Sigmund Freud is one of the greatest psychologists and one of the founders of modern psychiatry (Hall 1962). Also his Freudian personality theory has huge impacts on other psychologists, such as Carl Jung, Karen Horney and Alfred Adler and some psychologists’ theories were built on Freudian theory for further analysis (Myers, 2010). His personality theory is focus on the idea of unconscious motivation, and how it influences human’s behaviour. Even though Freud is not the one to realize about the unconscious, but he is definitely the one to well develop this idea. Freud theories help us to understand more about the personality. In addition, “I’d Really Like to Eat a Child” which is written by Sylviane Donnio is an interesting children story. In the story, a little crocodile is getting tired of eating bananas, so he wants to eat a child. At the end of the story, even though he fails, but he doesn’t give up. In this paper, I am going to use the Freudian personality theory to interpret “I’d Really Like to Eat a Child.” Mainly, I will talk about the conscious, the id, the ego, the superego, and the defence mechanisms, and how these terms affect the behaviour of the characters in the story.
First of all, there are five stages in personality development, which are the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency period and the genital stage (Myers, 2010). Each stages focusing on a different erogenous zone to satisfy the pleasure need. Erogenous zone is a region of the body where irritating excitatory processes tend to become focalized and whose tensions can be removed by some action upon the region (Hall, 1962, p. 107). Oral stage is the first stage, and it is associated with the mouth. It usually happens during first year and a half. A person in this stage is characterized by putting things into their mouth or biting. Since the pleasure form the erogenous zone is different the pleasure from the satisfaction of the vital need, so when a baby suck his thumb, it only satisfy his erogenous zone, but it doesn’t fulfill his hunger (Hall, 1962).
Secondly, in Freud’s personality theory, he believes that a person’s mine is like an iceberg, and conscious, preconscious, and unconscious (Myers, 2010). Conscious is the aware of the external stimulation, such as sound, smell and taste. Preconscious is the hidden memories that are under the surface of conscious, but these memories can become conscious though stimulation. Unconscious are the things that people are not able to aware. These three levels of conscious have relationships with the three systems that I will talk about later.
There are three major systems which are the id, the ego and the superego in Freudian personality theory. These three systems work together to determine a person’s behaviour. People are born with the id. And later on, ego and superego will be developed as a person growth. These three systems work together to satisfy people’s needs and desires. If all of them work together as a team harmoniously, a person will be well function and behave