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Superego In Hamlet

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Hamlet Through Freud’s Eyes Intro Freud stresses that the beginning of a child’s life is very important due to the creation of the id, ego, and superego. The id is the instinctive part of the personality and serves to satisfy wants, the ego serves to mediate the ids wants into a realistic manner, and the superego takes into consideration the morals and norms of society while trying to control the id. In the play Hamlet, different characters represent these parts of the personality; King Cladius represents the id because of his instinctive desire to get whatever he wants even if it means murdering his own brother. Horatio represents the ego and Hamlet and his mother Queen Gerturde both have moments when they represent the superego. According …show more content…

It occurs during the phallic stage of the psycho-sexual development of the personality.”(“ Oedipus complex”) Many Freudian critics believe that Hamlet suffers from an unresolved Oedipus complex, which is easily justifiable due to the fact that Hamlet lost his father at a young age. According to Freud there is a point in all of our young lives where we desire our parent of opposite sex sexually and despise our same sex parent due to the fact that they have what we cannot have. Freudian critics argue that Hamlets desire to take his father’s place is perpetuated because he sees someone else, his Uncle Claudius, taking his fathers place. Hamlet is battling the same battle that everyone experiences during this phase but also struggles more intensely because he saw not only his dad have what he wants but his Uncle also taking what he desired. Hamlet idolized his father referring to him as Hyperion (the Sun King) and he wished to inherit and demonstrate all of the captivating and heroic traits of his father. Hamlets appreciation for his father and his unappreciative mentality for his Uncle can be seen in the text “Look here, upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brother. See, what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye

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