Dr Jekyll And Hyde Analysis

The book; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has since its release in 1886, been the building blocks of many horror and crime stories. There can be drawn many parallels between the book and modern crime stories, and that is the purpose of this essay. There will be a focus on the duali-ty, seen in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and there will be drawn lines between Sigmund Freud’s theories on the human psyche and the literature
Freud’s most known theories involve what he describes as, the id, the ego and the super-ego . His theory is that a person’s psyche is split up between these three parts, in most people there is a healthy balance between the three parts, but in people such as murderers there is imbal-ance between the parts, with might cause them to not reflect morally on their actions, thus maybe making them feel okay with murdering someone. Serial killers are described to have a more dominant than normal id, and a much smaller to non-existent super-ego, therefore mak-ing them feel that killing is just a tool for getting to their goal, and since their super-ego isn’t telling them no, they see no problem with using murder as a tool, they might even see it as a necessity.

Jekyll, is between his normal self, where he is completely sane, with a good balance between his id, ego and super-ego, he is what could be described as the average person, there is nothing special about him, he is average. Whereas Mr. Hyde is very much the opposite, he is wild, impulsive and completely mental. His id, ego and super-ego is completely out of balance, Freud would probably say that Mr. Hyde’s id is way more domi-nant than it should be. The id is described to be “the primitive and instinctive component of personality”. A person with a much more dominant id, wouldn’t care for others, they would just focus on their own needs and goals, and not care for anything or anyone standing in their way, this is also what characterize murderers and serial