Volatile Identities in Sam Shepard’s True West

Sam Shepard’s True West dramatizes the internal psychological conflict described in Sigmund Freud’s structural model of personality id, the ego, and the superego through the intense and shifting relationship between the two brothers, Lee and Austin. According to Freud, the human psyche is composed of three significant hypothesized parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The first signifies the primitive desires and instincts, the superego symbolizes moral ethics, and the ego mediates between the two while navigating external reality. Austen, apparently the cultivated screenwriter, represents the ego in the play. He functions as a mediator between Lee’s wild behavior and the expectations of the outside world. He is composed, mature, and controlled, serving as the antithesis of his brother Lee. They are different in every regard. However, as the play progresses, the rational and logical brother crumbles as his behavior becomes increasingly similar to that of his brother’s, and vice versa. The brothers melt into a one character. As True West is a clear dramatization of the fragmentation of postmodern identity, this study discusses the notion through a Freudian lens. Lee and Austin do not have fixed personalities but fluid expressions of the psyche’s internal conflict due to the postmodern fragmentation condition. Exposing how the struggle between id, ego, and superego can unravel the very notion of a stable self, which results in resorting to the primitive nature of the self (the Freudian id), ingrained in the human psyche as the only constant identity that Austen and Lee find themselves with.