Id
[Ucs. – Unconscious/Pcs. – Preconscious/Cs. – Conscious/Pcpt. – Perception]
Id
During the war and afterwards, Sigmund Freud started to piece together his version of the psyche with his papers On Metapsychology, and The Ego and the Id. The value of these papers helped to pave the way for psychoanalysis to map out the mind in a way that could begin to be useful to early clinicians. One of the big difficulties for Freud was explaining how the mind and the body were connected. Much of how our automatic systems work is unconscious. For a long time Freud simply called this process Ucs., but with the influence of the controversial psychoanalyst Georg Groddeck, who like Freud, believed that we are lived through unconscious forces, Freud renamed it the Id, which is latin for “it.”
For Freud he bridged the body and mind with his theory of the instincts in Instincts and their vicissitudes. “…Instinct appears to us as a borderland concept between the mental and the physical, being both mental representative of the stimuli emanating from within the organism and penetrating to the mind, and at the same time a measure of the demand made upon the energy of the latter in consequence of its connection with the body.” A way to look at the word vicissitudes is to look at how instincts for Freud are altered in the mind in response to the outside world. “A stimulus is applied from the outer world to living tissue (nervous substance) and is discharged by action towards the outer world.”
But in a different way than the typical inner and outer distinction of simple phenomenology, Freud looked at human experience as beset by the instincts in the same surprised way as how we are surprised by events in the outside world. “…Perceptions may be said to have the same significance for the ego as instincts have for the id. At the same time the ego is subject to the influence of the instincts, too, like the id…” The “…instinct is a stimulus to the mind.” Instincts are made known to us through craving and needs like when we are thirsty or hungry. “A better term for a stimulus of instinctual origin is a ‘need’; that which does away with this need is ‘satisfaction’. This can be attained only by a suitable (adequate) alteration of the inner source of stimulation.” This means that the mind has to recognize in perception something it thinks will satisfy, and when it finds it, it will want to repeat. For anyone who has a meditation practice, it becomes quite clear how incessant and powerful our instincts are and their need to find satisfaction. “An instinct…always has a constant force…The characteristic [pushing] is common to all instincts, is in fact the very essence of them. Every instinct is a form of activity; if we speak loosely of passive instincts, we can only mean those whose aim is passive.” How we are able to denote inner and outer in our experience is through muscular tension towards what is noticed in perception from the outside world and the inner instinctual needs. This muscular tension aims at achieving satisfaction to keep the nervous system “in an altogether unstimulated condition…The task of the nervous system is – broadly speaking – to master stimuli.”
In keeping with a Darwinian perspective, Freud used the term phylogenesis to describe how inherited tendencies could move from one generation to another. “External stimuli impose upon the organism the single task of withdrawing itself from their action: this is accomplished by muscular movements, one of which reaches the goal aimed at and, being the most appropriate to the end in view, is thenceforward transmitted as a hereditary disposition.” The instincts move in the most direct way possible to satisfaction for Freud by following the pleasure principle. “…Painful feelings are connected with an increase and pleasurable feelings with a decrease in stimulation.”
The source of the instinct is in bodily organs, and based on Freud’s instinct theory, he allowed for the probability of many instincts and he organized them into groups of sexual, self-preservative, and eventually death instincts. “The difference in the mental effects produced by the different instincts may be traced to the difference in their sources.” The aim of instincts is to find satisfaction, and if it’s not possible, to find an approximate satisfaction. “…an instinct may be found to have various nearer or intermediate aims.” A way to look at it is that different aims can have more or less satisfaction compared to how close the bodily organ recognizes through objects what is more or less satisfying. Depending on the object, some of them may satisfy more or less instincts. “[The object] is the most variable thing about an instinct and is not originally connected with it, but becomes attached to it only in consequence of being peculiarly fitted to provide satisfaction…It may be changed any number of times in the course of the [changes] the instinct undergoes during life…”
Sexuality Pt. 1 – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtn0r-sexuality-pt-1-the-aberrations-sigmund-freud.html
Beyond the Pleasure Principle – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gv855-beyond-the-pleasure-principle-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-23.html
In Freud’s view of evolutionary development of the brain, the Id’s instincts push outward until it bumps into perception of reality helping to create the conscious Ego. The Id is “…unknown and unconscious, upon whose surface rests the ego, developed from its nucleus the Pcpt. system….We must recognize the id as the great reservoir of [craving]…” The Ego is able to do this by identifying with objects in the external world, and it becomes conditioned by what gratification it can find in the external world.
Consciousness seems to have a limited bandwidth and how the Id develops our consciousness is through conceptualization. “A conception – or any other mental element – which is now present to my consciousness may become absent the next moment, and may become present again, after an interval, unchanged, and, as we say, from memory, not as a result of a fresh perception by our senses….During the interval the conception has been present in our mind, although latent in consciousness.” This is how Freud looks at the Id, which is timeless, because it holds memory residues as opposed to creating fresh perceptions. Concepts in perception are conscious, and concepts that have moved into absence from perception are unconscious. Freud recognized the internal thought-process “by [its intrusion, and how it’s made into a perception]. It is like a demonstration of the theorem that all knowledge has its origin in external perception. When a [purposeful emotional investment] of the process of thinking takes place, thoughts are actually perceived – as if they came from without – and are consequently held to be true.“
Here Freud makes a distinction between different forms of unconsciousness. Unconscious ideas do not penetrate consciousness without help. The preconscious consists of dormant ideas which are currently weak, but when they become strong they can enter consciousness. “We have found a preconscious activity passing into consciousness with no difficulty, and an unconscious activity which remains so and seems to be cut off from consciousness…The term unconscious…now comes to imply something more. It designates not only latent ideas in general, but especially ideas with a certain dynamic character, ideas keeping apart from consciousness in spite of their intensity and activity.”
This force keeping content unconscious, that Freud points to, is repression. “…The Ucs does not coincide with the repressed; it is still true that all that is repressed is Ucs., but not all that is Ucs. is repressed.” The Ego for Freud also has unconscious ideas that coincide with the preconscious, and how they differ from unconscious ideas is language. Once ideas appear in perception and can be labeled, they then can reside in the preconscious. “‘How does a thing become preconscious?’ And the answer would be: ‘Through becoming connected with the word-presentations corresponding to it.’ These word-representations are residues of memories; they were at one time perceptions, and like all [memory] residues they can become conscious again…Only something which has once been Cs. perception can become conscious, and anything arising from within (apart from feelings) that seeks to become conscious must try to transform itself into external perceptions: this becomes possible by means of memory-traces.” Through Psychoanalysis, Freud provides for a way to make what is unconscious, conscious, via these language links. This is by “…supplying Pcs. intermediate links through the work of analysis…” What is unconscious for Freud are the instincts and we only know about them when an idea can be connected with their feelings and needs. What makes them unconscious is when the idea of an instinctual impulse is altered by repression, and made into a different idea that is able to move into consciousness.
The preconscious, on the other hand, has a memory store of ideas related to impulses that it can work with, at differing levels of distortion. It can work on its own in ways that are recognizable to us. “…We have evidence that even subtle and difficult intellectual operations which ordinarily require strenuous reflection can equally be carried out preconsciously and without coming into consciousness. For example, during sleep, someone finds immediately after waking, that he knows the solution to a difficult mathematical or other problem with which he had been wrestling with in vain the day before.”
Because words are heard through our hearing perception, Freud puts it also in the category of the preconscious. “Verbal residues are derived primarily from auditory perceptions, so that the system Pcs. has, as it were, a special sensory source. In essence a word is after all the [memory] residue of a word that has been heard.” Visual thinking for Freud is more unconscious. “Thinking in pictures is only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious…it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words…”
The Inward Arc of Exploration – Adyashanti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYAQ-EAT5NU
Repression
What makes ideas in the unconscious so difficult to arise in consciousness is the complex system of repression. “It is by no means impossible for the product of unconscious activity to pierce into consciousness, but a certain amount of exertion is needed for this task. When we try to do it ourselves, we become aware of a distinct feeling of repulsion which must be overcome, and when we produce it in a patient we get the most unquestionable signs of what we call his resistance to it. So we learn that the unconscious idea is excluded from consciousness by living forces which oppose themselves to its reception, while they do not object to other ideas, the preconscious ones…Every mental act begins as an unconscious one, and it may either remain so or go on developing into consciousness, according as it meets with resistance or not. The distinction between preconscious and unconscious activity is not a primary one, but comes to be established after repulsion has sprung up…This ‘something’ behaves like a repressed impulse. It can exert driving force without the ego noticing the compulsion. Not until there is resistance to the compulsion, a hold-up in the discharge-reaction, does the ‘something’ at once become conscious as unpleasure.”
During sleep, repression can relax and new connections can be made via dreams. Word presentations, or a train of thoughts, has the ability to label unconscious contents. These word skills are described by Freud as residue of the day’s work. Recent memories can be used as a symbolic language to communicate what the unconscious is wishing. “During the night this train of thoughts succeeds in finding connections with one of the unconscious tendencies present ever since his childhood in the mind of the dreamer, but ordinarily repressed and excluded from conscious life. By borrowed force of this unconscious help, the thoughts, the residue of the day’s mental work, now become active again, and emerge into consciousness in the shape of the dream.”
In Metapsychology, Freud described how repression could appear as a muscle tension. “If it were a question of the operation of an external stimulus, obviously flight would be an appropriate remedy; with an instinct, flight is of no avail, for the ego cannot escape from itself. Later on, rejection based on judgment (condemnation) will be found to be a good weapon against the impulse. Repression is a preliminary phase of condemnation, something between flight and condemnation…The essence of repression lies simply in the function of rejecting and keeping something out of consciousness.” Again, with a meditation practice, the longer a person practices during a sitting, the more the practitioner meets with a lot of resistance. The goal of concentration in basic meditation is to be able to resist impulses to strengthen the ego. Free association, on the other hand, allows one to rattle off whatever comes to one’s mind, without censorship. Exploring ideas in the preconscious may point to unconscious ones that are deeply repressed. As unacceptable thoughts appear, including perverted sexuality and violence, the motives of repression become clear.
Freud consistently reminded readers of ambivalence. Not all pleasures are 100% enjoyable. All of them have some sense of consequence. “We then see that the satisfaction of an instinct under repression is quite possible; further, that in every instance such a satisfaction is pleasurable in itself, but is irreconcilable with other claims and purposes; it therefore causes pleasure in one part of the mind and ‘pain’ in another. We see then that it is a condition of repression that the element of avoiding ‘pain’ shall have acquired more strength than the pleasure of gratification.” Over time, people develop a hierarchy of pleasures based on how much pain they create in the wake of satisfaction. Repression isn’t all pain and part of the reality principle is to be able to avoid stress through inaction towards satisfaction of a lower-level pleasure. Lower pleasures have very painful consequences that cause remorse. They begin to look tainted. One can eventually learn to enjoy non-activity and avoidance of remorse. The mind can then use experience to categorize pleasures and pains to find more sustainable satisfactions that are less tainted with consequence. For Freud, there are emotional investments in gaining satisfaction, and counter investments in avoiding consequences.
As unconscious repressed ideas roil around with instinctual pressure, they do so until there are perceptions in consciousness that can gratify. If the desires are unacceptable to the ego and super-ego agencies, that we will later describe, they will be repressed by the anxiety created by those agencies. This leads to Freud to have to explain differing levels of repression. A primal repression is the original repression of an instinctual impulse that is unacceptable. Secondary repressions deal with distorted alternatives that are also unacceptable to consciousness. Acceptable alternatives can move into consciousness. “During the practice of the psychoanalytic method, we continually require the patient to produce such derivatives of what has been repressed, as in consequence either of their remoteness or of distortion, can pass the censorship of consciousness. We then observe that the patient can go on spinning a whole chain of such associations, till he is brought up in the midst of them against some thought-formation, the relation of which to what is repressed acts so intensely that he is compelled to repeat his attempt at repression.”
For Freud the alternative idea can be a replacement pleasure for the unconscious one, and in turn, the alternative can increase in desire… “As we found in the origin of a fetish, it is possible for the original instinct-presentation to be split into two, one part undergoing repression, while the remainder, just on the account of its intimate association with the other, undergoes idealization.”
Repression requires constant energy, and this can be seen with things like humour which only have a temporary effect. “[Joking…generally lifts] the repression [temporarily, but] the repression is immediately reestablished….Repression demands a constant expenditure of energy, and if this were discontinued the success of the repression would be jeopardized, so that a fresh act of repression would be necessary….[It applies] a steady counter-pressure. A constant expenditure of energy, therefore, is entailed in maintaining a repression, and [energetically] its [letting go] denotes a saving…With a return to waking life the repressive [emotional investments] which have been called in are once more put forth.”
Humour – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtm13-humour-sigmund-freud.html
There are also weaker forms of repression that allow desire to breakthrough “into consciousness by circuitous routes.” Stronger forms of repression can turn into symptoms like anxiety and phobias and or a withdrawal of craving. It can sometimes manifest as a reaction-formation [a move to the opposite], where the mind finds a reward, for example sadism towards the impulse, and the consequent action opposing the repressed wish. “It is very probable that the whole process is made possible by the ambivalent relation into which the sadistic impulse destined for repression has been introduced…” This see-saw for Freud even affects sexual attitudes for some people. His example is of a loving or sadistic attitude that can flip when a rival cannot be beaten. “The hostile attitude has no prospect of satisfaction; consequently – for [energetic] reasons, that is – it is replaced by a loving attitude for which there is more prospect of satisfaction – that is, possibility of discharge.” It’s the need for discharge that makes the mind look for replacements. “This displaceable libido, [or sublimated energy], is employed in the service of the pleasure principle to obviate blockages and to facilitate discharges.” Freud then hints at a scapegoating example, when people need a release of the sadistic impulse, but cannot find a suitable object. “Punishment must be exacted even if it does not fall on the guilty.” Needs appear as a sense of urgency in consciousness. Like a preference that needs the environment to change to get satisfaction. A setup of work, and a payoff of release. We can then alter the environment with labour saving technology to reduce future urgency. “Sensations of a pleasurable nature have not anything inherently [urgent] about them, whereas unpleasurable ones have it in the highest degree. The latter [urgently move] towards change, towards discharge, and that is why we interpret unpleasure as implying a heightening and pleasure a lowering of energetic [investments]…”
In the The Ego and the Id, Freud continued the consolidation of instincts conflicting in the Id after Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which for him, are now the life and death instincts. “The id has no means of showing the ego either love or hate. It cannot say what it wants; it has achieved no unified will. [Life] and the death instincts struggle within it; we have seen with what weapons the one group of instincts defends itself against the other. It would be possible to picture the id as under the domination of the mute but powerful death instincts, which desire to be at peace and (prompted by the pleasure principle) to put [Life], the mischiefmaker, to rest.” It would be possible to look at suicidal ideation as a signal pointing to difficult or insurmountable obstacles. For example, dealing with an incurable disease and wanting to be released from all the pain.
The Id connects with the Ego and Superego or Ego Ideal and it brings the unconscious conflict to those later developed entities. “There are two paths by which the contents of the id can penetrate into the ego. The one is direct, the other leads by way of the ego ideal. The ego develops from perceiving instincts to controlling them, from obeying instincts to inhibiting them. In this achievement a large share is taken by the ego ideal, which indeed is partly a reaction-formation [moving to the opposite] against the instinctual processes of the id. Psycho-analysis is an instrument to enable the ego to achieve a progressive conquest of the id….We see this same ego as a poor creature owing service to three masters and consequently menaced by three dangers: from the external world, from the [craving] of the id, and from the severity of the super-ego. Three kinds of anxiety correspond to these three dangers, since anxiety is the expression of a retreat from danger….The ego tries to mediate between the world and the id, to make the id pliable to the world and, by means of its muscular activity, to make the world fall in with the wishes of the id. It is not only a helper to the id; it is also a submissive slave who courts his master’s love. Whenever possible, it tries to remain on good terms with the id; it clothes the id’s Ucs. commands with its Pcs. rationalizations; it pretends that the id is showing obedience to the admonitions of reality, even when in fact it is remaining obstinate and unyielding; it disguises the id’s conflicts with reality and, if possible, its conflicts with the super-ego too. In its position midway between id and reality, it only too often yields to the temptation to become sycophantic, opportunist and lying, like a politician who sees the truth but wants to keep his place in popular favour.”
Ego
The way Freud put so much emphasis on unconscious processes was appropriate because of how much influence it has in all of our lives. In familiar territory Freud described the important Ego function and the effort it requires to fend off external and internal influences. The prescription to “know thyself” seems a tall order. The Ego is the unconscious mind’s response to perception of the external world. “It is to this ego that consciousness is attached; the ego controls the approaches to…the discharge of excitations into the external world; it is the mental agency which supervises all its own [holistic] processes, and which goes to sleep at night, though even then it exercises the censorship on dreams. From this ego, proceed the repressions, by means of which it is sought to exclude certain trends in the mind not merely from consciousness but also from other forms of effectiveness and activity.”
Like many other theorists, Freud then explained his version of what he thought was the center of consciousness. “It starts out from the system Pcpt., which is its nucleus, and begins by embracing the Pcs., which is adjacent to the [memory] residues. But, as we have learnt, the ego is also unconscious…The ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world through the medium of Pcpt.-Cs.; in a sense it is an extension of the surface-differentiation. Moreover, the ego seeks to bring the influence of the external world to bear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavours to substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle which reigns unrestrictedly in the id. For the ego, perception plays the part which in the id falls to instinct. The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions…Thus in its relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed forces…”
Here Freud explains that feeling we all have of the ego being like the Wizard of Oz behind a curtain, pretending to be more powerful than he is. “The ego is in the habit of transforming the id’s will into action as if it were its own…The ego is itself the projection of a surface….” Freud then explained how we came to have an Ego at all. “The ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensations, chiefly from those springing from the surface of the body. It may thus be regarded as a mental projection of the surface of the body…It is as if it were thus supplied with a proof of what we have just asserted of the conscious ego: that it is first and foremost a body-ego.”
Wizard Revealed – Wizard of Oz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RQxD4Ff7dY
Our conceptual self wants a conceptual well-being of the body based on conceptual measurements. We measure quantity and quality with our perception and think about the conceptual self this way and it eventually conditions in this loop for the rest of our lives. Our conceptual self can then search beyond the body and measure preferences in the outside world, therefore expanding the conceptual self. The feelings of danger come through measurements of poor quality or quantity in perception. Through imitation we can map out objects and people in terms of how helpful, loving, or unhelpful, hating, they are. The ambivalence is based whether those people or objects move from reliable sources of pleasure to unreliable ones. These people and objects become mentally rehearsed and conditioned in our minds to operate independently of those actual people and objects. A lot of our personality is developed through imitation of parents and other important sources of pleasure and pain. We cultivate and rehearse them so that we can master them in the future.
Freud then went on to discuss what happens when the ego has too many identifications, without gaining a distinct personality, including a lot of internal conflict. “If they obtain the upper hand and become too numerous, unduly powerful and incompatible with one another, a pathological outcome will not be far off. It may come to a disruption of the ego in consequence of the different identifications becoming cut off from one another by resistances…There [also] remains the question of conflicts between the various identifications into which the ego comes apart…”
So much of our early identifications become so important since our brain is developing at that time and will lay the foundation for the adult personality. This includes experiences of disappointing objects and people. “Whatever the character’s later capacity for resisting the influences of abandoned object-[investments] may turn out to be, the effects of the first identifications made in earliest childhood will be general and lasting.” These internal personalities take root and become counselors, that could be helpful or pathological. The “king” ego has to navigate all the advice it receives before it can take action. In some cases the deliberation, or rumination, can last a long time. “This modification of the ego retains its special position; it confronts the other contents of the ego as an ego ideal or super-ego…By virtue of its relation to the perceptual system [the ego] gives mental processes an order in time and submits them to ‘reality-testing’. By interposing the processes of thinking, it secures a postponement of motor discharges and controls access to [movement.] In the matter of action the ego’s position is like that of a constitutional monarch, without whose sanction no law can be passed but who hesitates long before imposing his veto on any measure put forward by Parliament.”
Fundamentally, the ego and id orient themselves in different directions, while the ego is supplied by energy from the id. The ego then discharges satisfaction in the world and creates its sense of “the world” by how it remembers where the good and bad measurements are in the preconscious. “All the experiences of life that originate from without enrich the ego; the id, however, is its second external world, which [the ego] strives to bring into subjection to itself. It withdraws [craving energy] from the id and transforms the object-[investments] of the id into ego-structures. With the aid of the super-ego…it draws upon the experiences of past ages stored in the id.”
The conflicts in the id spread out into the ego and super-ego for Freud, and the danger for the ego is to maintain pleasure, or flow, and to avoid boredom and stress, which could lead to self-destructive and suicidal intentions in the super-ego. “Through its work of identification and sublimation [the ego] gives the death instincts in the id assistance in gaining control over the [cravings], but in so doing it runs the risk of becoming the object of the death instincts and of itself perishing. In order to be able to help in this way [the ego] has had itself to become filled with libido; it thus itself becomes the representative of [the life instincts] and thenceforward desires to live and be loved…”
The life and death instincts separate as the ego sublimates and develops life affirming interests, and the super-ego takes on arguments for destruction. “The ego’s work of sublimation results in a [separation] of the instincts and a liberation of the aggressive instincts in the super-ego…In suffering under the attacks from the super-ego or perhaps succumbing to them, the ego is meeting with a fate like that of [microorganisms] which are destroyed by the products of decomposition that they themselves have created. From the [energetic] point of view the morality that functions in the super-ego seems to be a similar product of decomposition…The ego is the actual seat of anxiety. Threatened by the dangers from three directions, [the ego] develops the flight-reflex by withdrawing its own [emotional investment] from the menacing perception or from the similarly regarded process in the id, and emitting it as anxiety. This primitive reaction is later replaced by the carrying-out of the [defense mechanisms] (the mechanism of the phobias). What it is that the ego fears from the external and from the libidinal danger…[is] the fear of being overwhelmed or annihilated…The ego is simply obeying the warning of the pleasure principle.”
Going into more depth with the super-ego, Freud explains it’s frightening qualities. “…We can tell what his hidden behind the ego’s dread of the super-ego, the fear of conscience. The superior being, which turned into the ego ideal, once threatened castration, and this dread of castration is probably the nucleus round which the subsequent fear of conscience has gathered; it is this dread that persists as the fear of conscience.” For example, the ego can feel beleaguered and lose interest in its projects and become self-destructive. When there is despondency “…the ego relinquishes its [emotional investment in itself]…because it feels itself hated and persecuted by the super-ego, instead of loved. To the ego, therefore, living means the same as being loved – being loved by the super-ego, which here again appears as the representative of the id. The super-ego fulfills the same function of protecting and saving that was fulfilled in earlier days by the father and later by Providence or Destiny. But, when the ego finds itself in an excessive real danger which it believes itself unable to overcome by its own strength, it is bound to draw the same conclusion. It sees itself deserted by all the protecting forces and lets itself die….The same situation as that underlay the first great anxiety of birth and the infantile anxiety of longing – the anxiety due to separation from the protecting mother.”
The way that the ego can get in trouble is when it allows release of socially unacceptable desires coming from the id, which then are bashed by the super-ego through the release of stress. In other cases the super-ego creates challenges for the ego that are an all or nothing scenario, but are also too difficult for the ego to accomplish. In the modern world, anything that could involve accusations, police, lawyers, and also excessive work demands mixed with threats of intimate partner rejection, can trigger what psychologists like to call stressors. The ego requires so many skills to satisfy the super-ego, before difficult projects can be engaged with successfully. Flow states happen when the skills in the ego satisfy both the id’s natural instincts and a healthy super-ego. For those with a meditation practice, the method would be to strengthen the ego with mindfulness of the impulses that interfere with the ego’s healthy goals and purposes. One can just be aware with the anxious sensations connected to those thoughts, faces, voices, and feelings. Instead of manipulating them, just welcome them quietly without manipulating muscle tension to get rid of them. The only added thing that is needed is to move the attention to the pain of those impulses, see how it interfere’s with the healthy ego’s motivation, and to let the pathological narratives drop on their own. Then continue developing ego skills and move on with life.
Super-ego/Ego Ideal
Like the Id, the Super-ego for Freud has less of a sense of control compared to the ego, and is capable of surprising it while seeming like an authority outside the body. “…This part of the ego is less firmly connected with consciousness….” How identifications work with the super-ego goes back to Freud’s cannibalism theory in Group Psychology. Needs appear and are satisfied by objects, but they can also be disappointed by lost objects. The archaic cannibalistic attitude of trying to consume the powers of others developed later on to a less violent imitation. Character for Freud is our ability to emotionally feed on role models and love objects, and when they disappoint, or are lost there is “an alteration of his ego which can only be described as a setting up of the object inside the ego…This introjection, which is a kind of regression to the mechanism of the oral phase, the ego makes it easier for the object to be given up or renders that process possible…From another point of view it may be said that this transformation of an erotic object-choice into an alteration of the ego is also a method by which the ego can obtain control over the id and deepen its relations with it – at the cost, it is true, of acquiescing to a large extent in the id’s experiences. When the ego assumes the features of the object, it is forcing itself, so to speak, upon the id as a love-object and is trying to make good the id’s loss by saying: ‘Look, you can love me too – I am so like the object.'”
The mind fantasizes about objects and people so its important characteristics are remembered, but it also gives the id material for wishes so it can manipulate those objects according to preference and to rehearse scenarios based on those wishes. These imitations of people in particular can include narratives that are more or less entertaining, but provide a lot of information related to role models, whether good or bad ones. Even more disturbing, the skill of recreating people in the mind can also recreate critical, threatening and abusive people. A kind of possession. It can become very complicated how the ego can respond to a negative super-ego, and the below list is not exhaustive. For example, the ego can…..
- Look for authoritative excuses to validate past behaviour, and to possibly continue it.
- Transfer hatred and resentment towards real people who represent those negative voices in the mind.
- Agree with the negative voices and self-abandon with addictions or completely self-destruct in suicide.
- Transfer worship towards people who represent those voices, to masochistically ask for punishment and give one’s ego to the ruler for them to guide.
- Similar to the above situation, the ego can add love to the worship and offer sex and tenderness to the authority figure in the mind and project it onto real people who represent those objects.
- Join with the sadistic voices to identify with them, strengthen the ego, and gain power to achieve one’s goals through their beliefs.
Group Psychology: https://rumble.com/v1gvcxr-group-psychology-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-33.html
How Freud distinguishes the super-ego from the ego-ideal is through childhood development. The Ego-Ideal is “..an individual’s first and most important identification, his identification with the parents in his own prehistory…It is a direct and immediate identification and takes place earlier than any object-[investment]…The super-ego is, however, not simply a residue of the earliest object-choices of the id; it also represents an energetic reaction-formation [moving to the opposite] against those choices. Its relation to the ego is not exhausted by the precept: ‘You ought to be like this (like your father).’ It also comprises the prohibition: ‘You may not be like this (like your father) – that is, you may not do all that he does; some things are his prerogative.’ This double aspect of the ego ideal derives from the fact that the ego ideal had the task of repressing the Oedipus Complex; indeed, it is to that revolutionary event that it owes its existence.” The Oedipus Complex outlines in childhood what you should be and what you shouldn’t be, in order to get favour from your parents. Freud borrowed from Kant’s Categorical Imperative where one should act responsibly as you would expect others to, like following a universal law that applies to everyone. A ‘should.’
Crucially, the super-ego takes on the roles of the father and authority figures in society, having a huge affect on the individual. The difference in life enjoyment, peace, and an emotional standard of living, so to say, is like the difference between living different lives. How the world is judged, viewed, enjoyed, or loathed, has so much to do with the parental influence imitated into the mind. With rehearsal and practice, the individual could have a pathological parent steering them towards chaos and destruction, or a healthy parent leading the individual towards fulfillment. One person’s categorical imperative may not match another’s. With much uncertainty in the world, one’s ego can be surprised by results and facts, leading the ego to find fault with the super-ego. A healthy mind for Freud requires an ego that vets suggestions from the id and the superego, along with suggestions from culture.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle: https://rumble.com/v1gv855-beyond-the-pleasure-principle-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-23.html
The super-ego not only absorbs dispositions of parents of the current generation, but it also inherits from past authority figures, that had to survive so many dangers for us to exist. Freud references periods of glaciation that would have challenged those generations. Part of the heritage of individuals “…is a heritage of the cultural development necessitated by the glacial epoch.” The Id recognizes pleasure in the most basic way, but it also contains primordial knowledge of past survival that feeds energy to the super-ego. Wanting satisfaction is not the same as knowing where solid sources of satisfaction can be found. A modern example of this is watching visual programming on TV or other devices and seeing extremely high standards of success and beauty transmitted by culture directly to our brains. These standards are often difficult or impossible to attain. The super-ego picks it up and thinks “that would be great to have!” But the ego begins to feel anxious and fatigued because it cannot or doesn’t yet know how to achieve those ideals in the real world. Freud synonymously used the super-ego and the ego-ideal, but the ego-ideal eventually differentiated to a more personal self-monitoring of how one wants to be in the world of ideals, including early conflicts with role-modeling and desires for attention from parents. This Freud called the Oedipus Complex. This super-ego connection with the id helps to explain why social rewards and punishments have so much colour, perfume and verve, but also anxiety and emotional reactivity. It feels racy but dangerous. Achieving the super-ego’s standards leads to a big psychological reward, and failure to a deep depression. The ego feels it is losing its sense of agency when it follows this critical taskmaster.
Here Freud was an influence to René Girard, as one can see the Oedipus Complex triangle can now move beyond the family to ideal role models in society, but also ancestor role models. The ones who survived and procreated so that we now exist. “The Ego Ideal is therefore the heir of the Oedipus Complex, and thus also the expression of the most powerful impulses and most important [craving adjustments] of the id. By setting up this ego ideal, the ego has mastered the Oedipus Complex and at the same time placed itself in subjection to the id. Whereas the ego is essentially the representative of the external world, of reality, the super-ego stands in contrast to it as the representative of the internal world, of the id. Conflicts between the ego and the ideal will ultimately reflect the contrast between what is real and what is psychical, between the external world and the internal world. Through the forming of the ideal, what biology and the [adjustments] of the human species have created in the id and left behind in it is taken over by the ego and re-experienced in relation to itself as an individual. Owing to the way in which the ego-ideal is formed, it has the most abundant links with the…archaic heritage. What has belonged to the lowest part of the mental life of each of us is changed, through the formation of the ideal, into what is highest in the human mind by our scale of values.”
Part of that archaic heritage leads to belief in religions, and also group identifications, which are a “substitute for a longing for the father…The self-judgment which declares that the ego falls short of its ideal produces the religious sense of humility to which the believer appeals in his longing. As the child grows up, the role of the father is carried on by teachers and others in authority; their injunctions and prohibitions remain powerful in the ego ideal and continue, in the form of conscience, to exercise moral censorship. The tension between the demands of conscience and the actual performances of the ego is experienced as a sense of guilt. Social feelings rest on identifications with other people, on the basis of having the same ego ideal.”
Freud then referenced Totem and Taboo and how rivalries between generations over access to resources led to surrender and familial group identifications. “Even today the social feelings arise in the individual as a superstructure built upon impulses of jealous rivalry against his brothers and sisters. Since the hostility cannot be satisfied, an identification with a former rival develops.” This can extrapolate towards larger groups in culture. A lot of group cohesion is when neither member can take the place of the leader, like the primal father, and love and affiliation becomes the only choice for survival. Laws of prohibition are followed and cultural imitation is taken in. The ego has to make alterations to actions, which also signals limits to the id, which can then be passed onto descendants and be taken on by future generations in their own id. Freud’s version of Darwinian rebirth. “The super-ego…[is in] relation with the [hereditary] acquisitions of the id and [making] it a reincarnation of former ego-structures which have left their precipitates behind in the id…It reaches deep down into the id and for that reason is farther from consciousness than the ego is…Thus in the id, which is capable of being inherited, are harboured residues of the existences of countless egos; and, when the ego forms its super-ego out of the id, it may perhaps only be reviving shapes of former egos and be bringing them to resurrection.” Past successes, psychological preferences, and conflicts, show up in the id and then are brought into the higher functions as the individual has to face similar dilemmas of past ages. Voices and faces unleashing criticisms escalate between the ego and the super-ego. Freud compared it to “the Battle of the Huns in Kaulbach’s painting.” The super-ego for Freud, has a positive side in that it helps to explain the mysterious desires of the id to the ego. Primordial messages of what survival skills that are missing from the ego. Carl Jung delved into his version of this with his Personality Types, which are essentially groups of skills that may or may not have been developed. “…The super-ego is being influenced by processes that have remained unknown to the ego. Thus in this case the super-ego knew more than the ego about the unconscious id.”
Totem and Taboo: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html
Before this paper, Freud searched around for understandings of that creepy feeling that can come from the unconscious in The Uncanny, and its “elusive quality, something that escapes as soon as it is felt,” as Valérie Bouville describes in her analysis of the paper. For Freud, the unconscious, archaic, primal intentions can slip through repression and bring back old superstitions, ghosts, a feeling of fate, a whiff of an idyllic past to reconnect with, déjà-vu, demonic enemies that appear as an Other, and life possibilities to develop that haven’t been thus far. For example, Freud describes the primal stage of narcissism, when one is young and one is one’s own ideal, as something that remains as a residue that comes back to remind the developed ego of the opportunities that were lost over time. An example of The Double, was when Freud was mistaken over his reflection in a mirror in a sleeping car on a train. “I can still recollect that I thoroughly disliked his appearance.” Freud caught his own self-consciousness. “A special faculty is slowly formed there, able to oppose the rest of the ego, with the function of observing and criticizing the self and exercising a censorship within the mind, and this we become aware of as our ‘conscience.’ The fact that a faculty of this kind exists, which is able to treat the rest of the ego like an object—the fact, that is, that man is capable of self-observation—renders it possible to invest the old idea of a ‘double’ with a new meaning and to ascribe many things to it, above all, those things which seem to the new faculty of self-criticism to belong to the old surmounted narcissism of the earliest period of all. But it is not only this narcissism, offensive to the egocriticizing faculty, which may be incorporated in the idea of a double. There are also all those unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in phantasy, all those strivings of the ego which adverse external circumstances have crushed…”
The uncanny feeling can be more or less disturbing, depending on whether the old conflicts are still insurmountable, but if the ego has developed enough skill and maturity, and opportunities appear in reality, the dormant unconscious intentions may nudge and push into consciousness as something that now has a possibility of being achieved, including the relief of repression. It can be a motivation for the ego to learn to sublimate those skills by gaining pleasure in learning, by metaphorically ingesting those missing characteristics of The Double. Because of that cannibalistic requirement of feeding, in order to introject new skills, pleasure becomes an important component of learning. Only when there is enough pleasure in concentration or absorption, are you actually satisfying the id with these new skills you are developing. This is how we are able to sublimate in a successful way: Pleasure. When learning is treated as a drudgery, development is slower. As the ego gains pleasure in developing new skills, it can achieve things that also provide more social rewards and less blame. So if your job, for example, provides a lot of appreciation from society, enough rewards to get attractive intimate partners, but you also find pleasure in developing those skills for their own sake, then the more conventional happiness you will experience. There will be more fireworks, perfume, flavour, verve, colour, and also an anxious concern to preserve it. Of course, this juggling is very difficult and in times of impermanence, illness and dying, that conventional happiness evaporates. For most of us, life experience includes a lot more stress and striving to placate those angry and critical voices that hector: “You’re not good enough!”
The Jhanas “Can we concentrate long enough to gain pleasure learning new skills?”: https://rumble.com/v1gqznl-the-jhanas.html
I should not be surprised to hear that psychoanalysis, which concerned with laying bare these hidden forces, has itself become uncanny to many people for that very reason. ~ Freud, in The Uncanny
The strangeness of self-attacking and that of attacking others becomes more lucid with Freud, when the experience of these entities in our mind feel perplexing. The id wants pleasure according to the Pleasure Principle, and the ego must use the Reality Principle to respond to obstacles in perception, and the id has inherent dispositions that are triggered in “SHOULDS” that are inherited from the distant past and copied from parents and authority figures. The ego ventures to get satisfaction, and failures create rumination based on parental faces, ancestral feelings of anxiety, and symbols that appear in the mind that haven’t been conceptually assimilated by the ego yet. The ego searches for past solutions, tries to find new ones, or gives up the search with self-abandonment. If there is success, then the ego speaks with the super-ego and criticizes others for not learning what was important. If the ego fails, the diametrically opposing super-ego takes aim at the ego, along with criticism from other people, creating anxiety. This is the main reason why people have trouble taking in criticism, especially when the ego is fed up and can’t take anymore stress. It’s also the reason why people desperately want to move out of a masochistic self-attacking position and move into a more powerful sadistic position where others are criticized instead. It leads inevitably to an intangible something that motivates us beyond material success. It goes into what Otto Fenichel described as Narcissistic Supply.
The Ego and the Id – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781891396816/
On Metapsychology – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140138016/
The Uncanny- Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780367253578/
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/