called Ove (2014), My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (2015), Britt-Marie Was Here (2016) and Anxious People (2020) all of which depict mental well-being, human relationships and sustainable well-being. Although Backman is a multimillion-selling, internationally translated author, his fiction has received relatively little sustained academic attention, especially in terms of its psychological aspects. Two complementary theoretical frameworks are used in this study to highlight the unconscious processes and defence mechanisms in characters' experiences of grief, anxiety, and depression, and the strengths-based, future-focused processes they undergo to become more flourishing. Two complementary theoretical lenses are used in this study: Freudian psychoanalytic theory to highlight the unconscious processes and defence mechanisms in characters' experiences of grief, anxiety, and depression; and positive psychology to highlight the strengths-based, future-focused pathways through which characters move toward flourishing. This study employs a qualitative thematic content analysis to explore the similarities and differences in the themes that emerged from the four books: psychological disturbance protected against in various ways, displacement, reaction formation and sublimation of loss; psychological recovery that happens at the level of flow-inducing engagement, strengths of the characters, and making meaning; and the strong consistency of the story arc, one in which the individual flourishes through, and not apart from, the giving up of isolation in favor of collective life. Finally, the implications for literary study and the ways in which popular fiction models the beginnings of psychological suffering and the routes to psychological success are considered.