Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886 and ever since, it has been regarded as a classic piece of psychological and horrific suspense. This work deals with the phenomenon of schizophrenia, also known as split personality. The main chareacter in this novel, Jekyll, a brilliant, conservative, respectable doctor who is symbolic of the ideals of society, invents a potion that can separate his repressed evil tendencies from the positive aspects of his personality. When he drinks it, his dark side is fully expressed and he metamorphoses into Hyde, a short, ugly, vicious monster who proceeds to do all the things that the saintly doctor would never think of doing (Stevens 843-859). He then represents all those things prohibited and suppressed by society, such as sex, murder, and vice.

Encompassing many of the same themes, "Psycho" is a 1960 film that deals with split personalities, as does Stevenson's novel. The main character in this film, Norman Bates, is a schizophrenic man with severe psychological problems. Ten years before, he killed his mother after catching her in bed with her lover. Because of his intense guilt, he refuses to acknowledge

Guilt is another reason Bates becomes "Hyde". Like an Oedipal complex, it deepens the rift between the two halves of his personality and makes his "Hyde" more apparent. When Bates kills his mother, he cannot accept the guilt of matricide. To avoid this guilt, he preserves his mother's body and convinces himself that she is still alive by dressing up as her, even donning a wig for the part. Bates also converses with his "mother", adopting a matronly voice when speaking as his mother, to recreate her inside his own mind. He also refuses to accept the fact that he has committed a number of murders besides matricide, such as the murder of Crane and Arbogast, a private detective, so he represses the guilt and heaps the blame on his mother. Bates cannot accept the evil part of himself because the social order prohibits it. Therefore, his darker half inherits his unacceptable actions. This parallels Stevenson's novel, in which this darker half is Hyde.

us, and would be socially unacceptable if expressed. In the case of Jekyll, he is even more socially acceptable than the "normal" Bates. Jekyll is a model member of society; he is charitable, kind, and compassionate. His id is almost completely unapparent. Upon drinking his potion, his superego, Jekyll, vanishes and his id is fully expressed as Hyde. Every negative aspect of the doctor becomes visible, and his actions are no longer socially acceptable. He visits places of ill repute, frequents prostitutes, and murders, in complete defiance of society's values. Bates and Jekyll show, through their transformations, the different dimensions of personality as proposed by Freud.

Freudian theory sets forth the idea of the id and superego, which helps explain the existence of Bates' and Jekyll's "Hyde". The "superego is partly conscious; it is the self-evaluative, moralistic component of a personality that is formed through internalization of parental and social rules" (Hockenbury 364), whereas the id is completely opposi

Some topics in this essay:
Hyde Oedipal, Jekyll's Hyde, Jekyll Hyde, Marion Crane, Norman Bates, Stevenson's Hyde, Bates Jekyll, Jekyll's Freudian, Hyde Hyde, According Freudian, sexual desire, oedipal complex, id superego, repressed sexual, repressed sexual desire, split personality, film psycho, freudian theory, id expressed, bates kills, stevenson's novel, mother catching bed, preserves mother's body, expression repressed sexual, strange dr jekyll,