Mental Mind In Macbeth

988 Words4 Pages

Sigmund Freud had a theory that there are three main parts of your brain that control your everyday decisions. Your id, ego, and your superego. All of these things in your mind, but some people have larger areas than others. In this case, in the tragic play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, one part of Macbeth’s mind controls his mental state. Macbeth’s id within his mind controls his mental state because his wants and desires turned him into an evil person. Macbeth’s first decision to kill the king filled his want to be king and please his wife and it put him in a bad mental state. Macbeth’s want to live without fear led him to kill yet another person and put him in an even worse mental state. And Macbeth’s id controls his mental state much …show more content…

At the beginning of the play, Macbeth id led him to kill Duncan and starting off his new change of mental state. In 1.3 Macbeth is speaking to himself and saying, “My thought, whose murder yet / is but fantastical, / Shakes so my single state of man / That function is smothered in / surmise, / And nothing is but what is not” (1.3.152-155). This quote helps prove the Macbeth had the idea of murder before Lady Macbeth even brought it up, so his id had say in this decision. Even though Lady Macbeth 's id pushes him to execute the murder, Macbeth had say in it. If Macbeth’s id and mind was completely against the murder, he wouldn 't have thought about it so many different times, he would have just shut it down. Since his id was not totally against the murder, he partly wanted to kill Duncan to be satisfied with the spot of the king, and to satisfy his wife. He was not forced into killing Duncan, Lady Macbeth just got his id running and thinking about what he could have. This was the start of his change in mental state because after the murder he was so incredibly guilty. “I am afraid to think what I have done. / Look on ’t again I dare not” (2.2.66-67). In summary, because of Macbeth’s id, he murdered the king which leads him into a bad mental …show more content…

Finally, some people may think Macbeth’s ego and superego have in impact on his mental state, but it is all mainly his id because Macbeth barely has an ego or superego. In the CommonLit article, it explains what both the ego and superego is, “Freud said that ‘The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions’” (CommonLit Staff). “For example, the superego would tell a child not to hit another child because that would be morally wrong” (CommonLit Staff). In this theory, someone 's ego is their common sense and superego is morality. These two things don’t control Macbeth 's mental state because, they can’t. His ego and superego don 't have an impact because he has very small amounts of common sense and morality. WE can see that Macbeth has no morality when he kills the king, his best friend, his best friends son, Macduff 's family, and more. We can also see he has no common sense when he brings to not think things through towards the end of the play, causing him to be a tyrant. According to CommonLit, “the id ‘knows no judgments of value: no good and evil, no morality’” (CommonLit Staff). This is exactly what Macbeth has, and he has a large portion of his id. So, Macbeth’s ego and superego don’t have a large impact and effect on Macbeth 's mental state, because he has a very small ego

Open Document