e-ISSN: 2637-0875 Journal of Language and Communication, 6(1) 339-350, March 2019 ©Universiti Putra Malaysia Press MOTHER-CHILD ATTACHMENT: EXPLORING FREUDIAN DENIAL AND AGGRESSION IN NEIL GAIMAN’S CORALINE Nur Syafiqah Aqilah Ahmad Sabri Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor. E-mail: syafiqahqilah@gmail.com ABSTRACT Neil Gaiman’s Coraline was published in 2002 and, since then, many studies have been conducted on this literary work of children’s literature. In all these studies, research using Sigmund Freud’s concept of defense mechanism and John Bowlby’s theory of attachment are yet to be conducted. I intend to analyse Coraline using these concepts in this study in order to fill in the research gap. In the novel, the eponymous character, Coraline, has been going through a journey to find her missing parents after discovering the existence of another world that resembles her real world. When Coraline encounters the Other Mother in this alternate world and finds that she resembles Coraline’s own missing mother, she feels confused. From here, my study will focus on the scope of Coraline’s relationship with her real mother and Other Mother through Freud’s defense mechanism and Bowlby’s theory of attachment. My study uses a textual analysis approach and aims to analyse Coraline’s family relationship, her feelings of denial as well as her aggressive behavior towards the Other Mother. Findings show that Coraline’s family relationship with her Other Mother is mirroring John Bowlby’s theory of attachment but in contradiction, Coraline still chooses to return back to her real mother as opposing this theory. Besides, Coraline’s denial and aggression depict her disapproval and rejection towards the existence of her Other Mother. Keywords: Attachment, mother, denial, aggression, Coraline, Neil Gaiman INTRODUCTION Neil Gaiman is a contemporary American author who writes fiction across many mediums, but he is particularly popular in the genre of children’s fantasy literature. This may be due to the fact that Gaiman explores “darker-psycho emotional themes in children literature” (Grace, 33). One of Gaiman’s award-winning children’s novel is entitled Coraline; a novel about the journey of an 11-year old girl to the Other World to search for her missing parents. There, she discovers that everything is similar to her own house and she meets her Other Mother, who resembles her real mother. Along her journey, she finds that the love and attention she desired for, and given by her Other Parents (OP), are not the same as the ones given by her real parents. As time passes by, the true nature of her Other Mother is revealed and, at the end of the novel, Coraline makes a plan to escape from the Other World. The objective of this study is firstly to examine Coraline’s relationship with her real parents and Other Parents through John Bowlby’s theory of attachment, to investigate Coraline’s denial and, lastly, to reveal Caroline’s unconscious thought in terms of aggression towards the character of the Other Mother by using Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical approach.