Dent best personifies the superego, with his desire to take the moral high ground above the chaos. Bruce Wayne/Batman is the ego trying to mediate between The Joker’s id and the idealistic views of society, specifically Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent. He appeals to the primal side of humanity with his philosophical approach in society. The id in The Dark Knight is clearly The Joker. She shows her power by literally stopping the id of Crowe from killing a man. Speaking of Holly, she is the superego of the story.

He often mediates between Crowe’s id instincts and the idealistic approach his daughter, Holly. Ryan Gosling plays Holland March, the ego in our story. He embodies all our human base instincts. Jackson Healy, portrayed by Russell Crowe, represents the id in the new Shane Black comedy. In case you’re still a little confused, here are ten films that use characters to represent the the id, the ego, and the superego in their story structure. Rather than just mediating, the superego can actually stop the id from doing certain things it may incline us to do. The superego consists of the conscious and the ideal self. Feud used this example: The id is like a horse and the ego is the rider on top of that horse. The ego is rational and oriented toward problem solving. The ego is the mediator between our sometimes unrealistic id and our over-idealistic superego. Our aggression to fight against death or harm, our libido or instinct towards sex, hunger, and thirst are all aspects of the id. Experts attribute uncoordinated instinctual trends to the id.

The conflict created by these three ideas running into each other gives us more than enough drama to keep a story fresh for two hours of screen time, which is why this design is often seen in screenplays.įor anyone who missed the day they discussed Freud’s ideas in school, the id is the primal component of the personality. Long before Freud’s suggestion of this idea, stories were often told with a key character representing one of these three aspects of the psyche. He suggested that our personalities could be seen as having three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. Sigmund Feud is credited with popularizing the idea that the human psyche is multi-faceted.

Freud id ego superego