Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [17]
Michael provides a good model for what the ego does if we think of the Bluth Company as an individual. When the company stock is unfrozen in “Whistler’s Mother,” every family member begins clamoring for fulfillment of their individual “needs.” Gob needs a yacht, Lindsay needs a club membership, and Tobias needs (is?) the Queen Mary. Michael, playing the role of the ego, tries to regulate the needs of his family, who are playing the role of the id, by delaying the satisfaction of those needs.
And then there’s the super-ego. The super-ego is just another burden for the ego. Freud explains that the super-ego is developed by the parents, who offer love and threaten punishments, which are “signs to the child as a loss of love.”5 George Michael’s relationship to his father is a good example of what the super-ego (Michael) demands of the ego (George Michael). The demands of the super-ego limit the satisfaction of the ego. Take, for example, the exchange between George Michael and Michael in the episode “Motherboy XXX,” where George Michael wishes to go to the Christian camp “The Promise Land” with Ann.
Michael: It–It’s not about school, pal. It’s more about family. Your Uncle Buster’s been very depressed lately, and you haven’t visited him. Family first. Or did they not teach you that at the Promise Land?
George Michael: I don’t know. You won’t let me go.
The ego is pulled in every direction, and must juggle demands from the super-ego, the id, and the external world. Freud explains, “An action by the ego is as it should be if it satisfies simultaneously the demands of the id, of the super-ego, and of reality—that is to say, if it is able to reconcile their demands with one another.”6
Prove It: Baiting the Unconscious
Freud believed that parapraxes, or everyday errors, betray unconscious impulses. We all fall victim to parapraxes such as slips of the tongue, slips of the pen, bungled actions, and misreadings. You don’t have to be crazy to have a parapraxis or two every once in a while, but they are exceedingly common in the Bluth family.7 As Tobias, the queen of parapraxes, says, “I suppose that we all do expose our inner desires, don’t we?”
There aren’t enough pages in this book to catalog all of Tobias’s homoerotic actions and statements. So let’s focus on Tobias’s gaff in the pilot episode: mistaking a group of flamboyantly dressed men for pirates. Freud would say that this was no coincidence—Tobias had unconsciously intended to spend time with homosexuals, though perhaps not necessarily to protest the local yacht club’s discriminatory policies.
In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud tells the story of a man who, in wanting a day to himself, had to nevertheless pay a visit to someone that he would otherwise prefer not to see. After begrudgingly boarding the train to his destination, the man inadvertently transfers to the wrong train, and goes back to his home, where he would rather spend his time.8
Freud would no doubt say that Tobias has repressed homosexual urges (“No, I’m not gay, Lindsay . . . how many times . . . must we have this . . . ”). Tobias, thinking he is dressing as a pirate when he is actually dressing in Lindsay’s clothing, is one thing. Joining a group of homosexuals for a protest is another. Tobias, like the man who transferred to the wrong train, is satisfying an unconscious urge. Freud believes that when it comes to making errors, there are very few coincidences. We pretty much have to agree with him in the case of Tobias, who says questionable things like, “Oh, I can just taste those meaty leading man parts in my mouth!” so frequently that Michael even suggests that Tobias tape record an entire day’s worth of dialogue, thinking that he “might be surprised by some of [his] phrasing!”
Shémale and Misreadings
Freud maintains