"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not."A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is book about Stephen Daedalus a young boy who is trying to define himself as his life goes on. This book is slightly harder to analyze on the Freudian Lens so I'll take it through the "Big 4".
-The Unconscious- The way the book is laid out is in a stream of consciousness very contradictory to the unconscious topic given. Though the book does show some signs of repression, a large factor in the unconscious topic. As the book does not illustrate all his life it only show the parts he wants to remember from his life.
-Psychoanalytical Development- As he starts out he goes through his teething showing the oral stage. And his need to explore his surroundings. His oral stage is abruptly ended when he is sent to school where rules are set down and must be followed. Growing up as a protestant and a budding artist he went through the anal stage and was taught due to schooling to become very anal retentive. As his phallic stage developed he himself started to develop sexual feelings and eventually indulges in a prostitute in his latency stage. And as he reaches the phallic stage he finds peace in himself.
-Id, Ego, Super-ego- As he grows up due to religion he tries to stay in the super-ego heavy side of his mind. But occasionally brings his inner Id out (ex.telling his principal the actions of a teacher hitting him and the celebration he had). Stephen is never truly balanced and his ego is never really shown being at either one with small hints of the other and vice versa.
-Drives- Stephen as a child would like to die due to his devotion to his religion. As he slips away from his overly active Super-ego he also slowly respects life more than he did and tries to make his life worth living for.
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