Abstract
Psychoanalytical reflection of the characters in Uwem Atakpo's Return to the sun-god empathises with the protagonist and other characters in the play which gives us the verisimilitude of the play and the living realty. From the text, it is evidently clear that the people in the unnamed community had a life, a traditional life with the people's traditional, religious, cultural and philosophical beliefs which the people had abandoned and then embraced the new modern lifestyle, beliefs and practices. The gods of the community reacted and with the attendant impending calamities hanging over the community, the people were urged to return to the sun-god. Psychoanalytical criticism or theory is one of the modern theories used in literature. It is a theory that is regarded as appropriate to handle personality organization and the dynamics of personality that guides psychoanalysis. The study is a qualitative – descriptive design which describes the psychoanalysis structure of the characters in the play The data were drawn from the major characters in the play using the purposive sample method. Sigmund Freud's 1880's psychoanalytic theory has been adopted for the analysis of the drama because among so many other functions, psychoanalytic theory attempts to capture and explain the dreams, plans, desires, and the struggles of both the community and individuals to overcome their desires, certain issues and some cultural and philosophical beliefs.