Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time Analysis

Sigmund Freud came up with a theory describing the mind in three parts: the id, the superego, and the ego. The id seeks pleasure, and will stop at nothing to get what it wants. The superego is concerned with morals, and wants to do what is right. The ego works as a balancing act between the two, creating and maintaing a happy medium. Sometimes, when the brain is too overwhelmed for the ego to successfuly do its job, people resort to using defense mechanisms. A defense mechanisms is an unconscious mental process that decreases anxiety or guilt. People don’t want to feel bad - so they tend to displace, repress, or deny their feelings. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher uses defense mechanisms that differ from ones

Christopher is aware of the fact that he is considered different, but he does not believe that he should be labeled as “Special Needs”. He explains this toward the beginning of the novel, saying, “everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult and also everyone has special needs, like Father, who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Mrs. Peters, who wears a beige-colored hearing aid, or Siobhan, who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs” (Haddon 43-44). Each person he

He gives almost no expression of emotion, whether it is happiness, guilt, sadness, or love. He understands that other people can express these emotions easier than he can, but sometimes the reason he does not express them is because he does not completely understand them when he is feeling them. In a meeting with Siobhan, she tells him “Sometimes we get sad about things and we don't like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don't know why we are sad, so we say we aren't sad but we really are” (Haddon 75). By saying “we really don’t know why we are sad”, Siobham is implying that Christopher is sad but does not understand why and is repressing the emotion rather than letting it out. He is incapable of showing the emotion, but there is no way to prove whether or not he actually feels it at all. According to the research of Helen Tager-Flusberg, “There is little doubt that children with autism have difficulty attributing mental states to themselves or to other people” (Tager-Flusberg). Siobhan makes this clear by trying to diagnose Christopher with an emotion he seems incapable of describing himself. Although it is probable that Christopher is feeling what the average person would describe as “sad”, his inability to express his own mental state makes it hard for Siobhan to know how to take care of