Attachment, Social Disorganization, and Trauma Beneath the Iceberg—An Analysis of Grenouille of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

It has been proven that secure parental attachment can help children regulate their emotional arousal effectively. Those who do not have a safe and healthy relationship with their caregivers to receive protection may suffer from attachment trauma in childhood, which may lead to negative effects on their personalities and interpersonal relationships. Moreover, while growing up in the context of social disorganization, with no peer or community support, children may lose their attachment to the community and hence display some deviant behaviors. To understand how the interconnections among attachment, trauma, and social disorganization may bring some negative impacts on children’s development and devastate their interpersonal relationship with the outside world, this study aims to use Süskind’s novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer as a case study and examine how the protagonist Grenouille, an unwanted and unloved orphan, gets involved in the murder of twenty-six young girls with an unsurpassed wondrous scent. The study uses Satir’s iceberg theory as the overarching framework, underpinning the theories of attachment, social disorganization, and childhood trauma, to guide the analysis of both the observable behaviors and concealed emotions, desires, and inner selves of Grenouille. This involves examining multiple layers of the model, such as coping mechanisms, feelings, feelings about feelings, perception, expectations, yearnings, and self-understanding.