Reading into Freud

"The ego is not master in its own house."-Sigmund Freud

Freud´s Theory of the Unconscious suggests that we all have repressed and unresolved childhood conflicts below the surface of our conscious mind. These conflicts, he suggests, stem from a battle between the id (instinctual desires) and the superego (“conscience,” namely, socially-acquired control mechanisms which have been internalized, and which are usually imparted in the first instance by the parents"), forming the ego. The ego is accessible in the preconscious while the superego and the id are not. However, these three parts of the mind make up the self and can explain how our minds work and therefore how and why we behave the way we do. How then, does art come into play? Freud addresses the writer as somewhat of a speaker for us all. Literature, he says, is a form of catharsis for the writer in that it represents childhood play and memories. For the reader, literature is device in which "we can enjoy our own day-dreams without reproach or shame". Consistent with Freud´s outlook on gender differences, a female can enjoy erotic literature and a male can enjoy aggressive literature, behaviors which are stereotyped and disapproved by society, without feeling guilty and without affecting the outside world. Are we conscious of this catharsis? Does reading bring us into a different world? A world which our id desires to live in but is denied by the superego. In this manner, Freudian psychology helps explain why we create art (in the form of literature), but does it account for a definition of what art actually IS? Is that too something beyond our grasp and hidden in the unconscious?