I am doing so now for the last time, the very last time. We have gone over this matter a million times now if we've gone over it once and I'm getting quite sick and tired of repeating it. It's me who'll be locked up by Major Samsonite if the need arises, not you. You seem to be forgetting something, namely that it is my name and address which is printed at the bottom of page sixteen of the Gazette and not that of any fucking, excuse my language, any fucking Commissioner. When Chris requests an article from Ikem before publication the clear struggle between the representative ego and id is evidenced. Chris, the ego, must serve as the mediator, censoring the articles printed in the Gazette and editing Ikem's editorials of their more radical elements. Likewise Ikem and Sam oppose each other the editor often attacking Sam's political policies and decrees. In Freud's model the the id and the superego oppose each other. 36) His numerous sexual relations mimic the id's drive for sexual satisfaction and characteristic "I want, I want."Īs the head of state, Sam represents the superego, dictating societal standards. He has become a self-proclaimed "passionate crusader." (p. Ikem, freely expressing his views through his daily editorials, relentlessly criticizes the government with a disregard to personal consequences and therefore represents the id. The ego allowed the personality to cope with the inner and outer demands of its existence." To personify the three voices their conversation would follow with the biological id constantly screaming "I want it now, I want it now" and the ego replying, "You can't have it, but try this instead" and the superego overseeing the decisions of the ego and judging either "You have done well" or "No, you have erred and done wrong!" Achebe explores these three entities by developing characters that embody each. The ego stood as the mediator between the impulses of the id and the asceticism of the superego.
The superego constituted the external moral imperatives and expectations imposed on the personality by it's society and culture.
The first of these "consisted of amoral, irrational, driving instincts for sexual gratification, aggression, and general physical and sensual pleasure. Sigmund Freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three dependent parts, the id, the ego and the superego.