A Freudian Reading of Oedipus Rex and Antigone In Civilization and Its Disturbances, Freud postulates that the main source of conflict within the human psyche is between the id, the Ego and the Superego. The id contains all of a person's primordial impulses, such as anger, sex or violence, and these impulses are projected onto the ego, which is the source of rational thought. Therefore, many of our conscious thoughts are influenced by these impulses. Since in a civilized society many of these compulsions, such as the tendency towards violence and casual mating, are unacceptable, a mechanism is needed to keep these thoughts under control. The superego performs this function by restraining the ego, and it does so by reversing these primordial drives on the ego itself. Freud suggests that this causes unhappiness in humans, because these animalistic tendencies, since they do not cause destruction in the external world, now cause destruction in the human psyche. This leads to inner conflict and unhappiness among human beings. In extreme cases this leads to psychological illnesses such as hysteria. In man the two main drives are Eros and Death, and these two forces oppose each other as a struggle "between the instinct of life and the instinct of destruction". It is evident very early, as shown in the famous Oedipus Complex developed by Freud, where the male child focuses his Eros drive on his mother and his Death drive on the father figure. This leads to the classic Oedipal triangle in which the son kills his father and marries his mother, as originally occurred in Sophocles' play Oedipus the King. Here Freud takes a decidedly modern view of an age-old problem of why humans are sick. ..... middle of sheet ...... ace College Publishers, 1999.Ehrenberg, Victor. "Sophocles Rulers: Oedipus." In Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex, edited by Michael J. O'Brien. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Fagles, Robert. "Introduction to Oedipus Rex." In Sophocles' three Theban plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus. Trans. Robert Fagles. NY: Penguin, 1984. 131-53. Sigmund Freud, "Oedipus Rex". The interpretation of dreams. Qtd. In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. ThomasWoodard (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1966) 101-104.Sophocles. The three Theban comedies: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus. Trans. Robert Fagles. NY:Penguin, 1984. 157-25Van Nortwick, Thomas. Oedipus: the meaning of a male life. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.