One of Freud's many contributions to the study of human psychology is the concept of the id, ego, and superego. These are different aspects of the personality, and mental health largely consists of the integrated and harmonious functioning of these parts of the personality. While some of Freud's work is obsolete, the concept of id, ego, and superego are key to our understanding of the Cluster B personality disorders, which affect about 10% of the population and account for much of the crime, abuse, and drug addiction in America. Studying these mental structures and behaviors in personality disorders help us understand the same behaviors as they occur in healthier people.
The personality is most likely to reach a balanced state of mental well-being if the individual has had a decent childhood, education, and opportunities for personal growth. When someone's personality is not fully developed, we often see the id, ego, and superego in a tug of war, and the personality seems to be fragmented in a very real sense. In someone with neurosis or personality disorders, rapid mood changes are often seen as the different parts of the personality fight for control.
The id is the unconscious mind. It is present from birth and has little sense of external reality. The id operates on "the pleasure principle," which seeks to avoid anxiety and pain. The libido is the biological need for warmth, sex, food and other basic needs. The "primary processes" are the id's attempts to have its way whenever it wants, without a moral sense or logic to guide it. It can be irrational and nonverbal, and it can be self destructive and self contradictory. It remains a unconscious force. The id relies on the ego to interpret and fulfill the id's needs. The id can make its desires known to the ego and the conscious mind through emotions, dreams, fantasies.
The ego is at the center of the mature personality. The ego operates on "the reality principle." One of the main functions of the ego is "reality testing." The ego asks "Is this true? Is this possible? Is this what I want or at least taking me in the right direction?" The ego takes the primary drives of the id and creates steps to satisfy those emotional or physical needs. The ego is willing to delay gratification. This often involves creating a plan to reach those goals and more refined (creative) sources of pleasure. These are the "secondary drives." The ego is the referee that mediates the id and the superego and tries to satisfy their needs in the real world.
The ego functions as the personality's traffic cop, garbage collector, and courts. Although the ego tends to get a bad rap (We call someone overbearing "egotistical"), most emotional problems are characterized by a weak ego that is unable to balance rationality and emotions.
The ego uses a variety of defenses to against unpleasant emotions, anxiety, and external reality. And the ego is only partly in the conscious realm. A weak ego will take threatening emotions or experiences and repress them as an ego defense, sweeping them under the carpet and out of our conscious awareness. This lets the ego avoid a certain level of stress, but at the price of diminished functioning. The healthy ego doesn't simply push anxiety into the unconscious like a hoarder with a house full of trash.
The superego is the voice of morality and social functioning that starts developing around age 4 or 5. At first these ideas are primitive concepts of reward, punishment, shame, and guilt. In girls we see the rapid development of the superego during the "latency stage" from the beginning of school until puberty, when girls are all about fairness, compassion, and equality. In a healthy person, the superego becomes internalized principles of right and wrong and a sense of conscience.
When the ego fails to develop fully, the superego is seen as an external force that carries with it shame and guilt. Often this is an "introjection" (like a tape loop) of the overbearing parent's voice. We see this frequently in the movies such as "Cary" when she is publicly humiliated at the prom and her mother's voice can be heard "They're all going to laugh at you! They're all going to laugh at you! They're all going to laugh at you!" And the immature superego turns sadistic, inflicting bullying and shame on others.
As I said the other day, the role of the id, ego, and superego might sound like this:
Id: "I want a puppy!"
Ego: "Can I really care for a puppy with my work schedule?"
Superego: "You should get a rescued dog." ... Or maybe "You don't deserve a puppy because you let your goldfish die when you were seven!"
Let's jump the orange Rorschach blot for more....
We tend to think that evil or mental illness is the result of ego run amok. it's a popular theme of classic science fiction that the further beings evolve intellectually, the more amoral and dangerous they become.
Reality is more like The Sopranos - evil people are small minded and petty, full of anxiety, self doubt, self pity, shallow sentimentality, anger, hypocrisy, sadism, and burdened with guilt by neurotic parents. These are not strong people, and their apparent egotism conceals fundamental weakness.
In the narcissist, what seems like an ego run amok is typically the sign of a weak, insecure person who is compensating for their insecurity. Adler called this the false "superiority complex" that compensates for the real "inferiority complex." Freudians would describe the narcissist as using the "reaction formation" defense of pretending the opposite is true (pretending they are superior instead of insecure) while using "projection" to direct their feeling of worthlessness onto others and dehumanize them. The other common problem of the weak ego is the id is free to generate infantile fantasies of omnipotence and rage over the smallest frustrations, and this is typical of the narcissist.
While narcissists suffer from weak egos, they do an amazing job of overcompensating. Consider Mitt Romney and his powerful family. He apparently believed being elected president was a done deal. But where was the reality testing of a strong ego? He thought he was winning until the polls closed. Add to that his notorious temper (yelling at cops), ruthless treatment of working people, and odd vacant personality, and you see the weak ego of someone that never climbed out of his father's shadow. See also John McCain, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Anthony Weiner, and John Edwards.
When the ego is weak, the personality can be ruled by a dysfunctional superego. The superego that has not matured is usually sadistic, and this can be directed inwards or outwards. The dysfunctional superego sees guilt in everyone else. This is projection of their own guilt onto others. Typically these people also have intense shame, so they expect everyone else to feel shame. Not feeling shame and guilt around people with superego pathology is likely to be interpreted as defiance and cause the person with superego pathology to organize a witch hunt. Here we again see the sadism of superego pathology.
In a recent diary about Bible Belt horror stories, people shared their experiences with holy roller neighbors who told them that family tragedies such as the death of child was surely a punishment from God. Here we see both the direct sadism of the superego and the ability to blame that sadism on an outside agency. If these people knew their Bible, they might recognize themselves as "Job's comforters," Job's neighbors who came to accuse him after God had destroyed his life, although Jobs was upright and blameless. God steps in to rebuke the neighbors and restore Job. There are many excellent psychological insights in the Bible, but these seem to be the least popular passages, and it's no wonder.
The literature of psychoanalysis tends to gloss over the role of accusations in superego pathology. Accusations get lumped into technical terms like transference and countertransference, but people with superego pathologies may spew an endless stream of accusations and paranoid ideas. Why? Because someone (the analyst) spoke to them like an adult in a concerned manner, and that's enough to trigger a loss of control in many people. These paranoid ideas can become persistent delusional beliefs about the "bad" qualities of anyone who questions them. Psychoanalysis patients often seem to morph into amateur detectives trying to pry into the personal lives of their counselors, even going as far as to stalk them around town. This search for some sort of evidence and proof can become a vendetta, but it can also help a patient if they have a moment of clarity when they say "Oh my God, what am I doing? Why am I sabotaging other people and my own recovery? Where did this behavior come from?"
Like the ego, the superego is only partly conscious. Therefore, a person's supposedly elevated moral sense is likely to come with its own emotional baggage of primitive, conflicting, and self sabotaging ideas. This unconscious quality catches us unawares when we say "Oh my God, I sound just like my mother." See? This is why we can't have nice things! (oops)
Without a strong ego, we see chronic anxiety or sudden mood swings. The weak ego lacks sufficient reality testing and relies on ego defenses. Freud named ten defenses (Repression, Regression, Reaction formation, Isolation, Undoing, Projection, Introjection, Turning against one’s own person (self harm) , Reversal, Sublimation or displacement.) Splitting was also mentioned and has received more attention in the past several decades.
If you want to see ego defenses in action, just quietly challenge someone's image of a good person. But be be prepared to run, because that will escalate fast. If you know someone well, you may see specific ego defenses turn on like a switch has been thrown.
Regression is an ego defense that causes a sudden change of mood. A person's thoughts and mood change suddenly because they are regressing to a more child-like state. Typically this involves the emergence of old repressed anger and the primitive sadistic superego precursors. Someone feels they are losing at something, so they launch an angry tirade of accusations. Because this is a very effective way to appeal for support from onlookers, regression can feel egosyntonic and empowering while being bad for mental health.
Splitting is the separation of specific ideas, objects, and emotions, leaving a person with the ability to pick the idea or emotion that provides the best defense at that moment. This is much more primitive than it sounds, because there are only a couple choices available. These contradictory ideas seem to be present simultaneously. In politics, we see people who insist Obama is a ruthless dictator and a wimp in mom jeans. We can probably find people who blandly take both positions in the same sentence. This leaves someone without a firm belief system on which to build the ego. And typically splitting is associated with borderline personality types, so rage is likely to be a big part of their defense.
These primitive defenses can be used selectively to target and intimidate opponents. This "selective lack of impulse control" can be abusive and ruthless. Splitting is likely to generate a stream of accusations that are dramatic, enraged, and alarming. Most bystanders won't pay attention closely enough to notice that the accusations are incoherent and contradictory.
Politics and corporations are great for people with weak egos. Reality testing can ignored as the individual surrenders to "the madness of crowds," perhaps as they used to surrender to "the madness of the family" (folie à famille). And if you think back to lousy jobs you might have had, you will probably recall a lack of reality testing in the workplace. If the organization can't tolerate basic reality testing of its assumptions, the personal relationships of the group are probably quite unhealthy. When the emphasis is on gooey neurotic passivity of being "nice" and not rocking the boat, we're very likely find theft and fraud.
Sublimation is considered the most healthy, especially when the primary drives are harnessed to supply creative energy.
Kernberg mentions sublimation in his description of a weak ego:
Ego weakness is reflected especially in the patient's lack of anxiety tolerance, impulse control, and of developed sublimatory channels as evidenced by chronic failure in work or creative areas.
Melanie Klein added the defense mechanism "projective identification," which is a way of forcing other people into the role of the bad guy. This is often seen with splitting of the beliefs about another person in order to create the delusional image of a persecuting enemy who deserves retaliation. Kernberg described specific primitive defense mechanisms as characteristic of borderline personality disorder: projection, denial, devaluation, dissociation or splitting, and projective identification. and they are called borderline defence mechanisms. I covered this in a
previous diary, and here's a lovely couple (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) that seem to be teetering on the edge of a murder-suicide.
The weaker someone is, the more they will resort to these ego defense mechanisms. They use these defenses to reduce anxiety from threatening events and emotions and to protect their self image by justifying the rotten things they may do. The ego is suppressing and mystifying these problems until they no longer threaten the conscious mind.
And the weaker the ego, the more violently someone will respond to criticism. Even an expression of genuine empathy is likely to be interpreted as a sadistic attack that deserves retaliation.
This can actually work fairly well at least in terms of protecting the fragile ego. It can even work professionally and financially for many people. These are "egosyntonic" feelings, behaviors, and rewards which fill the needs of the ego and protect the idealized self-image. But this can create the successful person who is very unhappy and cruel to their family. Still their overall success will prevent them from growing or changing. Or maybe through psychoanalysis they come to realize that they aren't the great person they thought they were, that they actually have egosyntonic ruthless and sadistic character traits. This insight does not automatically make someone change, especially if they have experienced good outcomes from ruthless and exploitive behavior.
And let's be honest, who doesn't admire a ruthless winner? But it's also to be a generally weak passive person (codependent) who is attracted to a personality disorder like a moth to a flame. And under the influence of life's normal stressful catastrophes (divorce, grief, family illnesses, workplace bullying, domestic abuse), they are likely to regress and show at least some traits of a personality disorder. There also seems to be natural attraction between narcissists and borderline personality disorders.
The ego defense of displacement is often associated with political activism, where personal anger is channeled into a social cause. This is most obvious on issues where the passionate angry activist seems to have little or no genuine interest in the topic. Possible thought disorders may also come into play when they seem unable to follow simple trains of thought and instead take refuge in conspiracy theories or other forms of "woo." Also look for a lack of reality testing (Is there a plan here? Is there a goal? What would winning look like and what would the blowback be? Are we accomplishing anything or just having fun acting out?).
On the conservative side of the political spectrum, we see a lot of reaction formation. Note that the red states that are most dependent on the federal government are obsessed with how independent they are, to the point of believing that they are supporting the rest of the country. Reaction formation is often used to negate issues of dependency on others, and this is called counter-dependency. And as I mentioned above, religion is frequently used as a mask for sadism. Right wing blogs often have comments that talk about their love of Christ in the same breath as psychotic omnipotent fantasies about a genocidal purge of their liberal neighbors.
In the last 50 years, there has been much more emphasis on the full development of human potential while paying less attention to Freud's concepts. In Maslow's famous Hierarchy of Needs, we can still see Freud's concepts. Maslows basic needs correspond to the primary drive of the libido, id, and the pleasure principal. Maslow's process of self-actualization corresponds to the effective functioning of the ego and superego. And Maslow's fulfillment through creative work is the healthy sublimation in Freud's secondary drives.
I enjoyed Maslow greatly, but we tend to overlook (or maybe we are repressing) the knowledge that probably at least half the population is not capable of reaching Maslow's further reaches of human development. Maslow describes the importance of being able to have genuine communication about things as simple as the growth of a child, baking a loaf of bread, or the growth of a tree. But for many people, this is a foreign language, like Urdu. There are people that just won't ever "get it," and all the team building exercises and retreat weekends won't fix it.