THE POET’S PERSONALITY STRUCTURE IN SYLVIA PLATH’S DADDY

Abstrak

This research examines the poet's personality structure through two selected poems of Sylvia Plath’s Daddy. Sigmund Freud’s personality structure theory Id, Ego, and Superego is used to analyse the poems. Employing a qualitative descriptive method data were collected through reading, note-taking, identifying and classification, and analyzed using psychoanalytic literary criticism. The findings indicate that the Id functions as the dominant source of psychic energy in both poems, manifesting through somatic repression, the death instinct, and repetition compulsion, particularly in the obsession with the lost father figure and bodily fragmentation. The Ego is represented not merely as a fragile entity, but as a mediating agent capable of insight, reality testing, and narrative organization, effectively recognizing destructive patterns in Daddy. The Superego evolves from an internalized oppressor into an agent of moral justice and collective sanction, validating the speaker’s rejection of patriarchal authority through ethical judgment. Overall, the research concludes that Plath’s poems construct personality not as a static or unstable structure, but as a dynamic psychological system wherein the interaction of the Id, Ego, and Superego enables the transformation of passive victimization into active psychological autonomy.

Kata kunci

• ego
• id
• literatature
• psychoanalysis
• superego
• sylvia plath