Character Analysis Of Sharon Cady's 'Displacement'

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Displacement involves shifting the id impulses from a threatening or unavailable object to a substitute object that is available. Cady starts performing poorly in her Calculus class, just to get Aaron Samuel’s attention and thus her professor, Ms. Sharon Norbury fails her in her test. The fact that she has to know let her parents know about her performing poorly in a subject she’s actually very good at makes her loath Ms. Norbury and thus, she goes to her gang of plastics and instead of letting her id impulse of anger take control over her, displaces these negative feelings by writing that Ms.Norbury is a drug dealer in the Burn Book (substitute object). According to Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, the structure of personality included the Id, ego and superego. The Id, whose sole purpose is to seek pleasure and wants instant gratification of needs without any regard for what is appropriate, includes the basic …show more content…

When Regina starts dating Aaron again and when she was purposely dangling Aaron in front of Cady to make her jealous, (Regina: Cady, will you please tell him his hair looks sexy pushed back) she wants to settle the dispute like an animal, her id impulse taking control in her head. But her ego inhibits the impulse, makes her realize that won’t be an acceptable way to channel out her anger and thus abides by the social rules of ‘girl world’ and thinks of other ways to sabotage Regina but in more acceptable ways. (Giving her Kalteen bars to make her fat, giving her facial cleansing gel which actually contains intensive moisturizing foot cream, making Regina’s gang of plastics against her etc. were more acceptable ways to channel out her anger.) Wanting to destroy her can also be related to aggressive instinct, which according to Freud was a major derivate of death instinct, and whereby individuals try to destroy others or

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