Greg or and the Unconscious Self of Kafka- A psychoanalytical Reading of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

Abstract

The ‘unconscious’ of man was absolutely inaccessible until the emergence psychoanalysis theory propounded by Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud. In his path breaking books vizThe Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life Freud has discussed at length the functioning and significant role of the unconscious and the subconscious upon a human being. The concept of ‘Id’, ‘ego’and ‘superego’ is very crucial in this regard. ‘Id’ is the very identity of a person that is bestial in nature and savage in its behavior. ‘Superego’, the superstructure implies the societal rules of society that are made the savage, the beast a human in its literal sense. ‘Ego’ represents the man, in between the two. The evil desires, bestial nature of the subconscious mind of man is continuously suppressed by the rules and laws of society. But inevitably there will be a ‘return of the repressed’ either in forms of dreams or in reality or through the form of art. Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis could be perused from this perspective.