Overtones Themes

Overtones Themes

Ego versus Id

The theories of Sigmund Freud were very popular when Overtones was first produced. Freud looked at the way various psychological forces shape a person. He eventually concluded there were three major parts that made up an individual's psyche: the ego, the id, and the superego. The ego represents the part of the psyche that experiences the outer world through the senses. It is the "rational" part that primarily governs the actions of the person. The id is the part that contains the instincts for survival and the drive for pleasure. It is often considered the wild, primitive part. The superego is the part that contains the values and moral standards. Although Freud did not publish The Ego and the Id (the book which clearly identified these terms) until 1923, he had already extensively discussed the concept of conflicting societal and primitive forces upon the psyche, and these theories were well-known...
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