What does this Freud cartoon mean?

Pic

I don’t understand what the mess of dotted lines is supposed to represent.

I would take it to indicate that there are complex interrelationships between the three Freudian personality aspects, id, ego, and superego.

And there is not a direct/clear connection between the personality aspects and behavior. For example, you can’t draw a straight line from id to bad (devil horns).

A proper Freudian can only say, “What does it mean to you?”

Agree, of course, dealing with Freud’s notional tripartite division.

I would not use the term “personality aspects” however to describe them. Nor would “devilish” and “angelic” be limited to behavior.

The Id as “bad” and superego as “good” is in fact a common mis-generalization, which dynamic analysis, the title of the image, is an attempt to neutralize.

Illustration: Eating because you’re hungry would be a manifestation of the Id. Killing a bunch of innocent civilians because your commanding officer ordered you to would be a manifestation of the Superego.

There’s a question mark in there. Hope that helps!

IANAShrink, but I’m afraid that none of what you’ve written here is true, or particularly helpful, unless you’re making a joke about the extreme silliness of such suggestions.

Maybe you and I can do some joint sessions.

Why do you say that? Hunger is a very common example of an impulse driven by the id. The feeling of pride and accomplishment from obeying an authority figure is a common example of behavior driven by the superego. What part do you disagree with?

I think it’s a satire on Freud’s theory, showing the id, ego, and superego linked by ridiculously convoluted (but actually arbitrary and meaningless) pathways that can mean whatever you want. Or, rather, can mean whatever your therapist thinks.

Compare with these cartoons depicting the infamous butterfly ballot:
http://www.infoimagination.org/ps/election_2000/images_2000/ballot_official.gif
http://home.pacifier.com/~ppenn/butterflybush.gif

Also, the dotted line coming from EGO hooks right back to EGO (egocentric). And there’s one dotted line that goes in a circle, not connecting to anything. So he’s adding little meta-jokes about dotted line placement in illustrations.

Well, of course none of it is true, but that’s because Freudian psychology isn’t true. He did in fact describe how those parts of the mind were supposed to work.

Um… You’ve gone a bit beyond factual answers and into the realm of opinion.

It just means a cigar, nothing more! :smiley:

“I love my cigar, too, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.”

Why not? That’s how they are frequently described.

The id takes the shortest past to the Devil one.
The Ego goes in a question mark.
The SuperEgo actually forms the rest of that, if you look at the end parts (arrow heads) the only two lines really out there outside of the question mark are from the id and the SuperEgo, and the majority of the complicatedness is from the Superego.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon…