Paper Details

Name: Rajinder Kaur Saggu
Country: India

Year: 2014
Volume: Volume-1, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 5-8

Heart of Darkness can be studied as a journey which is like travelling into the Freudian “Id” or the Jungian “shadow”. The two psychologists have given their theories about the complexity and working of the human mind. Normal behaviour of human being is guided only by the conscious mind which is just the surface layer of the mind.
There is a lot below the surface of which man is normally not aware. In Heart of Darkness Marlow‟s journey to Congo, the dark “centre of the earth”‟ seems to be a journey from the surface layer of the mind into the deeper layers, the dark recesses of the mind. Marlow himself says at one stage during his journey, “The mind of man is capable of anything- because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.”
According to Freud‟s theory of psychoanalysis, the individual‟s behaviour is assumed to result from the interaction of three key sub-systems within the personality: the Id, ego and super-ego. The id is the source of instinctual drives which are considered to be of two types:a) constructive drives, primarily of a sexual nature, (b) destructive drives which tend towards aggression, destruction, and eventual death. Thus life, or constructive instincts are opposed by death, or destructive instincts. Freud, however, used the term sex in a broad sense to refer to almost everything pleasurable; from eating to creativity. The id is completely selfish, concerned only with the immediate gratification of instinctual needs without reference to reality or moral considerations. Hence it is said to operate in terms of the pleasure principle. (Coleman 55)