preview

The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde

Decent Essays
Psychological Freud’s belief was that mental health and psychological wellness requires a harmonious relationship between the different parts of the mind and a lack of harmony can lead to neurosis. Plato invented the original tripartite and Freud expanded on it in 1923. The tripartite is divided into the sections: The Superego, the Ego, and the Id. The Superego is basically the conscience of our mind. The Ego is consciousness created by the combination of the Id and Superego. The Id is having thoughts of instincts and drives which are necessary to satisfy. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, we see the main characters representing the Superego, Ego, and Id.
The Superego is representative of our conscience and is opposite of the id. “Superego” comes from Latin and really means “above the ego”. It is the greatest power of our mind. The superego is what most people would call the conscience or where a god would be. The Superego is a basis for how we view the world, social norms, and morals. Also, as the Superego portrays the conscience, it holds our sense of wrong and right. We have to follow the needs of the Superego or else we might feel some guilt or shame.
Freud said that the Ego is the mediator between the Id and Superego and the outside world. For the Ego to do its job, it has to delay the desires of the Id until it is socially acceptable to give the Id the needs. So our conscious-driven Ego is a balance of the Id and Superego, evening out our primal needs
Get Access