Freudian Views Relating to God
Freudian Views Relating to God
In Freud’s theory described above conscious, preconscious, id, ego and defense mechanism all play a predominated role in the life of Rachel Cameron in, The Jest of God.
Freud had concluded that a person is always aware of their conscious state. In regard to the Jest of God, the main character Rachel is always aware of her thoughts and feelings. Even though she does not express the thoughts and feelings outwardly in the verbal or non-verbal manner.
Freud believed that memories could come through from the preconscious to the conscious state by reliving and thinking about past memories. The preconscious state is refereed to in the book when she is trying to resurface her thoughts about her father when she leaves and talks to the funeral director Hector. Rachel released her memories from her preconscious at that time. “While Hector is talking, my eyes are searching the room, and yet this is senseless. Nothing is as it use to be, and there is nothing left from than, nothing of him not a clue” (A Jest of God, pg. 129).
Freud referred to the “ID” as the pleasure principle. An example of Rachel living out her id is when she is having sex with Nick and not using any protection regardless of the consequences that may occur. This occurs because Rachel can’t find a balance between her ID and her superego. As mentioned above the superego is refered to as “what society wants” and the ID is refered to the “pleasure principle” in the book she repeated had a sexual encounter with Nick even with the high risk of becoming pregnant.
In the book Rachel’s main conflict is creating a balance between her ID and her superego. Rachel’s need to have pleasure in her life, as well as, continuing to up hold the highest of moral standards that her mother deems absolutely necessary.
There are several defense mechanisms she uses to survive, the first one being rationalization. In rationalization the theory states that a person takes a “bad action” and justifies that action taken. An example of this is when Rachel hits James in the nose with the ruler for not letting her see his math work. Once his nose starts to bleed and she realizes what she has done, she than justifies her action because she feels that to do otherwise would be detrimental to her authority as the...