Transcript of Audio Lecture
In this next lesson, we will learn about the id, the ego
and the superego.
Slide 2. In short, the Id is a part of the psyche that
says: I want what I want right now. And what it wants met are basic
drives—food, sex, pleasure. The Ego is the part that says: Uh, ID,
later… maybe… it depends. Finally, the Superego is the part that is just
as demanding as the ID, but instead of saying NOW, it says NEVER.
Psychoanalytic theory called this the structural model. How does it fit
in with the topographic model of the conscious, pre-conscious, and
unconscious describe in the previous lesson? Well, the ID is pretty much
entirely unconscious. The Superego is also mostly unconscious. And the
ego spans the unconscious, preconscious, and conscious. Thus, most of
the action in the psyche is going on in the unconscious, where the id,
ego, and superego meet. Let us now look at the id, ego, and superego in
more detail.
Slide 3. Let us start with the id. A useful mnemonic
for the basic characteristics of the id are the three Ps: it’s primary,
it’s primitive, and it operates by the pleasure principle. First,
Primary means that it is innate and (unlike the ego and superego) it’s
present at birth. Second, primitive means it consists of basic,
biological drives like hunger, lust, thirst. Third, it operates by the
pleasure principle, which is not really a deep and philosophic principle
because the ID does not reason, but simply a way for us to summarize the
ID’s operating principle: It wants gratification now.
Slide 4. The problem with the id, though, is that
although it wants what it wants when it wants it, it cannot reason or
plan or anticipate consequences or grasp reality or really do anything.
It’s just a bunch of primitive drives and all it can do is stimulate
some very primitive reactions, some reflexes and perhaps some fantasies
and memories of need fulfillment, so in general it cannot meet it’s
needs, and so it’s needs remain unfulfilled and tension results. Tension
is really the source of what we call libido. The tension or frustration
of basic drives not being met creates libido which is the source of all
psychic energy. Essentially, it’s like a steam engine: the steam—the
unresolved needs of the ID—is building up inside and that steam or
libido provides a general source of energy that can then be used for a
wide variety of psychic processes.
Slide 5. Starting in the first year of life another
psychic process called the ego begins to emerge. This is the part of the
psyche that perceives reality, that can anticipate consequences, that
can decide what to do and direct actions. All of these functions are
called secondary processes or ego functions. To the extent that the ego
functions can reduce the id’s frustrations, the libido generated by the
id’s frustration becomes bound or channeled into ego functions.
Slide 6. So the ego can meet the needs than the id on
its own cannot. But the ego is operating according to a very different
principle. Whereas the ID operates on the pleasure principle, the EGO
operates according to the reality principle. The ego’s rule is to wait
for a safe, realistic, appropriate time and place and object. So for
example if you’re feeling hungry and a person near you is eating a
sandwich, you ego stops your from grabbing the sandwich out of their
hands and instead thinks “wait until I can get food in a way that
doesn’t get me in trouble”. This is the reality principle and is
incomprehensible to the id. The ID wants what it wants when it wants it,
regardless of the limits or the consequences. As another example, if
you’re feeling lustful, you don’t grab and kiss the next person you see.
Instead, the ego says “Let us wait for a safe location, a realistic
partner, and an appropriate time to meet our sexual needs”. The id does
not understand this. So the reality principle and the pleasure principle
are in perpetual conflict. You always have needs that are not being
fully met. Since the id wants those needs met NOW, the ego has to do
work, has to use energy, to prevent the expression of the id’s needs,
hungers and lusts in ways that would be unsafe, unrealistic or
inappropriate.
Slide 7. That’s not the only source of conflict and
those are not the only two types of psychic functions. A third function,
the superego, begins to develop during the phallic stage. The superego
is the set of internalized values learned through parents and other
societal authority figures. We can think of the superego as the
in-dwelling parent. The in-dwelling parent begins to enable the child to
control him or herself on their own without having any actual external
parent around. You can see this forming as children enter into the
phallic stage. For example, you might see a child grab a cookie and
(even though they are unaware that anyone’s watching them) they’ll reach
over and slap their own hand, and say “no, bad, don’t do that!”. It
sounds like their parents talking to them but it’s coming out of their
own mouth, suggesting that they’ve internalized that parental voice. The
two components to the superego are the conscience and the ego ideal. The
conscience is the internalization of all the child’s experiences of
hearing ”no, bad, don’t do that”. The ego ideal is the internalization
of all the child’s experiences of hearing ”yes, good job”. So, the
conscience is the consolidation of negative reactions and resulting
feelings of guilt, and the ego ideal the consolidation of all positive
reactions and resulting feelings of pride. They form at about five or
six years because, according to the Freudian model, this is the time at
the end of the phallic stage when children are identifying with their
parents and thus buying into the parent’s value system. Now whether the
Freudian explanation is correct or not, we do see a change in the
children’s self control at about this age. But because it’s forming at
this time, the psychoanalytic model suggests that the superego is fairly
primitive: it’s a childish morality-- simple, unreasonable, moralistic
and it gets stuck that way in the unconscious early in life. So now that
we’ve added the superego to the psychic picture, let’s consider the
situation the ego finds itself in.
Slide 8. The ego, the part of the psyche that you
identify with and call “me” and that makes realistic decisions has to
deal with three sources of threat or anxiety. Of course there’s always
the external threats out there which the superego and the id are not
paying attention to, but the ego, operating on the reality principle,
does have to monitor. The anxiety evoked by real world dangers, whether
those dangers be lions or psychology 310 exams or rent payments, are
called reality anxiety. But that’s not all the anxiety that the ego
needs to deal with because the ego also has to keep the id’s impulses
under control. There is always the concern—an unconscious concern—that
maybe those impulses are going to slip out, and maybe one of these days
you’ll just reach out and caress the wrong person, or grab someone’s
sandwich away from them. This is called neurotic anxiety, anxiety that
those id impulses are going to break free and cause all sorts of
problems for you. And finally there are the superego’s rules. The
superego, ignoring the needs of the id and the demands of reality, says
there are simple rights and wrongs, and if you do not follow my rules I
will make you feel horrible about yourself. The concern about doing
something that’s going to cross the superego’s very strict standards
causes moral anxiety. In sum, the poor ego is having to deal with
reality anxiety, neurotic anxiety and moral anxiety. How does it defend
itself against these sources of anxiety. That will be the topic we’ll
consider in the next lesson.
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