Dream, Desire, and Disobedience: A Freudian Psychoanalytic Analysis of Love and Psychological Conflict in Eros and Psyche and Orpheus and Eurydice
Honesto “Troi” III Borromeo, Flordelice Pedrera
Psychology and Education A Multidisciplinary Journal August 29, 2026 DOI: 10.70838/pemj.620503 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Psyche's disobedience in Eros and Psyche follows a trajectory of ego maturation, in which unconscious desire passes through prohibition into an act of knowing that consolidates the ego, whereas Orpheus's backward glance represents ego dissolution under unresolved grief, enacting the death drive as a compulsion to reunite with the lost object. Proposes these divergent outcomes as a typology of how unconscious conflict shapes transgression in love narratives. |
Abstract
This study aims to demonstrate that disobedience in Eros and Psyche and Orpheus and Eurydice instead expresses unconscious psychological conflict rooted in desire, repression, and anxiety. Using a Freudian psychoanalytic framework, the analysis applies close textual reading to each myth's pivotal transgressive moment, coding Psyche's lamp scene and Orpheus's backward glance according to the dynamics of the id, ego, and superego. The findings reveal two opposing outcomes. Psyche's defiance follows a trajectory of ego maturation: her curiosity, driven by unconscious desire (id), passes through prohibition (superego) into an act of knowing that consolidates rather than destroys. Orpheus's glance, by contrast, represents the collapse of egoic regulation under unresolved grief, enacting the death drive (Thanatos) as a compulsion to reunite with the lost object. These divergent results — ego integration versus ego dissolution — offer a typology of how unconscious conflict shapes transgression in love narratives. The paper extends existing psychoanalytic myth criticism by moving beyond character-level interpretation to identify the specific intrapsychic structures that produce disobedience, revealing these myths as allegories of psychological processes that remain active in contemporary experiences of love and loss.