Susan Moraleda

 Freudian Slips

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Id (top panel): Las Vegas viewed by the outside world.

Ego (two center panels): Yin/Yang: Koi/Crow and Octopus Grab

Superego (three lower panels): Drippy Surrealism I, II, III

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Las Vegas, with its neon glow, explosions/implosions and unfiltered excess, is a perfect stage for the unconscious. In Freudian Slips, six panels explore Freud’s tripartite theory of the psyche through the lens of a city where impulse, image, and inhibition collide.

​The id is first—historic, neon, and detonating bombs in the desert. It wants to explore everything. It speaks in jackpots, atomic energy and skin. The next two panels represent the ego, negotiating between indulgence and reality, the yin and the yang of sink or swim. The superego arrives last, draped in liquid guilt and casino confessionals where eyes are on all. It is swimming in the moral codes we often perform, even in places designed to suspend them.

​Each panel is a psychological “slip”, a glimpse into what lies beneath the surface of spectacle. Together, they form a portrait not only of a Freudian psyche, but also of a city that mirrors it—where fantasy is currency, and repression finds its own expression.

​Vegas doesn’t dream because it is the dream: glitzy, grotesque, and shimmering with denial. Freud would have lost his shirt here, smiling all the while.

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