According to the Greek definition, psycho is derived from psyche, which is commonly known as the human mind. Many psychologists define analysis as the process of separating a whole into its parts to discover certain aspects of the entity such as their function or relationship. Therefore, psychoanalysis simply means the internal study of the human mind, dealing with its reasoning, stability, emotions, and any other aspect that explains a person’s visible characteristics.

Throughout the play “Fences”, by August Wilson, the main character Troy Maxson exemplifies Sigmund Freud’s idea that we are threatened with suffering from three directions.

First, we suffer from our own body. The pain and anxiety we experience are the warning signals that our body is doomed to decay towards dissolution.

Second, we suffer from the external world. Natural elements of this world could rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction incurring pain and suffering.

Lastly, we suffer from our relations to other men. This direction of suffering is perhaps the most painful because of the harm it inflicts upon our conscious and subconscious. Most times this harm comes from those close to and dear to us, such as family and friends.

In Fences, Troy’s suffering from his own body is realized as a result of him having an affair with Alberta. He exclaims, “She gives me a different idea…a different understanding about myself. I can step out of this house and get away from the pressures and problems…be a different man. I ain’t got to wonder how I’m gonna pay the bills or get the roof fixed. I can just be a part of myself that I ain’t never been.”

One can infer that Troy’s soul had become stagnated in his relationship with Rose. He was on a path of decay with no room or freedom to think creatively. Thus, enabling him to grow towards a positive direction. His survival instinct forced him to seek a way out of this sense of stagnation and decay, by means of having an affair with Alberta.

Troy’s battle with pneumonia reflects his suffering from the external world whereby nature’s forces raged against him with overwhelming merciless destruction. According to psychologist, Carl Jung, “we deem those happy who from the experience of life have learned to bear its ills without being overcome by them.”

Troy was able to conquer pneumonia and his close encounter with death. Although he may not have been happy, having conquered death, the painful experience itself had influenced his personality by making him stronger. It further taught him coping skills for future externally induced sufferings such as, the rejection from his one love of sports, baseball.

Troy relationship with his father denotes Sigmund Freud’s third threat with suffering; namely, from our relations with other men. He recalls his father having said that he doesn’t care about any kids. All he wanted was for Troy to learn how to walk so he could start working. This recollection is an integral part of Troy. It clearly explains the distant relationship between him and his father. It portrays their interactions as that without feelings.

Their relationship can be compared to the relations between two men ignorant of each other’s existence, yet striving for the same goal, love and affection of the same woman. His father, obviously unable to provide a standard of moral and values for his son resorted to proving that he was a man and his father by overpowering Troy. To emerge as a “winner” he physically battered Troy and raped his woman. According to Carl Jung, “Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves.”

Children learn what they live. The interactions between Troy and his father are perfect examples of Freud’s third threat with suffering, relations with other men and why it is perhaps the most painful. Troy’s external character as harsh, rough, and unreasonable is a result of what he had lived. The barrier he built around his feelings is the result of the internal pain he feels, or had felt throughout his lifetime. His past is the formation and development of his present consciousness with the absence of certain emotions that one usually feels towards a relative or trusted one.

Anyone who can identify with Troy’s character, Fences, comes as a highly recommended read.