The Id, the Ego and the Superego of The Simpsons

The purpose of this essay is to explore three main characters from the popular television series The Simpsons in regards to Sigmund Freud’s theories in psychoanalytical analysis. This exploration is done because of great interest by the author and the lack of psychoanalytical analysis found connected to The Simpsons television show. The main aim is to show that these three characters, Homer Simpson, Marge Simpson and Ned Flanders, represent Freud’s three parts of the psyche, the id, the ego and the superego, respectively. Other Freudian terms and ideas are also discussed. Those include: the reality principle, the pleasure principle, anxiety, repression and aggression. For this analysis English translations of Sigmund Freud’s original texts and other written sources, including psychology textbooks, and a selection of The Simpsons episodes, are used. The character study is split into three chapters, one for each character. The first chapter, which is about Homer Simpson and his controlling id, his oral character, the Oedipus complex and his relationship with his parents, is the longest due to the subchapter on the relationship between him and Marge, the id and the ego. The second chapter is on Marge Simpson, her phobia, anxiety, aggression and repression. In the third and last chapter, Ned Flanders and his superego is studied, mainly through the religious aspect of the character. The outcome of this analysis is that the three characters can be used as a representation on the three parts of the psyche, that is, Homer Simpson has a controlling id, Marge Simpson has a controlling ego and Ned Flanders has a controlling superego. It is hoped that this conclusion might spark interest in others to do their own interpretation on characters found in The Simpsons universe, since the deep and rich characters give endless opportunities for various types of psychoanalytic analysis