SIGMUND FREUD

ID, EGO, SUPEREGO


ID : If It Feels Good, Do It

The first and most primitive part of the personality, present in the infant, is the id. Id is a Latin word that means "it". The id is a completely unconscious, pleasure-seeking, amoral part of the personality that exists at birth, containing all of the basic biological drives: hunger, thirst, self-preservation, and sex, for example.

By "sex drive" he really meant  "pleasure drive," the need to seek out pleasurable sensations. People do seem to be pleasure-seeking creatures, and even infants seek pleasure from sucking and chewing on anything they can get into their mouths. In fact, thinking about what infants are like when they are just born provides a good picture of the id. Infants are demanding, irrational, illogical,and impulsive. They want their needs satisfied immediately, and they don't care about anyone else's needs or desires.

EGO: The Executive Director

People normally try to satisfy an infant's needs as quickly as possible. Infants are fed when hungry, changed when wet, and tended to whenever they cry. but as infants begin to grow, adults start denying them their every wish. there will be things they cannot touch or hold, and they must learn to wait for certain things, such as food. Freud would say that reality has reared its ugly head, and the id simply cannot deal with the reality of having to wait or not getting what it wants. Worse still would be the possibility of punishment as a result of the id's unrestrained actions.

According to Freud, to deal with reality, a second part of the personality develops called the ego. The ego, from the Latin word for "I", is mostly conscious and is far more rational, logical, and cunning than the id. The  ego works on the reality principle, which is the need to satisfy the demands of the id only in ways that will not lead to negative consequences. This means that sometimes the ego decides to deny the id its desires because the consequences would be painful or too unpleasant.

For example, while an infant might reach out and take an object despite a parent's protests, a toddler with the developing ego will avoid taking the object when the parents says. "No!" to avoid punishment- but may go back for the object when the parent is not looking. A simpler way of stating the reality principle, then, is "if it feels good, do it, but only if you can get away with it."

SUPEREGO: The Moral Watchdog

If everyone acted on the pleasure principle, the world would be pretty scary. How does knowing right from wrong come into Freud's theory? Freud called the third and final part of the personality, the moral center of personality, the superego. The superego (also Latin meaning "over the self") develops as a preschool-aged child learns the rules, customs, and expectations of society. The super ego contains the conscience, the part of personality that makes people feel pride when they do the right thing and guilt, or moral anxiety, when they do the wrong thing. It is not until the conscience develops that children have a sense of wright and wrong.