Ego, superego, and id

Although psychoanalysis has a variety of views on when ego psychology began, most who identify with the ego psychological school place its beginnings with Sigmund Freud's 1923 book The Ego and the Id, in which Freud introduced what would later come to be called the "structural theory" of psychoanalysis. The structural theory divides the mind into three agencies or "structures": the id, the ego, and the superego.

There are some problems, however, with Freud's structural theory, especially the part of it that deals with the id, or the unconscious. The parts of it that draw the most criticism are the concept of infantile sexuality, the infamous Oedipus complex, and putting too much emphasis on the role of sexual drive in human life and behavior. There are some ardent followers of Freud's concepts' that developed and worked on some parts of his theory, especially concerning the ego. But there are also lots and lots of critics, some of which even go as far as to claim that his theory is dead.

Freud's structural theory

The ego, superego, and id are the tripartite divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory, compartmentalizing the sphere of mental activity into three energetic components:

1. the id being the source of psychological energy derived from instinctual needs and drives.
2. the ego being the organized conscious mediator between the internal person and the external reality.
3. the superego being the internalization of the conscious mind, extenuated by rules, conflict, morals, guilt, etc.

In Freud's theory the id corresponds to the unconscious, the ego to the conscious, and the superego to the "preconscious." The conscious mind is what a person is aware of at any given moment (reality). The preconscious may be defined as "available memory." the things a person is not thinking about "right now." but can easily remember (such as moral and social norms). For Freud, however, these two were just the tip of the iceberg. He believed that the largest, and hidden part of our mind is unconscious—things that we cannot become aware of easily. They either originate in the unconscious, such as our drives and instincts, or they can become "hidden" at some point in life because we cannot bear to be aware of them, such as memories of trauma.

Of three agencies of our mind, the ego is in the most difficult position. It is at the crossroads of reality, society (represented by the superego), and biology (represented by the id). That is why sometimes the ego, or "I," can feel overwhelmed or threatened by the demands of those parties, and unable to reconcile them all. This feeling is anxiety.

Id

Freud borrowed the term "Id" from the Book of the It ("Das Buch vom Es" in German) by Georg Groddeck, a pathfinder of early psychosomatic medicine. The id (Latin, "it" in English, Es in the original German) represented primary process thinking—our most primitive, need-gratification impulses. It is organized around the primitive drives of sexuality and aggression that arise from the body. Sometimes the word Freud used in German, Triebe, is mistranslated as "instincts," but it literally means "drives." On occasion, Freud also called them "wishes." Drives are translations of basic human needs into motivational forces.

In the id, these drives require instant gratification or release. As one researcher has put it: "Just picture the hungry infant, screaming itself blue. It doesn't 'know' what it wants in any adult sense; it just knows that it wants it and it wants it now. The infant, in the Freudian view, is pure, or nearly pure, id. And the id is nothing if not the psychic representative of biology." ^[1] But the wish alone cannot satisfy the body, which functions according to pleasure or instant gratification principle. If the need is not satisfied immediately, it becomes stronger and stronger until it breaks into person's consciousness.

The main point of Freud's theory is that adult psychological problems involve these instinctual impulses or drives, that originate in childhood.

Two main forces among the drives and instincts of id are the life instincts and death instinct.(Eros and Tanatos). Life instincts perpetuate the life of the individual(all the needs connected to survival: food, water, shelter, etc.), as well as the life of the species (sex). This synergy, that motivates our psyches, Freud called "libido", I desire in Latin. Libido started to mean particularly the sex drive (not any other drive) because Freud believed that sex was most important of the needs in our psyche, since people are social beings, he considered sex the most social of all needs.

Later in life, Freud started to think, that next to life instincts, there is a death instinct. It is our unconscious wish to die. Death promises peace, end to pain, suffering and all the negative and unpleasant experiences of life. For many people in the world, the life is everyday struggle and suffering, so death is satisfaction of all our needs. Freud might have agreed with the saying: the first step of a child is the first step towards death. Freud saw the evidence of death instinct in our desire for peace, attempts by many people to escape the reality through alcohol, drugs, books, movies. Very directly it presents itself in suicides, indirectly, in aggression, cruelty, destructiveness.

Ego

Ego means I in Latin,the original German word Freud applied was "Ich".

Although in his early writings Freud equated the ego with our sense of self, he later began to portray it more as a set of psychic functions such as reality-testing, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, memory, and the like.

Since the id drives need satisfaction, the conditions for it should be made by the second system, the ego. In Freud's view, the ego mediates between the id, the superego, and the external world to balance our primitive drives, our moral ideals and taboos, and the limitations of reality. To successfully mediate between all these parties and fulfill its function of adaptation, the ego must be able to enforce the postponement of gratification of the drives and impulses of the id.

To defend itself from unacceptable impulses, the ego develops defense mechanisms. Those are psychic means for compromise solutions to personal conflicts and problems. Defense mechanisms include repression, reaction formation, projection, regression, denial, rationalization, and sublimation. Ego uses defense mechanisms whenever internal drives threaten to create anxiety or whenever there is a danger of original, unacceptable impulses to resurface.

Superego

The word itself consists of "super', meaning above, or over in Latin, and "ego'. So, it actually is "above-ego", the "higher Power" of our mind, where our conscience and moral norms reside. Religious people may argue that it is the part of us where God dwells and speaks to us.

The superego stands in opposition to the desires of the id —fulfillment of our biological desires very often is socially unacceptable. There are two reasons why an id impulse can become unacceptable: 1) as a result of a need to postpone gratification until there are reality conditions that make it possible (checking reality for suitable conditions to gratify the needs is one of the functions of the ego, as discussed above); 2) as a result of a prohibition imposed by other people (especially parents) and social environment. The sum of thse norms and prohibitions is the content of the superego.

The superego is based upon the internalization of the world view, norms, and mores a child absorbs from his or her parents and the surrounding environment at a young age. As the conscience, it includes our sense of right and wrong, maintaining taboos specific to a child's internalization of parental culture. If the requirements of the superego are not followed, feelings of guilt and/or shame may arise.

According to Freud, superego arises from the struggle to overcome the Oedipal conflict, thus giving it power similar to that of an instinctual drive and making it actually almost a part of unconscious. That's why sometimes feelings of guilt may arise without any conscious mistakes.

The superego has two sides: conscience and the ego ideal. They function like plus and minus, positive and negative: conscience is about punishments and warnings, the ego ideal is about rewards and positive reinforcements. Superego is actually like another set of needs and wishes, but unlike id, they have not biological roots, but social ones.

Development of the concept

After Freud, a lot of work has been done to elaborate also on Freud's concept of the ego, especially his functionalist version of it. Extensive effort was put into detailing the ego's various functions and how they are impaired in psychopathology. Several central ego functions are reality-testing, impulse-control, judgment, affect tolerance, defense, and synthetic functioning.

An important conceptual revision to Freud's structural theory was made when Heinz Hartmann argued that the healthy ego includes a sphere of autonomous ego functions that are independent of mental conflict. Hartmann believed,that psychoanalysis aims to expand the conflict-free sphere of ego functioning and facilitates adaptation , that is, more effective mutual regulation of ego and environment.

David Rapaport systematized Freud's structural model and Hartmann's revisions of it. Clarifying Freud's work, Rapaport portrayed the mind as divided into drives and structures.

Another important name among psychoanalysts is Erich Fromm.His theory is that society and individual are not in opposition to each other.As an individual is a part of society, a large portion of his needs and desires is formed by it. This way id (our instinctive drives and desires) and superego (norms of society) are not two opposing forces, but interconnected ones. Thus, the task of psychoanalysis is to find harmony in the relationships between an individual and society.

Recent ego psychological authors have taken the approach in a number of directions. Some, such as Charles Brenner, have contended that the structural model should be abandoned and psychoanalysts should focus exclusively on understanding and treating mental conflict. Others, such as Frederic Busch, have argued for an increasingly nuanced and sophisticated concept of the ego.

Others have rjected Freud's tripartite structure. Two significant examples are Carl Gustav Jung and Alfred Adler. Jung, one of Freud's early followers, eventually created a school of analytical psychology. His main breaking point with Freud was the id part of the psyche. Jung believed, that there is personal part of our unconscious, as well as what he called "collective unconscious".Jung introduced the term Persona ( a portion of personality similar to superego) and rejectedFreud's distinction between ego and superego.

Alfred Adler, also Freud's pupil in the beginning, started to stress that the motivating force of human life is the inferiority complex. It starts as soon as a child is able to compare itself to other people and realize that some of them are better suited for coping with environment and its issues.From the moment the inferiority feeling takes root,the child tries to overcome it.

Criticisms of Freud's structural theory

Main problem with Freud's tripartite theory for many people is Freud's claim that the id (unconscious) is the biggest and the most imprtant part of human psyche. His emphasis on the dominant role played by drives and instincts of the id, and particular obsession with sexual drive as the basis for just about everything in human life and behavior was and is the the main reason of many criticisms. This "vision of humanity was not merely diminishing but also impoverishing," ^[2] as Prof. Tallis puts in his article "Burying Freud". Freud's view of human as just another animal, governed by unconscious drives and instincts can make one feel pathetic and worthless. Freud's attempt of "opening all secrets with a single key" ^[3] oversimplifies human nature and behavior, that are far too complex to be explained with only one notion.That applies especially to the infamous Oedipus complex, repression of which was, according to Freud, the root of all neuroses. The idea of infantile sexuality is another one of Freud's notions attracting lots of criticism. The idea, that even a very young child has sexual impulses and desires (even if it doesn't understand them)was used as an excuse by child molesters and abusers. On the opposite side of the spectrum lies another problem with attributing all our psychological issues to repressed sexual desires: some psychoanalysts' patients may "remember" the abuses, that never actually happened and even try to accuse the people they "remembered" abusing them. Prof. Tallis quotes sources, according to which in USA "since 1988 1,000,000 families have been estimated to be affected by therapist-inspired charges of sexual molestation, supposedly uncovered by the awakening of the repressed memories." ^[4] There is another inherent contradiction in the Freudian theory of unconscious-the question of repression. In order to actively repress something, the unconscious must be reflectively conscious of it. But if it's conscious enough to qualify something as need to be repressed, it can't be considered and called 'unconscious' then.

Another part of Freud's theory creating a problem is his endoment of the superego with powers similar to those of an instinctual drive. Demands of the environment become another set of needs, albeit, not biological, but social one in nature. So, if, according to Freud, the superego is actually partly unconscious, it becomes very confusing, which needs then, the id ones or the superego ones, are more primal? Even taking the example with the infant as pure id, any mother (and many fathers) will tell that as much as that infant needs food and clean diapers, it needs its parents' love and attention. And it will cry as much to satisfy this (clearly not biological) need.

Endnotes

1. ^  Boeree, C. George. 2006. Sigmund Freud
2. ^  Tallis, R.C. 2001. Burying Freud
3. ^  Webster, R. 1995. Why Freud was Wrong:Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. London: Harper Collins.
4. ^  Tallis, R.C. op.cit.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Boeree, C. George. 2006. Sigmund Freud http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/freud.html
• Freud. 1962. The Ego and the Id (originally published 1923). W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0393001423
• Tallis, R.C. Burying Freud,http://human-nature.com/freud/tallis.html
• Webster, R. Why Freud was wrong: sin, science and psychoanalysis,London: Harper collons, 1995
• Webster, R. Introduction:The legacy of Freud,http://www.richardwebster.net/freudslegacy.html

External links

• Freud's Psycho Dynamic Theory

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