MCU Characters: Captain America and Iron Man Through Freudian Theory

This essay offers a Freudian psychoanalytic perspective on the characters of Captain America (Steve Rogers) and Iron Man (Tony Stark) within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It examines the application of Freud's structural model of personality, specifically the id, ego, and superego, to understand the characters' behaviors, motivations, and conflicts. The analysis explores how Steve Rogers embodies the superego, driven by moral principles and a desire to serve his country, while Tony Stark's personality reflects a clash between the id and superego, leading to the creation of Ultron. The essay highlights how the characters' psychological makeup, shaped by their developmental stages and societal influences, influences their actions and relationships within the MCU narrative. It uses the characters' actions to illustrate the complex interplay of the id, ego, and superego, and how these elements contribute to the formation of their personalities and the conflicts they face, particularly in the context of the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie. The essay ultimately concludes that Captain America's personality is a direct reflection of the ego as proposed by Freud, highlighting his mental agility to stand for a cause.

Running Head: STEVE ROGERS AND TONY STARK: A FREUDIAN PERSPECTIVE
Steve Rogers and Tony Stark: A Freudian Perspective
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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STEVE ROGERS AND TONY STARK: A FREUDIAN PERSPECTIVE
Introduction
The Marvel’s franchise has been the cause of fascination and enhanced the growth of fans
who were an avid reader of the Marvel’s comic books for the characters in the movies were all
taken from the movies. It was in 2008 that the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)
started with the first Iron Man film. The characters we will evaluate under the Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory of personality are the traditional and clean cut super hero- Captain
America and the anti-hero Tony Stark. Though there are various scopes into which these
characters can be layered to explain but we evaluate the developmental stage in both the
characters which comes as a contrast in the phase two of the MCU franchise with the finality of
Stark’s and Roger’s ego clash which results in the birth of the Ultron, the villain who poses the
genius of Stark and Dr. Bruce Banner.
Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and is considered to be the founder of
psychoanalysis proposed that the structure of the human mind is divided into three parts: Id, ego
and super-ego in his essay ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ in the year 1920 and then elaborated
about the psyche division after three years in ‘The Ego and the Id’ (Brown et al., 2017). This
division is done on the basis of the fact that the human interaction in his social dealings are
derived from these three agents interacting and develops the mentality of an individual.
The Id is the most outer structure of the psyche and is defined as the unconscious part
which operates on the pleasure principle and is impulsive and acts on the childlike basis which is
basically done to gratify the physical urge. It is considered to be the primitive among the three
and is out of the conscious thought process. The superego is the one which is the institutionalized
version of the social being and is practical and rational part of the psyche which is the conscious

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STEVE ROGERS AND TONY STARK: A FREUDIAN PERSPECTIVE
part of the psyche and deals with the ethical and moral issues. This part of the psyche is
supposed to be the complete opposite for it is formed by the cultural and social and moral
compass of the society they grow up in (Cherry, 2016). Hence, the to carry out the action or to
walk away is decided consciously by thinking pragmatically of the consequences of the action in
the light of right and wrong light which again is decided by the culture the individual grow up
with. At the end, the ego is the subconscious part of the psyche which balances the irrational
demand of the id and the amplified morality of the superego to walk away for the sake of
gratifying the cultural belief. It balances the action by maintaining the two extremities of the
conscious and the unconscious.
The belief of Freud that the human personality which is the basis of their behavior and
determines the reason of the personality formation combining the psychological and the social
aspect of growing up is the result of the interaction and conflict between these three structural
parts of the human psyche. The structural model as proposed by Freud can be seen as the
determining factor behind the formation of the first superhero of MCU-Captain America (Brown
et al., 2017). Steve Rogers, who is a captain gaining superhuman strength as a result of the serum
formulated by Tony Stark’s father Howard Stark to fight in the World War II. The psychological
concept of Rogers is shown to be already displaying the superego psyche according to Freud’s
structural model of the human psyche (Wong, 2018). He is shown to be a frail and weak man
trying to get enlisted in the army with the willingness to fight for good and to serve his country
along his friend Captain Buchanan Barnes serving in the 107th unit. But, in the movie Avengers:
Age of Ultron we see them as a complete unit after the cross over in the last film of the first
phase of the MCU, Avengers.

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STEVE ROGERS AND TONY STARK: A FREUDIAN PERSPECTIVE
Steve Rogers, is shown to be the one calling the shot and being addressed by everyone as
the Captain and yet in the very first part of the movie we see that the Strucker’s human
experiment generated twins, Wanda failing to control the collapse of the building which gets the
world leaders going against them and trying to bring them under the organized system of the
United Nations. This comes in direct conflict to Rogers’ alter ego which Captain America is the
ultimate epitome of and denies to come under the banner due to which the team breaks apart.
This is also due to Tony Stark’s superego of morality working on his psyche and empowering his
Id, which he has displayed in the previous movies and the ego where he fails to see the flaw in
the plan due to the guilt where he bears due to a mother blaming him for the death of his
seventeen years old son (Jiang, 2016).
This birth of Ultron, the ultimate production of the clash between the superego of the two
of the most powerful superheroes of the Marvel’s Universe that is Captain’s and Ironman that is
the alter ego of Tony Stark. The Ultron shows the diplomatic approach and the genius of the
Tony Stark and the girth of Hulk and yet shows the inhuman approach due to being too
pragmatic and hence sees the human as the threat to humanity and decides to wipe off the world.
Conclusion
The personality of Captain America, the alter ego of Steven Grant Rogers is the direct
reflection of ego as proposed by Freud in his psychoanalytic theory of the structure of the human
mind. He is shown to be the superhero the world needs and not just the hero the world wants. In
spite of having the super strength from the serum and the agility to overcome any kind of
physical injury, it is not this super strength which is the epitome of his personality but his mental
agility to stand for the cause which was structurally formed as the result of the cultural learnings

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STEVE ROGERS AND TONY STARK: A FREUDIAN PERSPECTIVE
he acquired in his lifetime even before he became Captain America is the real cause of his
existence.
References
Brown, S. P., Smith, J. W., McAllister, M., & Joe, L. (2017). Superhero physiology: the case for
Captain America.
Cherry, K. (2016). The Id, Ego and Superego: The Structural Model of Personality. About. com.
Jiang, Y. (2016). Discussion of the Postgraduates’ Reading Views—Based on Freud’s Theory
About “Ego,”“Id,” and “Super-Ego”. US-China Education Review, 6(10), 610-613.
Wong, C. W. (2018). The Loving Superego: A Defence of Freud’s Moral Naturalism.