The id, the ego and the superego

Text 7

Freudian psychological reality begins with the world, full of objects. Among them is a very special object, the organism. The organism is special in that it acts to survive and reproduce, and it is guided toward those ends by its needs – hunger, thirst, the avoidance of pain.

A part – a very important part – of the organism is the nervous system, which has as one its characteristics a sensitivity to the organism’s needs. At birth, that nervous system is little more than that of any other animal, an “it” or ID. The nervous system, as id, translates the organism’s needs into motivational forces, which are instincts or drives. Freud also called them wishes. This translation from need to wish is called the primary process.

The id works in keeping with the pressure principle, which can be understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately. 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 id is nothing if not the psychic representative of biology.

Unfortunately, although a wish for food, such as the image of a juicy steak, might be enough to satisfy the id, it isn’t enough to satisfy the organism. The need only gets stronger, and the wishes just keep coming. You may have noticed that, when you haven’t satisfied some needs such as the need for food, it begins to demand more and more of you attention, until there comes a point where you can’t think of anything else. This is the drive breaking into consciousness.

Luckily for the organism, the conscious, that is hooked up to the world through the senses. Around this little bit of consciousness, during the first year of child’s life, some of the “it” becomes “I”, some of the id becomes ego. The ego relates the organism to reality by means of its consciousness, and it searches for objects to satisfy the wishes that id creates to represent the organism’s needs. This problem-solving activity is called the secondary process. The ego, unlike the id, functions according to the reality principle, which says “take care of a need as soon as an appropriate object is found”. It represents reality and, to a considerable extent, reason.

However, as the ego struggles to keep the id (and the organism) happy, it meets with obstacles in the world. It occasionally meets with objects that actually assist it in attaining its goals. And it keeps a record of these obstacles and aides. In particular, it keeps track of the rewards and punishments meted out by two of the most influential objects in the world of the child – mother and father. This record of things to avoid and strategies to take, becomes the superego. It is not completed until about seven years of age.

There are two aspects to the superego. One is the conscience, which is an internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is called the ego ideal. It derives from rewards and positive models presented to the child. The conscience and the ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego with feelings like pride, shame and guilt.

It is as if we acquired, in childhood, a new set of needs and accompanying wishes, this time of social rather than biological origins. Unfortunately, these new wishes can easily conflict with ones from the id. You see, the superego represents society, and society often wants nothing better than to have you never satisfy your needs at all.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-27