McCall 1

Kevin McCall
E419
Travers
Metamorphosis Research Paper

Kafka: An Unofficial Founder of Ego Psychology

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself

changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” (Franz Kafka 3) With this line, Kafka opens his

short novel, The Metamorphosis; a short novel in which, through the clever literal use of a phrase

of the day, reveals a truth of the human mind. The Metamorphosis is Kafka’s exploration of the

birth of psychoanalytic theory, putting into word and story the dark mixture of a human mind

under crisis: the same ideas that Sigmund Freud, the blooming psychological theorist of the time,

would rename 8 years later into the cornerstone trinity of Ego Psychology: Id, Ego, and Super-

Ego.

Freud and Kafka, although not directly associated with each other, are intertwined in their

beliefs of the human psyche; directly in their thoughts and publications, and through the analyses

of their works. In 1911, Freud published an essay, Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental

Functioning, which is the first publication in which Freud, or anyone, created and used the idea

of Ego and instinct, creating two separate parties of the mind. He defined the concept as the

rational part of the mind (the Ego) warring with the pleasure (or, more commonly referred to as

sex) drive of man’s inner mind, with the pleasure principle being unconscious and the Ego being

rational, conscious thought. Seemingly unrelated, The Metamorphosis was published a few years

later in 1915. The Metamorphosis drove literary critics into deep discussions on the short novel;

enough discussion for Stekel, Freud’s top pupil, to devote a few paragraphs to The

Metamorphosis in his essay Pathological Disturbances of the Instinctual and Affective Life,

published in 1917. Stekel had his opinion, “diagnosing it (The Metamorphosis) as a zooanthropic
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phantasy (wrong) of transformation into a louse (wrong) and hence as denoting the self-aimed

sadistic component of unhappy homosexuality (probably wrong).” (Stanley Corngold 88) While

Stekel viewed the work through a light of why the transformation, Freud saw something

different; eight years after The Metamorphosis, the Id, Ego, and Super-Ego trinity concept was

proposed in Freud’s essay The Ego and the Id, following the concepts and ideas that Kafka

pushed through his characters in The Metamorphosis. A review of The Historical Kafka reveals

that “it is understandable that, on far slighter evidence, Kafka should often have been associated

with Freud.” (Richie Robertson 118) While their ideas were very similar, they (Kafka and Freud)

are not directly associated. They had very different beliefs on the same topics; “Certainly Kafka

knew about psychoanalysis, though probably from conversation…there were no books by Freud

in his personal library, and he was scathing about the therapeutic aims of psychoanalysis.”

(Robertson 118) Regardless of their opinions on the theories, it is likely that they took ideas off

one another’s works; not by intention, but by simply a case of great minds thinking alike, at least

in a particular scenario or thought process. “Freud nowhere explicitly alludes to Kafka, although

it is certain that he was aware of him.” (Corngold 88) It is through the lens of this same idea

relationship that The Metamorphosis becomes a masterfully crafted piece on the unconscious and

Ego.

The psychoanalysis of The Metamorphosis, from an Ego psychology perspective of

today, goes something like this: Kafka uses the Samsa family as a sample of a human under

pressure. Gregor in The Metamorphosis is the human mind, as the Samsa family represents the

parts of the mind. Thus the book begins, with Gregor having been inexplicably transformed into

a monstrous insect overnight. In the first line of The Metamorphosis, Kafka has already

employed an impossible event to demonstrate the human mind. In Dorrit Cohn’s words, “The
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impossible, inadmissible fact, by gaining factual status, thus … becomes involuted, self-

referential, and essentially concerned with its own irreality.” (185) This initial impossible fact

spurs the human mind, the Samsa family, into the first instinct response, known as the “fight or

flight” response. The unfathomable fact forces the mind to face it or flee from it. The initial

response (after forcing Gregor back to his room) is to flee, since their brains cannot determine

and agree how to fight the problem directly. Here the family splits up into their appropriate

warring factions: Grete shows herself as the Super-Ego, trying to do the most moral and societal,

group-oriented actions in trying to keep Gregor the beetle happy and away from the family at the

same time. Mrs. Samsa reveals herself as the Id, showcasing the maternal love seeking pleasure

of having a son to carry on her genetic identity, hoping and praying for him to get better. Mr.

Samsa is the Ego, the rational part of the mind, taking over the family in Gregor’s absence,

making money and keeping calm after the transformation is revealed, knowing that life must go

on. Once the pressure is increased, as what they fled from meets them again, each character

bends to their Id’s idea: Mrs. Samsa with her fainting, Grete helping her mother and increased

fear of Gregor, and Mr. Samsa attacking the source of the reinstated pressure, Gregor. Once that

already heightened pressure increases even more, the mind’s tolerance level is surpassed, and the

system collapses. The “fight or flight” response becomes just a fighting response, as the Samsa’s

attempts at escapes haven’t worked and no other means of escape are seen. Like a cornered

animal, the mind will fight with all its might, regardless of whether it can change anything.

When an organic force throws itself against an infinite, immovable force going the opposite

direction, the organism will lose. This is when Gregor dies. His Id gives up, and his Super-Ego

tendencies of his manhood flash through his head as the death of instinct is the death of the

organism, Gregor.
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This comparison not far fetched, and makes logical sense when applied to the terms. The

Structuralist (the name of the viewpoint of a branch of Ego Psychology) viewpoint is often used,

and often used as a good reference point. “… whether Kafka also needs literary Structuralism…

if not Kafka's own work, then at least the present state of work on Kafka seems to call for

Structuralist ideas.” (Cohn 182) The mystery of the Ego analysis is, the current Ego psychology

ideas were not around at the time of Kafka’s writing of The Metamorphosis. The idea preceding

this consisted of simply 2 things; the Ego, and the pleasure principle. Had The Metamorphosis

been based on the Ego theory of the time, the Samsa family would be even numbers, so as to

split into those 2 categories evenly. Kafka clearly intends that to not be the case. Kafka builds the

family off what was known, and then he makes his proposal of what he believes to be the

workings of the Ego thoughts of the time. Mr. and Mrs. Samsa are both from the predefined

psyches: Mrs. Samsa taking the pleasure principle and favoring maternal love and hopeless faith

over logic, while Mr. Samsa takes the logical route, arranging for the family’s survival through

the ordeal.

Beyond here is Kafka’s proposal of the workings of the mind. Grete’s character is that of

a daughter between the two extremes; she is a combination of the two, expressing characteristics

that bridge the gap between them. She shows the instinctive traits of the Id, but constantly uses

logic to dictate at the same time, unconsciously, creating a compromise in both. “… his sister,

almost fully dressed, opened the door from the foyer and looked in eagerly… when she caught

sight of him… she became so frightened that she lost control of herself and slammed the door

shut again. But, as if she felt sorry for her behavior, she immediately opened the door again…”

(Kafka 22) The next thing Kafka proposes with the way things work is the Id’s dominance. In

every character, regardless of whether the Id is their “natural” state, they become overpowered
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by the Id. Like when Gregor tries to use logic on the logical one, it backfires. “And so he fled to

the door of his room and pressed himself against it… it was not necessary to drive him back; if

only the door were opened for him, he would disappear at once.” (Kafka 35) This attempt to

overthrow the Id goes about as well as this example from Freud to describe the Id vs. the Ego; a

helpless rider (Ego) trying to direct a horse (Id): if the horse wants to go one direction, there’s

nothing the rider can do to change it, no matter how hard one may try. The attempt brings

disastrous results; an apple embedded in the back serves as quite the reminder that the Id will

win when the stakes are high. The mounting pressure coupled with a dominant “fight or flight”

response pushes everyone into their Id shortly before Gregor’s death. Once Gregor dies, the

stressor is released, and the rest of the family released from their forced fight response. The

family’s relief comes from, now that they have the option, the ability to fly; going to the country

to get away from it all. These two concepts, the existence of a 3rd presence (the Super-Ego) and

the belief of Id dominance, make their way directly into Freud’s The Ego and the Id, with

virtually no change between the two pieces.

Kafka’s expression of the human psyche was ahead of his time. The concepts that Freud

expanded into through The Ego and the Id had already been expanded in the same direction by

Franz Kafka. Kafka had bushwhacked his way into the territory of Ego Psychology, delving far

enough into the territory that Freud was able to follow his trail right to the basis of Ego

Psychology today. Had Kafka been a psychologist, Kafka could very well have been the founder

of Ego Psychology, and while he didn’t believe in psychoanalysis as a method of therapy, Kafka

would have defined the Ego Psychology theories that we attribute to Freud today.
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Works Cited Page

Cohn, Dorrit. “ Trends in Literary Criticism: Some Structuralist Approaches to Kafka”

The German Quarterly. Vol. 51, No. 2 (Mar. 1978): 182-188. JSTOR. Web. 18 May

2011.

Corngold, Stanley. “Freud As A Literary Text?” Diacritics Vol. 9, No. 1 (March, 1979): 83-94.

JSTOR. Web. 15 May 2011.

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Trans. Stanley Corngold. New York: Bantam Dell, 2004.

Print.

Robertson, Richie. “In Search of the Historical Kafka: A Selective Review of Research, 1980-

92” The Modern Language Review, Vol. 89, No. 1 (Jan., 1994): 107-137. JSTOR. Web.

16 May 2011.