Freud's "Second Self" compared to "The Mask"

In Rivkin’s “Intro: Strangers to ourselves” I found the development of psychoanalysis by Freud in his research of the unconscious interesting because his research challenged the idea of the human mind and how it is not chained to its natural instincts compared to animals. For example, “The ‘cogito’ or thinking self defines our humanity and our civility, our difference from animals chained to blind nature and uncontrollable instincts” (Rivkin 389). This idea of psychoanalysis was to access the inaccessible through different means and ways in which had never been approached or analyzed before in the human psyche. The areas that were now looked at were people’s dreams and their neurotic symptoms, which could express repressed thoughts or experiences. For example, “His discovery was that the human mind contains a dimension that is only partially accessible to consciousness and then only through indirect means such as dreams or neurotic symptoms” (Rivkin 389). Freud talks about these repressed feelings which create in a person a double self. We conform to society’s idea of what is appropriate behavior or thoughts and in doing so have two sides of ourselves which creates another area of ourselves in which we do not recognize. For example, “Repression is essential to civilization, the conversion of animal instinct into civil behavior, but such repression creates what might be called a second self, a stranger within, a place where all that cannot for one reason or another be expressed or realized in civil life takes up residence” (Rivkin 389). Freud’s idea of the double self that people create with their repressed thoughts and feelings that are natural or instinct driven and that are not acceptable in society I think relates to the movie “The Mask” with Jim Carey. In the movie the main character fits this idea of an acceptable citizen in society who acts and behaves appropriately. Until he finds this mask in which he uses as an outlet to act upon his hidden desires or impulses. This alternate side to him self is not held back by societies’ idea of appropriate behavior or morals but driven by natural instincts and impulses. He is more animalistic in a sense because he is driven by his instincts and desires and pursues them with full force.