This document summarizes a class discussion on Robert Louis Stevenson's novella "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and introduces some of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic concepts. The class analyzes how the novella depicts a divided self and the conflict between one's public persona and private desires. Freud's theory of the psyche as divided into the id, ego, and superego is presented as a way to understand Jekyll and Hyde's dual nature. The discussion suggests the novella can be read as both a critique of Victorian sexual repression and an early anticipation of Freud's ideas about how repression can lead to mental illness or "acting out." The class ends with an activity reviewing key

1. ELIT 46C
Day 11
THE DEVIL INSIDE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US

2. Business / Participation
Thank you.
Midterm, Part 1, in class on Thursday. More
about this later.
What participation looks like today:
◦ 4 total points possible
◦ Two individual points for saying two things in our
full group discussion.
◦ Two points for making a meaningful contribution
to your group during the midterm review
activity.

3. Jekyll and Hyde as a gothic novel
Helene Moglen has argued that the Gothic as a genre is about the relation of Self and Other:
--specifically about fear of and desire for the Other.
--doubling as a key theme in Gothic novel.
What other gothic novels have you/we read?
How do we see this Self/Other dynamic at work in these novels?

4. “Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both
sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside
restraint and plunged in shame, than when I labored, in the eye of the
day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorry and suffering.
[…] With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the more and
the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by who partial
discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is
not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the
state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond
that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip
me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that
man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of
multifarious, incongruous and independent
denizens.” (1709)

5. In Jekyll, the Other is inside.
But also, importantly, is him. The Other is part of the Self—or is the Self.
And not just him—this doubling is part of human nature. True for everyone.
Indeed, maybe it’s not even about doubling. Maybe the Self is full of “multifarious” and
“incongruous” and “independent” other selves!
We’re going to need some help with this…
Paging Dr. Freud!

6. What do you know about Freud?
What comes to mind when I say Freud?

7. Basic Freud
1856-1939
Born to Jewish parents in Austro-Hungarian
Empire
1881: Doctor of medicine from U. of Vienna
1886: sets up practice in Vienna
1900: The Interpretation of Dreams
1923: The Ego and the Id (full model of a divided
consciousness something like J&H)
1930: Civilization and Its Discontents (the costs of
social repression)
1938: flees Austria in the face of Nazism
1939: dies in exile in England
Psychoanalysis
◦ Practice
◦ Theory of the mind.

8. Why should we take
Freud seriously?

9. Early model of the psyche
Consciousness (CS)
_________________________
(repression)
Unconscious (UCS)

10. Later (mature) model of the psyche
pcpt-cs: perception
pre-conscious: processing of perceptual
information that happens before conscious
awareness of it
ID: German word for “It”
◦ all about desire, pleasure, gratification, hedonism.
◦ NO MORALITY. All unconscious.
Super-ego: laws, social morality, right and wrong.
Ego is stuck in between.
◦ Negotiating three masters:
--morality
--desire/pleasure
--reality (through perceptions)
◦ Most of consciousness is happening between those
dotted lines.

11. The Ego is caught in the middle
Ego mediates between three sets of demands.
◦ ID: “I want to do that!”
◦ Superego: “That’s wrong!”
◦ Reality: “If you do that, you won’t get away with it.”
Ego:
“Do I want to do it? Can I do it? Should I do it?”

12. “The proverb tells us that one cannot serve two masters at once.
The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three
harsh masters, and has to do its best to reconcile the claims and
demands of all three. These demands are always divergent and
often seem quite incompatible; no wonder that the ego so
frequently gives way under its task. The three tyrants are the
external world, the super-ego and the id. When one watches the
efforts of the ego to satisfy them all, or rather, to obey them all
simultaneously, one cannot regret having personified the ego,
and established it as a separate being. It feels itself hemmed in
on three sides and threatened by three kinds of danger, towards
which it reacts by developing anxiety when it is too hard
pressed.”
Freud, New Introductory Lecture on Psycho-Analysis (1933).

13. A more
metaphorical
diagram

14. Freud’s divided mind and Jekyll
How would you identify Hyde here?
What is the conflict within himself that Jekyll is
trying to resolve?
“the worst of my faults was a certain impatient
gaiety of disposition, such as has made the
happiness of many, but such as I found it hard
to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry
my head high, and wear a more than
commonly grave countenance before the
public.” (1709).
What psychic position is Jekyll inhabiting here?

15. Where does repression come from?

16. Repression
Comes from the superego, from the “Father,”
from society, from authority.
Repression is not easy. It’s effortful—it takes
work.
One problem is that the things that get repressed
don’t always stay that way.
“The return of the repressed.”
Repression produces neurosis: a type of acting
out.
Behavioral or psychosomatic symptoms:
◦ anxiety, depression, insomnia, emotional
disturbances, odd physical symptoms.
This is a cost of repression: mental (and or
physical!) illness.
Freud was obsessed with this cost.
◦ physician for repressed Viennese people, especially
women.
◦ Early essay, “Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern
Nervousness”: we pay too high a price for the
superego.
◦ Too much civilization  neurosis.
We would be more healthy
if we could be less good.

17. Repression and its consequences
Mr Utterson and repression.
◦ The “utter son” who accepts and embraces
repression.
“He was austere with himself; drank gin when he
was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and
though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed
the doors of one for twenty years” (1677).
“Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in
sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without
relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when this
meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of
some dry divinity on his reading desk, until the
clock of the neighboring church rang out the hour
of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully
to bed” (1681).
What happens when Jekyll renews and increases
his repression?
“My devil had been long caged, he came out
roaring. […] Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me
and raged. With a transport of glee, I mauled the
unresisting body” (1715).
And it is no accident who Hyde’s primary victims
are:
◦ Childhood innocence (the little girl)
◦ Benign patriarchal authority (Sir Danvers Carew)
The Id is taking aim at the Superego’s overarching
Victorian values!

18. Jekyll and Hyde and mental illness
I do want us to be able to read Jekyll & Hyde as a text about mental illness—however, it’s not
exactly the mental illness that you wanted to read into it.
◦ It’s a type of social or cultural illness.
◦ Or, more specifically, the way that social structures produce mental and physical illness.
◦ And how that plays out in one particular case.
In this way, I want to suggest that we can read Jekyll as both
◦ a scathing indictment of Victorian sexual morality, and
◦ an anticipation—40 years early—of Freud’s theories of repression and the split psyche.

19. Midterm Review Activity
Review in groups:
◦ themes of the course.
◦ make a list of at least 5 key themes.
◦ talk about how you see those themes playing
out in specific works.
Be prepared to share some stuff with the class.