Amy Ward: Freud

            Catherine’s nature was to be a bouncy, talkative, energetic, bright, cheerful, active girl (Erickson, 2).  Freud would see these things and call them Catherine’s Id.  For Freud, the Id was the representation of natural impulse, the desire for things that “feel good”.  And according to Freud, everyone is born with the Id in action, but soon thereafter develop the Ego.  That which tries to create a compromise between the urges and desires of the Id, and the expectations of the real world (Engler, 50).

            The Ego is influenced by the wishes and desires of people and things in the outside world, most notably by the parents (Engler, 51).  For Catherine, her most strict tutoring came from Herr Wagner who was an army pastor and who seemed to believe it his duty to “…impress on the flighty, cheerful princess the seriousness of life, the wickedness of the world and the dread of hell”.   He often called in Catherine’s governess, Babette, to try and instill some respect into the willful girl via a good beating (Erickson, 7-8).

            Babette was one of the shining memories of Catherine’s youth, as she was good-tempered, yet rational (Erickson, 5).  Babette and Herr Wagner were strong influences o recognize the desires of the world and so mold her own impulses to better ways.  Later when Catherine was in Russia and she had a few friends who would play with her, it was a time for letting the Id have its way without worry of the restraints of society.  They all took special joy in the times spent together (Erickson, 60).

            The Empress would have Catherine’s friends sent away.  Sometimes Catherine would find new friends to play with, but never for very long (Erickson, 65).  Sometimes even Peter would play with her.  She wasn’t looking forward to marrying him, but she felt it was her duty, and she courageously looked upon her upcoming marriage with a tinge of fear (Erickson, 68).  Here is when we see Freud’s Super-Ego make a strong play.  The Super-Ego is this sense of duty, of what is right, of what a person “ought” to do.

            Catherine knew that the Empress and her husband were people that she was supposed to be subject to.  Her father even wrote her a letter telling her how she should behave towards her new husband as her “Lord, Father, and Sovereign”.  And even women at that time were just beginning to come out a very cloistered environment where only the very poor women were even allowed outside their homes (Erickson, 58).

            The restrictions were growing more and more frequent, and longer in duration.  Not only did Catherine have the pressures of society telling her how she should act, the Empress controlling who she could see or visit with, but also now her husband was forcing her to be a soldier in his army of servants whom he drilled for hours on end.  He would even make Catherine stand in his room by the door with a gun on her shoulder for hours on end. (Erickson, 97).

            Once Catherine became Empress, and her husband was dead, she was free from the restrictions so many other people had put upon her.  She still had to worry a little about the expectations of her subjects, but that wasn’t a main concern for her as evidenced by the fact that she still had many “favorites” and had no compunction about changing them whenever they ceased to please her.  Neither was she worried about the concerns the court (Erickson, 374).  Freud would say her Ego had let her Id run loose.

References

Engler, B. (2003). Personality Theories: An Introduction. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Erickson, C. (1994). Great Catherine. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.