Abstract
“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.’
Highlights
Saul Bellow (10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005), a Canadian – American writer, is one of the greatest novelists of post-war American fiction
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
The term psychic apparatus refers to a Central, dominant theoretical Freudian structural model of psyche wherein: We assume that mental life is the function of an apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space and of being made up of several portions (Id, Ego and Super-ego)
Summary
Herzog’s first wife Daisy is an ideal woman whose heart and mind is deeply rooted in the traditional Jewish Values and moral ideas She performs her duty as a good wife, as in the words of Herzog “Stability, symmetry, order, contentment were Daisy’s. Throughout the novel, Herzog seems to be wandering in the solitary and lonely thoughts but in the end he rejects both loneliness and solitude The basic lesson, he preaches, is that: The first requirement of stability in a human being was that the said human being should really desire to exist.
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