Xenogears Retrospective Part 3: Fei and Freud

In part 3 of this retrospective I'll be examining the character of Fei a bit more closely and his relation to the part unification theme in Xenogears. I will of course be talking about elements that occur late in the game, so if you haven't played the game you might want to skip this one.

Spoiler Warning

Fei's Fractured Self

Very early in the game you are given hints that Fei is a bit more than he initially appears. He's lost most of his memories at the start of the game and repeatedly has ominous flashbacks and blackouts where he simply disappears for awhile. During one of his blackouts you encounter a character named Id and some heavy hinting that he is somehow connected to Fei.

Eventually you discover that Id is actually a repressed personality of Fei. It's revealed that when Fei was 4 years old his mother awakened as Miang, who usurped her personality. Miang realized that Fei was the reincarnation of the contact, and thus began to do experiments on Fei. These experiments involved agitating the power inside Fei to kill innocents, causing severe emotional and psychological damage to Fei. He sought help from his father, who dismissed Fei's story as childish nonsense and did nothing. With nowhere else to turn Fei retreated inside his mind and created Id, an alternate personality who he could force to shoulder the pain in his place.

Fei would retreat inside his mind and force Id to the surface during the experiments when he was unable to cope. As a result Id's entire initial existence was pain and suffering at the hands of a parent, resulting in a personality that was extremely aggressive; full of anger and hatred. When Grahf discovered Fei as the reincarnation of the contact he confronted Fei's father. In desperation Fei unleashed immense power to protect himself, accidentally killing his mother (who shielded Fei from backlash) in the process.

If there were a picture in the dictionary entry for "childhood trauma"...

This event caused Fei to retreat inside his mind, separating completely from the Id personality. The original Fei (referred to as "the coward" in the game) pushed Id to the surface, giving him complete control over his body. Fei (coward) also took the last image of his mother protecting him from the backlash for himself, never showing the truth to Id. Grahf then kidnapped Fei and took advantage of the anger and hatred in Id, training him as an assassin and teaching him to harness his immense power. From age 4 to 14 Id was in complete control of Fei, but was being used by Grahf for destruction. During this time Id completely destroyed Elru, along with the Solarian army.

Khan then went in search of Grahf and Fei. When Fei was 15 Khan found him, allowing him to seal away the Id personality into Fei's subconscious. With both Id and Fei (coward) locked away in Fei's subconscious, another personality surfaced to take over Fei's conscious mind. This new personality, Fei (new), is the personality that is present in Fei at the beginning of the game and is generally considered the "real" Fei through most of the game. Fei (new) begins as a primitive personality unable to control his past memories, but he grows and develops over time through his various experiences.

Fei (new) has a relatively normal upbringing for 3 years in the village of Lahan, allowing him to develop a personality and morality that neither Fei (coward) nor Id were able to due to their extreme circumstances. However, Fei (new) is still very young and immature at the start of the game rendering him unable to cope with emotional extremes. As a result when Lahan is caught in a battle and his best friend Timothy is killed in front of him Id is able to break free of Fei's subconscious and rip control away from Fei (new), subsequently destroying Lahan.

Id is unable to keep permanent control of Fei, and thus has to relinquish control back to Fei (new). Throughout the game Id will surface during periods of extreme emotion, but for the majority of the time Fei (new) maintains control and is able to continue developing. Initially Fei (new) has a very simplistic and childish view of the world and morality, often being reluctant to help others in need and expressing a desire to run away from problems. As he encounters more people and learns more of the world the personality, morals, and desires of Fei (new) mature as well.

Fei's father clearly initiates the "atonement with the father" step in the hero's journey, yet isn't the metaphorical father. Xenogears has a tendency to mix the literal and metaphorical meanings of the hero's journey.

After having time to mature Fei is confronted by his father and told the truth. This causes Fei to be forced into his mind, where a dialogue takes place between Fei (new), Fei (coward), and Id. Fei (new) is able to piece together the whole story and convinces Fei (coward) to show Id all of the warm happy memories that Fei (coward) had kept for himself as a shield to the atrocities that had occurred. The three personalities all come to terms with the events and merge back into a single entity.

Freud and The Structural Model

The Structural Model was developed by Freud as an attempt to explain the different portions of a person's psyche. The three entities described by it are the Id, ego, and super-ego.

The Id refers to basic instinctual desires and functions on the pleasure principle. Id is impulsive by nature and has no concept of morality or responsibility, desiring only the fulfillment of these desires and impulses with no regard to the effect on the outside world. Id is normally completely subconscious, only affecting a person with motivations or drives for certain ends.

The super-ego refers more or less to a person's conscience or internalization of a parental agency. The super-ego develops over time through the internalization of morality and societal expectations and causes a person to feel guilt when they act in an immoral or socially unacceptable fashion. The super-ego is an idealized version of the self and strives for perfection.

The ego is the conscious and logical entity responsible for reconciling the desires of the id, super-ego, and the real world. It functions on the reality principle; the ego tries to find a balance between the short term desires of the id and long term goals, while at the same time balancing all actions taken with the super-ego's desires to avoid feelings of guilt. The ego is generally thought to be where logic and common sense are kept, while the passions are kept in the id.

I wonder, what did people do for example pictures like this before Wikimedia Commons?

In Fei's case, Id represents the id, Fei (new) represents the super-ego, and Fei (coward) represents the ego. For Fei's early childhood his personality is whole and his ego is developing - however when the experiments begin Fei's ego retreats into his subconscious, pushing his id to the surface to bear the psychological torture when it becomes unbearable.

When Fei accidentally kills his mother, his ego represses the event and forces it onto his id and hides in his warm memories for protection. At this point Fei's conscious personality becomes completely id-ridden, meaning he is acting completely on his impulses and desires. Because these are influenced heavily by all of the pain and suffering his id has been forced to endure they are primarily destructive in nature. Completely unchecked by either the ego or super-ego, Fei's id runs amok and destroys indiscriminately - when he is sent by Solaris to destroy Elru he also destroys the Solarian army in the process.

Eventually when Fei's id is locked back into his subconscious by Khan the super-ego is allowed to take control of Fei's consciousness. Because the ego wasn't fully developed when it retreated the super-ego was never allowed to develop, so this new conscious personality is immature for Fei's physical age. This is shown by the almost child-like sense of morality displayed by Fei in the early game while the super-ego is still developing. However, when Fei is forced into situations that trigger severe emotional reactions the passionate and impulsive id is able to wrench control from the super-ego. Because the ego is dormant and unable to properly balance between the desires of the id and super-ego Fei is left with binary switching between the two, giving full control to whichever side can assert more control at the moment.

This situation continues until Fei is confronted by his father and forced into his inner dialogue between his personalities. The now-developed super-ego puts pressure on the ego to come out of his shell and reintegrate, assigning guilt for his mother's death. The ego eventually complies, allowing the id access to all the warm memories the ego had been holding. The ego then comes out of recession and reintegrates the split personalities of Fei. This unifies the parts of Fei and allows him to properly make contact with Zohar and awaken as the contact.

And we all know what happens next. Or well, sort of... they didn't exactly do the best job of explaining it. Being unfinished and translated from another language is a bitch.

Xenogears and References

Xenogears is absolutely full of references to religion, science, psychology, history, and culture. Some of these references are minor and passing while others are central themes that much of the game is built around (this site has a large compilation of the references and some good discussions). I can't imagine the amount of work it took to place all the references in the game in meaningful places, and you have to respect the development team for having such a wealth of knowledge to instill into their game and the commitment to stick with it (although I can't help but think that this contributed to the game shipping unfinished).

_________________________________________________________________________________

Well that's it for my Xenogears retrospective, I hope you enjoyed it! Keep in mind that I only scratched the surface when it comes to the metaphors and references in Xenogears, so if you're interested in more you should go take a look at Xenogears: Perfect Works. Perfect Works is a book that was officially published to give more detail and explanation to the universe and characters. It was only ever published in Japanese, so the linked fan translation is the only version that exists in English (to my knowledge at least).