The Guilt of Dr. Frankenstein

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origins through psychoanalysis. But, because I am honestly befuddled by Freud’s theories, I attempt to apply his theories on guilt to a book I know and love that just so happens to also be corroded by the guilty conscious of its main character Victor Frankenstein. By applying Freudian theories to the thoughts of Victor in Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, the struggle between the ID and the super-ego progressively becomes more prominent and is therefore helpful in conceptualizing them.

The Pleasure Principle

In 1920, Freud discusses a structural model of the mind in the essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” Within this essay he establishes the Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus and are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the ego is the organized, realistic ...

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such drive is the reality principle, which according to Freud, is a result from the ego’s impulse towards self-preservation and, in effect, forces pleasure to be postponed or attained in a roundabout way (Freud, “Pleasure Principle” pg. 34).
Within the beginnings of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” one can already establish a parallel between it and the mid of Victor. The tension felt by Victor towards his creation after infusing the spark of life into the demonical corpse he had so miserably given life and “unable to endure the aspect of being [he] had created, [he] rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep” ...

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