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Emma Bovary Psychological Analysis

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Emma Bovary’s life consists of many events that lead her from innocence to a path of destruction and despair. To gain a better understanding of Emma’s behavior and decisions that shapes her personality, the paper aims to analyze various aspects of her life through Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective. Specifically how the id, ego, and superego interacts to create her behavioral patterns. A prominent behavioral tendency of Emma’s personality is how often she spends time fantasizing over romance novels and the idea of love. Emma’s id needs are sexual, which is motivated by the sexual instinct (Eros). Although, her preoccupation with romance isn’t strictly sexual, but it can be seen as the manifestation of sexual desires. Most notably, her passion …show more content…

When Emma meets Rodolphe, her sexual instinct rises and she readily commits adultery, because of her desperate need of id discharge after Leon’s leave. Moreover, Rodolphe actively seduces her which enables the ego to use this affair to reduce id tension. The ego is extremely unbalanced, because the superego is unable to impose any moral standards on her actions, allowing the ego to let Emma reduce id needs through adultery. Their affair escalates quickly, and Emma becomes possessive because it is a means of catharsis for her sexual desires. Additionally, because her ego is dependent on Rodolphe to satisfy her intense id needs, Emma is easily jealous and anxious, convinced that she found her ideal love. These factors make her desperate, so she asks Rodolphe to elope, but he refuses and abandons her. Similarly, when she encounters Leon again, her sexual instincts and id impulses overpower any demands from the superego. Evidently, Emma’s effort to resist adultery never succeeds as a result of an unbalanced force between the three components. Furthermore, her behavior in the adulterous relationship is consistent. The ego tries satisfy unrealistic id needs through the affair. Therefore, Emma’s behavior is dramatic and disturbing by setting absurd demands from her lovers. The id is so demanding that she does not realize that her expectations are unrealistic, which drives her lovers away and causes her to go into a vicious cycle to look for a perfect love that does not

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