Eruption of the Submissive: A Study of Neurosis in Peter Shaffer’s Equus
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Peter Shaffer’s drama Equus has long been the subject of scholarly research, much of which centers on the psychological aspects of the work. However, none has directed the focus to a Freudian tripartite model of mind. On this basis, and in order to fill the gap in the literature on the topic, this article takes it upon itself to focus its attention on the psychological aspects in Equus, and tries to deliver a more comprehensive notion of the psychological flaws inherent in Alan Strang’s character. Based on the Freudian model of the mind composed of id, ego, and superego, this article analyzes the play in order to uncover the clues of Alan’s instability and abnormal personality in committing a horrible crime of blinding six horses with a hoof pick. Moreover, this study attempts to explain the impact of other characters’ behavioral patterns on Alan, while applying the same model. Methodologically, this study is divided into two different sections: contrary to the critics’ ideas that have associated the horses with either superego or the id, hereby it is argued that the horses can represent both, since Alan has mutated his sexual drives into religious fervor; in addition, Alan’s personality crisis is explained in terms of lack of ego formation which prevents him from creating a balance between the sense of guilt injected by the superego and the pulsing desires of the id that ultimately results in the dreadful crime of blinding the six horses. Lastly, this study moves to a discussion of the relationships between individuals and society, and explores how individuals are forced to conform to certain standards of behavior, since the resulting homogeneity contributes to the maintenance of society and its values.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".