Killings

According to Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the id is the “disorganized” part of the human psyche that demarcates basic instinctual drives: drives for bodily needs and desires, and particularly the sexual drive, or libido. The id contains the primal and base desires and instincts that the ego must suppress, control, and organize in order for a person to portray themselves as a sane, legible and consolidated person who acts in accordance with social norms and taboos. The ego, in essence, acts to control the id, as the id—its mess of chaotic and extreme desires, and its mandate to impulsively fulfill each of those desires—is practicably incompatible with the social mandate to be afunctioning person within the realities of Western society. The control that the ego must exert necessitates the repression of the id’s desires and the construction of a comportment that is compatible with human laws regarding civility and criminality.

Matt Fowler, the story’s protagonist, is a perfect illustration of the unceasing psychological competition and tension between the id and the ego. In a fundamental sense, Matt’s entire identity is predicated upon the repression of the intense emotions and desires of his id: the desire for passionate sex, the desire to protect his children, the desire to exact revenge upon

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