Sigmund Freud’s Psychic Apparatus Theory: A Study of the Protagonist in Saul Bellow’s Novel ‘Herzog’

“Psychology is the scientific study of the behaviour of humans..... The term ‘behaviour’ refers to both covert observable actions and covert observable mental processes and states such as perception, thought, reasoning, problem-solving, emotions and feelings (Encyclopaedia Britannica, P. 470) If the field of psychology is to study the mental processes and activities, art and literature give verbal expression to those mental and psychic processes. Sigmund Freud’s Psychic theories have encouraged the literary artists to probe deeper into human psyche and thereby presenting the ideas, ideals, thoughts and feelings which are of human interest and universal significance. The present article aims to highlight how the Sigmund Freud’s Psychic apparatus (Id, Ego and Super-ego) exercise a controlling and dominating influence on the personality, behaviour and character of the Protagonist Moses E. Herzog, depicted and portrayed by Saul Bellow, in his best known novel ‘Herzog.’

He is the first to receive National Book Award for Fiction three times. His Works abound in man's encounter with maddening, materialistic, mundane, money minded and misleading modern Civilization. His Novel  is one of the most famous survivor novels, composed in large part of letters from the protagonist Moses E Herzog. About the novel, Saul Bellow himself said "Herzog is a realistic word and psychological novel." 1 It deals with midlife crisis and mental strife and struggle of Moses E. Herzog who is a professor of Political Philosophy and ever in Quest of the self identity in the harsh and hostile environment, the stifling atmosphere, the suffocating milieu of the modern age of anxiety and angst. He is particularly in the words of Gordon L. Harper, "the prisoner of a shameless and important privacy in whom reason and desire, romantic self knowledge and understanding of contingency are always at war." 2 The character portrayal of the protagonist Moses is suggestive enough to exemplify the identity crisis in modern man's life which is inflicted with the ailment of psychic and mental disturbance and instability due to the imbalance in Id, Ego and Super-ego, three constituent elements of human psyche and personality. The novelist has also substantiated, through the character sketch of Moses, the fact that a man who makes a reliable and convincing balance between Id, Ego and Super-ego lives a happy and peaceful life. The more a man's Ego develops, the more perfect he becomes. In the role of father, a man is supposed to be tender and caring towards his children, But Herzog doesn't fulfil this duty. He never pays sincere attention to Marco and Junie, his son and daughter respectively. In his academic and professional life also, he proves a failure.
From the position of a reputed assistant professor, he turns a confused intellectual. He spends his parental property without paying his attention to safe and secure future. Thus, his passions, impulses and desires aren't lawfully controlled. They move like an uncontrolled and free horse into every direction of temporary pleasure.
The protagonist Herzog has always been wandering in the two worlds-one of Id ridden past and second of Super-ego influenced future of the lofty ideals to save humanity.
But he overlooks and ignores the conscious real world of Ego in his mind. As the novel progresses, his mind seems to heal. He comes to recognize his own reality. One day, he overhears a court case in which a man and a woman are being accused of the murder of a child. He is overwhelmed by such an urgent urge to go to Chicago to kill Madeleine and Gersbach. But he is Surprised and stunned to see the scene of Gersbach bathing June. The next day, he goes to a museum in company of Junie but his car crashes. The police arrest him for carrying a gun and he has to spend a night in the Jail. These events bring him closer to the reality that he has never been a good husband and caring father while expecting the others to be the idealistic men and women. At the end of the novel, he seems to reconcile the web of ideals with the foundation of practicality, the intellectual world of absolutes and metaphysics with the ground of reality. Throughout the novel, Herzog seems to be wandering in the solitary and lonely thoughts but in the end he rejects both loneliness and solitude. He comes

Conclusion:
Thus, Sigmund Freud's theory of psychic apparatus finds a due expression in the personality of the protagonist Herzog who has always been the Victim of the Id in his past by engaging himself in immoral acts and is an utopian dreamer who always pines for a true, ideal and moralistic community in the future. But at the end of the novel, the hidden Ego comes forward like the spark of light in the darkness and makes him realize that philosophical theories, web of ideals and utopian dreams cannot cure a man of the ailments of loneliness, tension, psychological pressures, neurosis, depression and death instincts. He can find peace, poise and pleasure only by making a delicate balance or equilibrium between self and the world around him.