“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe is a morbid story about the change undergone by the narrator and the horrific and disturbing nature of his behaviors. Through the narrator's development in the story, his behavior can be studied using an aspect of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory, the id, ego, and superego. In Poe's short story, "The Black Cat", the narrator's character discovers his love for animals at a very young age. Throughout the character's development, he begins to drink more and the visible change in the animals, with the exception of a black cat, is enormous. The narrator clearly has a love and passion for all of his animals, especially a black cat named "Pluto", but due to his rapid decline into alcoholism, the character's loving instinct for animals turns into an instinct for 'aggressiveness. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Identity is the most inaccessible part of the brain. It is buried in the unconscious state of mind and is responsible for man's most primal instincts. Sigmund Freud describes the work of the id as “fundamental drives, needs and desires.” The id responds to the use of instinctual desires, which are difficult to control most of the time and lead to Freud stating that the id relates to sexual desires and instincts, and aggressive instincts, which act as a pro-dominant instinct in history. One drunken night, when the narrator returns from the inn, Pluto finally notices the change in his owner and "tries to stay out of my way, to avoid me." The narrator's character is angered by the animal's reaction and his identity takes control of him. “My soul seemed to fly from my body.” The horrible nature of the id takes over and the aggressive instinct kicks in when the narrator picks up the cat and cuts out its eye. The narrator's aggression towards Pluto is evidence that his love towards animals at such a young age has changed and he finds pleasure in torturing animals. The ego is a mediating device used as reasoning, compared to the primal instinct and destructive nature of the id. The ego makes up the bulk of conscious decision-making from a reality perspective. The first characteristic of the ego shown by the narrator occurs after Pluto's eye begins to recover. The narrator feels guilty for cutting out the cat's eye and says: “I felt a new feeling growing within me. Who hasn't found himself a hundred times doing evil, doing something bad for no other reason than because he knows he shouldn't do it? He feels guilty towards the cat he once loved and who once loved him back. Both the identity and ego of the narrator's character are manifested when he decides to kill the cat because "I held onto him because I knew he loved me." His aggressive nature which comes from the id is counterbalanced by his ego, in which he realizes that what he is doing is wrong and is "so mortal a sin" (Poe, line 56), but because the superego is not not present to stop the id disturbing nature, the narrator's character continues to hook the cat. The same night, he is awakened by the cries of his neighbors who are screaming about a fire. All the while he can only think about the cat he hung in the basement, and if it was some sort of mysterious message. Again, on another drunken night, he sees a black cat, almost like Pluto, and wants to buy it from the innkeeper. The innkeeper tells him that he has never seen the cat before, and from there the cat starts to attack him..