Mushu is Mulan’s ‘Superego’

Freud divided the mind into three parts: the id (the instincts), the ego (which reins in the instincts) and the superego (which oversees the other two). The superego is, notoriously, authoritarian. Freud calls it the representative of established morality and compares it to a garrison in a conquered town. It is the ‘cruel and sadistic ethical agency which bombards us with impossible demands and then gleefully observes our failure to meet them’ (Zizek).

However, in his book Unforbidden Pleasures, Adam Phillips argues that the superego is, sort of, ridiculous:

What does the Freudian superego look like if you take away its endemic cruelty, its unrelenting sadism? It looks like Sancho Panza. And like Sancho Panza, the absurd and obscene superego is a character we must not take too seriously

In acknowledgement of Freud’s love for Cervantes, Phillips likens the superego to Don Quixote’s sidekick, but there are plenty of other examples; including Mulan’s sidekick, Mushu.

Mushu makes such a great superego because he is literally a totem representative of Mulan’s…