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.
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.
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.
Instincts are made known to us through craving and needs like when we are thirsty or hungry.
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.
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 keeping with a Darwinian perspective, Freud used the term phylogenesis to describe how inherited tendencies
could move from one generation to another.
The instincts move in the most direct way possible to satisfaction for Freud by following the pleasure principle.
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
onnected 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..." 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...
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.
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...
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.
This force keeping content unconscious, that Freud points to, is repression.
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.
Through Psychoanalysis, Freud provides for a way to make what is unconscious,
conscious, via these language links. This is by ...
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.
Because words are heard through our hearing perception,
Freud puts it also in the category of the preconscious.
Visual thinking for Freud is more unconscious.
What makes ideas in the unconscious so difficult to arise in consciousness is
the complex system of repression.
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.
In Metapsychology, Freud described how repression could appear as a muscle tension.
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.
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.
For Freud the alternative idea can be a replacement pleasure for the
unconscious one, and in turn, the alternative can increase in desire...
Repression requires constant energy, and this can be
seen with things like humour which only have a temporary effect.
There are also weaker forms of repression that allow desire to breakthrough...
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.
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.
It's the need for discharge that makes the mind look for replacements.
Freud then hints at a scapegoating example, when people need a release of the sadistic impulse,
but cannot find a suitable object.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Like many other theorists, Freud then explained his version of what he thought was the center of consciousness.
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.
Freud then explained how we came to have an Ego at all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The life and death instincts separate as the ego sublimates and develops life affirming interests,
and the super-ego takes on arguments for destruction.
Going into more depth with the super-ego, Freud explains it's frightening qualities.
For example, the ego can feel beleaguered and lose interest in its projects and become self-destructive.
When there is despondency...
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
How Freud distinguishes the super-ego from the ego-ideal is through childhood development.
The Ego-Ideal is...
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. 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...
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.
Part of that archaic heritage leads to belief in religions, and also group identifications, which are a...
Freud then referenced Totem and Taboo and how rivalries
between generations over access to resources led to surrender and familial group identifications.
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.
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.
Before this paper,
Freud searched around for understandings of that creepy feeling that can come
from the unconscious in The Uncanny, and its...
...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.
Freud caught his own self-consciousness.
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 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.
