Sigmud Freud’s theory of the separation of the mind directly connects to the characters in Robert Louis Stevenson's novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Society represents the superego as the self-critical conscious. Dr. Jekyll's role is the ego, his presence is there to make a plan in order to satisfy the id. Mr. Hyde, being the id, is the primitive and instinctive component of personality and the impulsive part of our psyche. In this case the ego and superego crushed the desire to satisfy the id to a breaking point driving Dr. Jekyll to near madness.The id operates on the pleasure principle which is the idea that every wishful impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of the consequences. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, all of the emotions …show more content…
In many ways, it is not necessarily a question of "good vs. evil", but rather a question of our desires versus the constraints of society. Dr. Jekyll satisfies the id’s need for pleasure and does morally upstanding acts to then satisfy the superego’s need to be perfect in the eyes of the outside world. Dr. Jekyll was a well-rounded man of science, but through experimentation meets death through his own creations. He represents the ego, the character that has to deal with reality choosing between two ways he should act. Although Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are originally interpreted as two different people, in the end they are one. Utterson came to Dr. Jekyll’s house to talk about the will and found that, "The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips and there came a blackness about his eyes"(3). With the infiltration of Hyde, he was able to create a separate identity to take advantage the darkest side of human nature. However Jekyll remained somewhat pure with the influence of Utterson, but being Hyde takes a toll on him. Jekyll became addicted to being Hyde and the freedoms that come with it, he allowed Hyde to take over instead of returning to society’s principles. Jekyll represents the ego attempting to find the "middle ground" between the desires of his id and the moral principles of his superego. However the superego is represented by the high expectations placed on gentlemen in London during the victorian era. Not being good or evil but the values of society represented in your subconscious. This is essential to assimilate into normal society and to satisfy the human need for belonging in a group. Turning into Hyde was Jekyll's escape from society. “I felt younger, lighter, and happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul,” (113). Society