Another form of analysis that Freud could make about Batman and his life is by using his idea of the doctrine of opposites. Batman’s biggest nemesis is the Joker, and the two could never be anymore different, but one without the other could not exist. In one movie, the Joker even comes out and says “he’s just too fun” and Batman cannot …show more content…
Freud would say that out of the most common defense mechanisms, Bruce mostly uses displacement. Freud would come to this conclusion because Bruce often displaces his feelings about his parent’s murderer. Early on in Bruce’s life, before we find out who killed his parents, Bruce takes out his anger and frustrations on other villains and felons that are openly available.
In addition to Freud, Erik Erikson’s theories of human development can also be used to describe Bruce’s personality and behavior. One of the best ways to analyze Batman through Erikson’s theories is his psychosocial stages of personality development and the crisis that can happen within each of them.
The first stage of Erikson’s theory is trust versus mistrust. In this stage, one can either be maladaptive, making them overly trusting, or malignant, making them under trusting. This stage comes from Freud’s oral stage and can be looked at the same way, making it to where Erikson would say that Bruce has a good medium between the …show more content…
Erikson would say that because of Bruce’s choice to become Batman and help protect the city, that he is showing initiative. But, later on after Bruce’s parents die, the guilt comes out and Bruce has to face it.
Freud’s latency stage matches up with Erikson’s industry versus inferiority stage. During this stage is when Bruce’s parents die, so Erikson would say that Bruce is faced once again with another crisis. This crisis hinders Bruce from moving on until he is able to reach his basic strength and make the decision to fight crime.
The fifth stage that Erikson introduces is the identity versus role confusion stage. Within this stage, James Marcia created five more, more detailed options. The one that best describes Bruce would be ‘identity achievement,’ because he had an identity crisis, and then dealt with it. Once Bruce was able to move past his parent’s death, he quickly realized what he had to do for Gotham.
The next stage, intimacy versus isolation, describes Bruce on both ends. Erikson would say that though Bruce wants to be with Rachel, he cannot do this because he makes the decision to isolate himself from those he loves so that they are not