In between

Chapter 2 focuses on Frodo leaving the Shire – travelling from Bag End to Bree. This phase of his journey concerns his first attempts at psychological separation from the internal mother. Given that he has used intrusive identification with the maternal object to defend against unbearable anxieties, his leaving mother-Shire activates these fears, at the heart of which is terror, symbolised by the Black Riders. They pursue Frodo, and each time he escapes them by withdrawing into an enclosed space, i.e. a claustrum. The nature of the claustra he intrudes into becomes increasingly fearsome, mirroring his mounting anxiety. First, he enters Woodhall, an idealised head-breast. He then emerges into an outside space and encounters Farmer Maggot, the first of Frodo&s;s Oedipal father figures who enable his separation from the internal mother. The second claustrum he enters is the Old Forest, which is rectal in nature and evocative of the onset of schizophrenia. Frodo is rescued from it by the mysterious figure, Tom Bombadil. Bombadil is another father figure, and he and his wife constitute a reparative parental couple who further Frodo&s;s engagement with the Oedipus situation. Frodo then enters another rectal claustrum on the Barrow-downs, but is again rescued by Bombadil, freeing him to arrive at Bree.