Jolene: The Seduction of Desire in Country Music’s Obsessive Battle for Inner Wholeness
What does Lacan, Freud, and Jolene have to do with each other? Better yet, what do they have to do with the dialectical struggle of country music and the soul’s achieving itself?
Let’s take a moment here, dear reader, and disassemble the skeletal structure of the pop country song “Jolene” as if it were, say, some fossilized relic from the Late Cretaceous period, buried beneath layers of commercialized sentiment and Nashville twang. On the surface, it’s a deceptively simple narrative: a woman pleading with another woman not to steal her man. But let’s be honest here — this isn’t about a “her” versus “her” situation. Or it is, but not in the way you think.
Jolene, like any good country song archetype, appears to be a recognizable figure, a threatening temptress with flaming locks of auburn hair and ivory skin. She is both other and Other, and the narrator’s obsessive fixation on her is immediately obvious. “Please don’t take him just because you can.” It’s pleading, it’s desperation, but we’re missing something if we keep this locked into a facile reading of external competition. What if Jolene isn’t real? What if Jolene is not some auburn-haired threat, but rather the spectral embodiment of something deeper — something internal, so intrinsic to the singer that she becomes inseparable from it?
What if, and here’s the kicker, Jolene is the narrator herself?
This is where the psychoanalytic dive begins, and I can’t resist the Lacanian hook. Jolene becomes not the other woman, but rather the internalized Other — the symbolic manifestation of desire, a desire that the singer cannot fully own or control, and that’s exactly what tears her apart. Lacan, in all his dense, slippery brilliance, talks about the “lack” in human beings. We are driven by what we lack, and it’s precisely this lack that shapes our desires, fantasies, and neurotic spirals. In other words, Jolene is not some fleshed-out being with porcelain skin; she is the embodiment of the narrator’s unresolved, unrecognized, and perhaps unacknowledged desires. Jolene is the unattainable object, the thing that the singer projects her desire onto. But the problem is, and this is key, that object — that Jolene — can never satisfy her. It’s always elusive. The more she fixates on Jolene, the more she distances herself from what she actually wants.
Now, pivot with me here, and let’s dig deeper into Lacan’s notion of the objet petit a — that which forever eludes full capture. Jolene is precisely this: the unattainable figure, the perfect representation of what the narrator thinks she wants but can never fully possess. But here’s the thing: the lack, this endless deferral of desire, is internal. Jolene is not the woman out there, flirting with her man, but rather the part of the narrator that feels incomplete, that forever fears it cannot hold onto love, happiness, or fulfillment. Jolene is the singer’s anxiety personified. “Please don’t take him,” she sings, but what she’s really saying is, please don’t take away my illusion that I can be whole. She fears that without Jolene, she will be unmasked, exposed to the harsh truth of her incompleteness.
Lacan’s theory of desire would argue that the narrator’s attachment to her man, the attachment she is so desperate to protect from Jolene, is really a proxy for her attachment to an ideal of herself that she has built up in her mind. This ideal self — this version of her that can be loved, that can be complete if only she holds onto her man — is fragile, constantly threatened by the emergence of the internal Jolene. Jolene is her doubt, her insecurity, her deep-seated fear that she’s not enough.
Let’s look at the lyrics with this in mind:
“Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene / I’m begging of you please don’t take my man.”
She’s not begging Jolene the woman; she’s begging Jolene the symbol of her lack, her inability to feel worthy on her own. Jolene is the locus of her unresolved desires, her fears that she cannot control or keep what she thinks makes her whole.
And now, here’s the kicker — the narrator’s man? He doesn’t matter. He’s peripheral. A placeholder. Just like Lacan’s infamous “phallus,” it’s not about the thing itself but about what the thing represents. The man isn’t the source of the narrator’s happiness; he’s the symbol she’s constructed to stave off the terrifying void of her own incompleteness. She needs to believe that this man can fulfill her, can make her feel loved and whole. Jolene, the internal specter of doubt, threatens to undo all of that.
In Lacanian terms, the narrator’s relationship with Jolene is a drama of misrecognition. She believes her happiness depends on keeping this man from being stolen, but in reality, her happiness, her wholeness, depends on confronting the fact that Jolene is an internal construction — her own creation. She is already fractured, already incomplete, and that’s what Jolene represents: the terrifying realization that no external force, no other person, can make her whole.
So when she says, “Please don’t take him just because you can,” she’s not talking to Jolene the seductress. She’s talking to herself. Please don’t let me lose the illusion that I can be whole. But Lacan, ever the realist, would remind us that this illusion will inevitably shatter. Jolene isn’t the enemy. She’s the truth.
The narrator’s real battle, then, is not with Jolene but with herself, with her own lack, with her own confrontation of the symbolic order that shapes her desires. And like any good country song, there’s a sadness to this realization. The singer will never be complete. She will always be haunted by Jolene. Because Jolene, dear reader, is her.
A Summary of Freud’s Psychoanalysis:
This section is only about Freudian psychoanalysis. If a reader is familiar, the reader may skip this section.
1. Ego
In Freud’s The Ego and the Id, he writes that, “[t]he functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that, normally, control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it.” This represents that the ego’s manifestation is that it controls the state of existence of the person. This represents that the ego is a key sort of driver coordinating the focus on the mind. Freud continues, “thus, in its relation to the id, [referring back to the ego] is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength, while the ego uses borrowed forces,” whereby the ego again takes a type of control whereby he drives the direction of the mind. Specifically, the ego controls the id and tries to hold it back from getting out of control. This likely makes sense, the ego is our rational selves “telling” ourselves not to partake in chaotic tendencies. Indeed, this is a powerful analogy Freud presents and he takes it further by stating, “[o]ften, a rider, if he is not to be parted from his horse, is obliged to guide [it — the horse] where it wants to go; so, in the same way, the ego is in the habit of transforming the id’s will into action, as if it were its own.” Likewise, the rider controlling the horse can not leave the horse — thus, the rider must do something with the horse and is inevitably never directly separated from it.
So much seems clear, and arguably the ego is the most accessible portion of Freud’s paradigm, because one can more consciously relate to it. Indeed, in our waking conscious lives, the ego is generally considered — in Freudian terms to be a more active agent.
Furthermore, Freud’s classical knowledge shines — either consciously or unconsciously — because the image of the horseman guiding a horse also appears in Plato’s theory of the soul. Plato’s theory of the soul frequently appears to parallel the Freudian tripartite conception of the soul.
Specifically in relation to the ego, the logos (λογιστικόν)[1] in the Platonic sense represents the part of the soul that loves knowledge and the search for knowledge.[2] It emphasizes the moral calculation of consequences, as opposed to blind passion.”[3] This idea can be compared to the section in the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus where “Socrates compares the soul to a charioteer who controls two horses — one white and docile, the other black and intemperate. These three figures echo the division of the soul into reason, emotion, and appetite in Book IV of the Republic.”[4] The charioteer is logos keeping control of the two horses.
Likewise, the logos and ego seem to be related — and it is possible Freud even wanted to make this direct analogy without explicitly referring to Plato’s theory.
2. Id
The id is a slightly more difficult concept to fully understand because in Freudian terms, the id is not directly evident to us. It is more closely associated with the unconscious aspects of our psyche.
Freud writes in his New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933) that the id “is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the dreamwork, and, of course, the construction of neurotic symptoms and most of that is of a negative character, and can be described only as a contrast to the ego.” Essentially, here Freud is stating that the id is generally inaccessible because it is part of our subconscious. Here, it may make more sense to draw the contrast between the conscious and subconscious; the id more closely associates itself with the subconscious while the ego associates itself with the conscious. Indeed, it may be more accurate to state that the ego is the conscious existence guiding our actions while the id represents unconscious motives we may have.
Freud continues his exposition of the id in his New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933) by extrapolating how “[w]e approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. . . . It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.”[5] Indeed, these analogies are helpful because the unconscious dimension of the psyche is difficult to interpret and delineate. Moreover, the id frequently tries to satiate its needs but the cause — or etiology — is difficult to identify. However, the instinctual needs to seek pleasure guide the id through what Freud calls the pleasure principle.
The pleasure principle is a key part in Freudian thought of interpreting the id.[6] However, the reality principle functions as a part of the ego trying to achieve the id’s desires, but in realistic ways.[7] Freud states, that in relation to the id, “an ego thus educated has become ‘reasonable’; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also, at bottom, seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished.”[8] In other words, the ego — as educated through social interactions — becomes “reasonable” and can not be governed by the pleasure principle. Thus, the psyche keeps in check the constant demand of the pleasure principle. However, instead of seeking pleasure instantaneously, Freud posits the reality principle itself also seeks pleasure but only in realistic and guided terms.
Further separating the id from the ego, Freud posits that the id “contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other. . . . There is nothing in the id that could be compared with negation . . . nothing in the id which corresponds to the idea of time.”[9] Therefore, the id is difficult to identify, but even if certain impulses are identified, there is likely a contradictory impulse leading to a different result. Moreover, enigmatically, Freud suggests that the id does not correspond to time. This lack of correspondence with time could either mean impulses that were better suited for another time or that the id lacks a conception of tracking regular motions. Arguably the former is a more likely answer whereby impulses can arise without causes or incentives, because it lacks a system of control — which is what the ego does.
Compared to the Platonic paradigm, the is eros. Eros in the Platonic sense represents what Socrates says is “that with which it loves, hungers, thirsts, and feels the flutter and titillation of other desires, the irrational and appetitive — companion of various repletions [sic] and pleasures.”[10] This, too, seems akin to Freud’s conception of the id. Thus, it gives further credence to the theory that the Platonic conception of the soul and Freud’s structure of the psyche run in tandem. Discussion of the parallel nature of the Platonic and Freudian system has occurred previously[11]
3. Super Ego
Finally, the third part of the Freudian paradigm is the super-ego. Freud describes the super-ego at times as almost a societal force reinforcing historical tradition. Freud specifically writes of the moral force of the super ego, “[t]hus a child’s super-ego is in fact constructed on the model not of its parents but of its parents’ super-ego; the contents which fill it are the same and it becomes the vehicle of tradition and of all the time-resisting judgments of value which have propagated themselves in this manner from generation to generation.”[12] Here, Freud suggest that children do not gain this type of moral guidance from their parents, but rather from their parents’ super ego. This moral guidance comes from societal traditions that will continue from generation to generation. In a sense, Freud posits a type of conservativism in this sense whereby the super ego constrains activity as a sort of social norm. In this sense, investigating the nature of the super ego is almost an anthropological discourse into the social values of the society and individual in which one resides.
In the Platonic conception of the soul, the Freudian super ego compares most closely with thumos, which represents the “spirit”[13] of unifying with the logos but resisting the erotic part of the soul.[14]
Again, if Freud’s conception of the super-ego is something that is passed down from a person’s parents. Thus, it represents a societal force brought down to an individual level into the psyche.
4. The Freudian Psyche Overall
Essentially, the Freudian psyche overall consists of three parts: the ego, id, and super ego. Each parts represents a key part of the human mind’s psyche for Freud and each part works in conjunction with the other parts and is essential for their healthy functioning. In a sense, a balance must exist between all of three parts.
Likewise, in parallel, the Platonic soul (ψυχή) consists of three parts; the λογιστικόν (logical), the θυμοειδές (thymotic/spirit) and the ἐπιθυμητικόν (appetitive/erotic). Each part represents an integral part to how a human functions. But there must exist a balance between the parts for justice to exist.
Regarding the overall psyche functioning together, Freud wrote, “The ego is not sharply separated from the id; its lower portion merges into it….” Here Freud means that the ego and id are deeply connected. The id seeks for the pleasure principle of constant immediate pleasure to please it right, then, and there. However, the ego relies on the reality principle that also seeks to fulfil desires, but in a more coordinated way based in realistic outcomes. Freud continues on the repressed — meaning the super ego — by outlining, “the repressed merges into the id as well, and is merely a part of it. The repressed is only cut off sharply from the ego by the resistances of repression; it can communicate with the ego through the id.” Here, there is a deep connection between the id and super ego. The repressed attempts to suppress the ego, but the ego pushes off the repression of the super ego so that it can communicate with the id but only through he mediating force of the ego.
Such a mediation between the super ego and id could be read as Freud suggesting that the ego wants to meet the desires of the id, but only to the extent that it is allowed to through the societal pressures pushing down on it. That is to say, the ego wishes to meet its desires based on the reality principle by maintaining part of the pleasure principle’s id. This id is constantly trying to be suppressed by the super ego, but in — perhaps an ironic or unexpected way, the ego saves the desires of the id.
Arguably, the best and clearest artistic representation of Freud’s paradigm comes from the philosopher and psychoanalytic social critic Slavoj Žižek’s interpretation from his documentary titled The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema(2009) of the three layers of the house in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie from golden age classic Hollywood cinema, Psycho(1960).[15] Žižek observes that main house in Psycho has three levels. Žižek contends that each level represents a part of the human psyche postulated by Freudian psychoanalysis. In Žižek’s conception, the top floor represents the superego where Norman Bates’ mother resides entirely in the movie; the ground floor represents the Freudian ego where all the normal seeming activity of the movie occurs; and the basement/fruit cellar represents the id; where the mother’s corpse is finally discovered in the film. Žižek describes the id as the reservoir of emotions and chaos. Moreover, in the movie, Bates moves his mother’s corpse from the top floor to the cellar. Žižek suggests this represents a deep connection in Freudian psychoanalysis between the id and superego. Žižek suggests this connection exists because usually the super ego represents a pressing and controlling force on the psyche but often with terms of “obscenity”. Žižek supports this proposition by observing the somewhat “obscene” language the mother uses to command Bates to otherwise.
Thus, arguably, the three levels of the Bates house in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) as described by Slavoj Žižek in his documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2009) arguably represents the most accurate depiction of the Freudian paradigm of the psyche in the human mind.
[1] Etymologically speaking, The Liddell & Scott’s A Greek-English Lexicon defines the word as,” λογιστικός from λογιστής 1 I.skilled or practised in calculating, Xen., Plat.: — ἡ λογιστική (sc. τέχνη), arithmetic, Plat. II.endued with reason, rational, Arist.: — τὸ λ. the reasoning faculty, Plat. 2.using one’s reason, reasonable, Xen.” Available at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Dlogistiko%2Fs
[2] Republic, 435 e
[3] This can be compare to “Crito 46 B (one of the passages which the Christian apologists used to prove that Socrates knew the λόγος), Theaetetus186 C ἀναλογίσματα πρός τε οὐσίαν καὶ ὠφέλειαν, and Laws 644 D. Aristotle Eth. 1139 a 12 somewhat differently.””
Available at
[4] Kenji Yoshino, The City and the Poet, 114 Yale L.J. 1835, 1841–68 (2005).
[5] Sigmund Freud (1933), New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. pp. 105–6.
[6]
[7] Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis p. 402–3
[8] Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis p. 402–3
[9] Sigmund Freud (1933), New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. pp. 106.
[10] Republic, 439 d
[11] Cf. Plato Robert C. Bordone, Tobias C. Berkman, Sara E. del Nido, The Negotiation Within: The Impact of Internal Conflict over Identity and Role on Across-the-Table Negotiations, 2014 J. Disp. Resol. 175, 180 (2014).
[12] Sigmund Freud (1933), New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. pp. 95–96.
[13] This spirit has been described in a
distinctively Platonic sense of θυμόςas the power of noble wrath, which, unless perverted by a bad education, is naturally the ally of the reason, though as mere angry passion it might seem to belong to the irrational part of the soul, and so, as Glaucon suggets, be akin to appetite, with which it is associated in the mortal soul of the Timaeus 69 D. In Laws 731 B-C Plato tells us again that the soul cannot combat injustice without the capacity for righteous indignation. The Stoics affected to deprecate anger always, and the difference remained a theme of controversy between them and the Platonists. Cf. Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, ii. pp. 321 ff., Seneca, De ira, i. 9, and passim. Moralists are still divided on the point. Cf. Bagehot, Lord Brougham: “Another faculty of Brougham . . . is the faculty of easy anger. The supine placidity of civilization is not favorable to animosity [Bacon’s word for θυμός].” Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, pp. 60 ff. and p. 62, seems to contradict Plato: “The supposed conflict between reason and passion is, as I hold, meaningless if it is taken to imply that the reason is a faculty separate from the emotions,” etc. But this is only his metaphysics. On the practical ethical issue he is with Plato.
[14]
Available at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0094%3Abook%3D4%3Asection%3D439e
[15] The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (Amoeba Film et al. 2009).
The Internal Jolene and the Freudian Psyche:
So, where does Freud enter into this Lacanian labyrinth? Freud, always the originator of psychoanalysis, helps us get to the root of this tangled emotional web. If Lacan reveals the structure of desire, Freud sets the stage with his foundational concepts of the id, ego, and superego. Here, the narrator’s plea to Jolene can also be seen as a battle between these Freudian parts of the psyche. Jolene represents not only the Lacanian objet petit a, but also the id — wild, chaotic desire seeking instant gratification. She is that unbridled want lurking beneath the surface, threatening to burst forth and derail the ego’s tenuous hold on stability.
The singer’s ego, trying desperately to maintain order, is begging Jolene, her id, to stay in check. “Please don’t take him,” she says, but what she’s really saying is please don’t let my own desires destroy me. It’s a kind of psychic negotiation, a Freudian tension between the ego’s reality principle and the id’s pleasure principle. The man, like in Lacanian terms, is just a vessel — a symbol of the narrator’s attempt to bridge the gap between her desires and reality.
The tragedy is that, in the end, both Freud and Lacan would tell us that this kind of psychic wholeness is an illusion. The ego may try to reign in the id, just as the narrator pleads with Jolene, but these desires can’t be fully tamed. They exist in a perpetual state of tension, and the pursuit of this kind of fulfillment — a man who will make her feel complete — is bound to leave her disappointed. Jolene will always be there, lurking, a reminder that desire is never satisfied, that the self is never truly whole.
In the end, Jolene isn’t just an internal antagonist. She is the uncomfortable truth of the human condition — the part of us that must always confront our own lack, the inevitable gap between what we want and what we can have. And that’s the brilliance of this song. It’s not just a simple plea to keep a lover; it’s a deep, existential cry to hold onto the fragile illusion of completeness. But, as both Freud and Lacan remind us, that illusion is always on the verge of shattering. Jolene will always be there, not just outside, but within.
