Some time ago, an article in the New York Times proclaimed: “In saloons, in

graduate seminars, in barbershops across the land, whenever particular people ask,
who, truly, are the giants of the Twentieth Century— who defined reality as we know
it—three names loom: Freud, Einstein, Walt Disney.”20

It is unclear just how Einstein is related to Freud and Disney. True, Einstein
corresponded with Freud and also did many things unconsciously, but somehow the
link between Disney and Freud seems clearer: to understand one can be useful to
understanding the other. Studying Freud and other early psychoanalysts can lead to
a better understanding of children and consequently to appreciating the effects of
some of Disney’s works. Freud’s concept of the mind’s structure can be useful in
explaining the appeal of Disney’s characters because many of them (Mickey Mouse,
Donald Duck, Goofy and others) embody universal aspects of the personality: id, ego
and superego. Early psychoanalytic knowledge about children can also show how what
adults experience as violence and primitive fantasy can actually, enhance a child’s
growth.

Although critics have examined Disney’s work since its beginning, the
psychoanalytic approach is new. Now that Mickey Mouse is over fifty years old, the
critics are reexamining Disney’s creations. No matter how blase, they are generally
in a certain awe of Disney’s meticulous attention to detail, the draftsmanship, the
imagination and the technical innovations that distinguish his craft. 5,17,24 He
was the first to create a fully synchronized sound track for a cartoon—in the 1928
production Steamboat Willie. He quickly adopted color.5 He developed the multi-
plane camera introducing the incredible depth of field.17,24 Other commentators
have looked at the psychological appeal of Disney characters, offered psychological
interpretations of a character or story and even drawn inferences about Disney’s
personality on the basis of his works.4,24 But none has yet presented an elementary
psychoanalytic understanding of children and then used that knowledge to examine
the effects of the work.

Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, worked directly only with adult patients; yet
from that age group he was able to draw inferences about child development and
formulate theories of personality. I will limit my discussion of Freud to the work
between 1900 and 1923. (I rely heavily on discussions by J. Tarlton Morrow, Jr.,
M.D. for this summary.) 1923 is a key date in Freud’s life for two reasons. First,
it was the year of the publication of The Ego and the Id, and second, it was the
beginning of his bout with cancer of the jaw. After 1923 it hurt Freud to talk. He
was in nearly constant pain. His sparkling sense of humor continued but clearly was
not as spectacular as it had been before that date.21

A neurologist by training, Freud was fascinated by the patients at Charcot’s Clinic

in Paris. They had paralyses which could not be explained anatomically, and Charcot
had been treating them by hypnosis. These cases, called “hysterical conversion
reactions,” led Freud to study the problem of hysteria in greater detail. In 1900,
partially as an outgrowth of that interest, Freud publshed The Interpretation of
Dreams. In this book Freud linked dreams to unconscious conflict resolution,
defined the structure of dreams, and posited the suspension of everyday logical
thinking in the chaotic, primitive, paradoxical world of the unconscious.