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Ego, Superego and Id
In his theory of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud sought to explain how
the unconscious mind operates by proposing that it has a particular structure.
He proposed that the self was divided into three parts: the Ego, the Superego,
and the Id.
The general claim that the mind is not monolithic or homogenous continues
to have an enormous influence on people outside of psychology. The mind
is also the point in the body in which all of the sadistic tendencies
arise.
The ancient Greeks also divided the soul into three parts of their own,
with only one part in common. The Greek parts were the desiring part (which
is like what Freud called the id, but without so much implication of suppressed
deviant sexuality), the spirited part, and the reasoning part.
The Id
The Id (Latin, "it" in English, "Es" in the original
German) represented primary process thinking — our most primitive
need gratification type thoughts. The Id, Freud stated, constitutes part
of one's unconscious mind. It is organized around primitive instinctual
urges of sexuality, aggression and the desire for instant gratification
or release. Freud borrowed the term Id from the "Book of the Id"
by Georg Groddeck, a pathfinder of psychosomatic.
The Superego
The Superego ("Über-Ich" in the original German, roughly
"over-I" or "super-I" in English) represented our
conscience and counteracted the Id with a primitive and unconscious sense
of morality. This primitive morality is to be distinguished from an ethical
sense, which is an egoic property, since ethics requires an eligibility
for deliberation on matters of fairness or justice. The Superego, Freud
stated, is the moral agent that links both our conscious and unconscious
minds. The Superego stands in opposition to the desires of the Id. The
Superego is part of the unconscious mind, and based upon the internalization
of the world view, norms and mores a child absorbs from parents and the
surrounding environment at a young age. As the conscience, it is a primitive
or child-based knowledge of right and wrong, maintaining taboos specific
to a child's internalization of parental culture.
Freud considered the Oedipus Complex to be a formative stage in the development
of the superego.
The Ego
In Freud's view the Ego stands in between the Id and the Superego to balance
our primitive needs and our moral beliefs and taboos. ("Ego"
means "I" in Latin; the original German word Freud applied was
"Ich".) He stated that the Ego consists of our conscious sense
of self and world, a highly structured set of unconscious defenses that
are central in defining both individual differences in character or personality,
the symptoms and inhibitions that define the neuroses, and ultimately
serving as the executive branch of the mind which leads to action. Relying
on experience, a healthy Ego provides the ability to adapt to reality
and interact with the outside world in a way that accommodates both Id
and Superego. Freud believed the energy used to run the ego (such as to
dissolve reality, moral and neurotic anxiety) was derived from the Id
in the form of cathexis and from the Superego in the form of anticathexis.
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