|
The id, ego, and super-ego are the divisions of the psyche according to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's "structural theory". The id contains "primitive desires" (hunger, rage and sex), the super-ego contains internalized norms, morality and taboos, and the ego mediates between the two and may include or give rise to the sense of self and the well being of humans.
History Most people who identify with the contemporary school of ego psychology place the theory's beginnings with Freud's 1923 book The Ego and the Id, in which he firmly established his structural theory. However, the first traces of the theory appear in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), in which it was introduced due to his dissatisfaction with his topographic scheme (i.e. the conscious, preconscious and unconscious). The Ego, the Id, and the Ideal of the Ego were then used in Group Psychology and Ego Analysis (1921); Freud would later replace the "Ideal of the Ego" with the Super-Ego. Id The id is the system "which behaves as though it were the Unconscious", in effect, the reservoir of gratification impulses such as the primitive instinctual drives of human sexuality and aggression. Freud believed that the id is inborn, and the drives of the id are said to work according to the pleasure principle, requiring immediate gratification or release without concern for external exigencies. Hunger itself may be seen as a pure id desire, and the crying of a hungry infant a manifestation of its instinctive attempt to satisfy that need. Ego In Freud's theory, the ego mediates among the id, the super-ego and the external world. Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives, morals, and reality while satisfying the id and superego. Its main concern is with the individual's safety and allows some of the id's desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal. Ego defense mechanisms are often used by the ego when id behavior conflicts with reality and either society's morals, norms, and taboos or the individual's expectations as a result of the internalization of these morals, norms, and taboos. Although in his early writings Freud equated the ego with the sense of self, he later began to portray it more as a set of psychic functions such as reality-testing, defence, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory. The word ego is taken directly from Latin where it is the nominative of the first person singular personal pronoun and is translated as "I myself" to express emphasis. Ego is the English translation for Freud's German term "Ich." Super-ego Freud's theory says that the super-ego is a symbolic internalization of the father figure and cultural regulations. The super-ego tends to stand in opposition to the desires of the id because of their conflicting objectives, and is aggressive towards the ego. The super-ego acts as the conscience, maintaining our sense of morality and the prohibition of taboos. Its formation takes place during the dissolution of the Oedipus complex and is formed by an identification with and internalization of the father figure after the little boy cannot successfully hold the mother as a love-object out of fear of castration. "The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more powerful Oedipus complex more rapidly succumbs to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on — in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt" (The Ego and the Id, 1923). The concept of super-ego has been subject to criticism for its sexism. Women, who are considered to be already castrated, do not identify with the father, and therefore form a weak super-ego, apparently leaving them susceptible to immorality and sexual identity complications. In Sigmund Freud's work Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) he also discusses the concept of a "cultural super-ego". The super ego operates off of the moral principle, which means that if the needs of the super-ego are not met, then we feel guilty. Jungs definition of ego Jung and Freud, psychiatrists who collaborated between 1906 and 1913, developed theories that were motivated foremost by their attempts to understand and cure neuroses. Both used the terms ego, consciousness, and unconscious. Both were compelled to recognize and try to explain causal forces in the unconscious that manifested dramatic opposition to the conscious attitude. However, Jung defined "ego" his way, and did not use the terms "id" or "superego". People Related topics | ||||||||
|
| |||||||||
 |
|
| |