Through attempting to escape his monster, Victor exemplifies the workings of the ego by understanding that his creation is wrong and dangerous. Victor’s monster personifies the id, this creation is an irrational impulse that has been materialized, his creation embodies pleasure and selfish desire. Through acting on the desire, Victor has demonstrated the power of the pleasure principle, yet by his extreme remorse and disgust, it is evident that the morality principle remains powerful. In Victor’s desire-led creation, he was ignorant to the consequences of his actions but through the actualisation of his amoral desires he has uncovered his guilt. Tension between selfish desire and the greater good produces remorse as ‘the tension between the demands of conscience and the actual performance of the ego is experienced as guilt’. With Victor being drawn to creation as well as seeing the monstrosity of his acts, he is conflicted in what is right. These two forces are mediated by the superego, attempting to bridge the gap between desire and wider good. The id conflicts with the ego, or the morality principle: ‘the form of conscience to exercise the moral censorship’. Freud dictates that desire is led by the pleasure principle or the id. We can implement a Freudian analysis of Victor’s guilt as a manifestation of the conflicting desire and morality. In his ambition, Victor was blinded to the extremity of his personal desire, not realising the consequences. These selfish urges are only desirable when they have not yet been achieved. In the aftermath of his creation, Frankenstein’s desire is replaced by regret and guilt as ‘the beauty of the dream vanished’ there is a sense of futility, an ephemerality to desire. Victor’s desires were selfish, instead of thinking of the implications of reviving the dead, Victor craves academic achievement. Through the act of creation, Victor achieves his personal desire, however, this is not gratifying, and Victor’s pleasure is short-lived. In Frankenstein, the principal character Victor is ambitious in his academic pursuit, dedicating two years to infuse ‘life into an inanimate body’. In reading Shelley’s writing, we can begin to understand the paradox of happiness and misery, situated alongside desire, and the lengths her characters will go to for their pleasure We can see how morality, or reality, can become obstacles to happiness and desire. In both these novels, the psyche is represented as tightrope-walking between misery and happiness, it is conflicted. Later in her career, Shelley also wrote Mathilda in 1820, which was published posthumously. In 1818 Mary Shelley wrote her most famous novel, Frankenstein, a novel following the callous Victor Frankenstein in his quest to create life. And whilst I am not in agreement with Freud’s ideas, I find it fascinating how we can see this theory mirrored in literature. I recently reread Frankenstein and found it shocking how perfectly it falls in line with Freud’s idea of the psyche. Early on in his career, Freud was convinced the pleasure principle held sway over unconscious life.Arts Editor, Molly Openshaw, demonstrated a Freudian reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, implementing the idea of the id and the ego in the tale of the modern Prometheus. Society brings the id’s pursuit of pleasure into alignment with “reality” and realistic ways of attaining pleasure. The id pursues pleasure and is unconcerned with the implications or repercussions. Id – repressed unconscious Superego – internalized conscience Presentation on theme: "Beyond the Pleasure Principle"- Presentation transcript:Ģ The First Topography Conscious Preconscious Unconsciousģ The Second Topography Ego – conscious “self”
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