Id, Ego, Superego - personality structure according to Freud

The idea that a person’s inner world has a complex structure has existed for a long time. Even philosophers of the era of Antiquity and early Christianity identified three spheres: spirit, soul and mind or reason. Currently, the most popular and at the same time the most developed structure of the psyche is the model of S. Freud. It includes three levels - consciousness, unconscious and superconscious - and is the basis of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.

General terminology

So, let's first figure out what it is - the Super-Ego.

In the personality structure, the father of psychoanalysis, Freud, identified three components: Id (“It”), Ego (“I”), Super-Ego (“Super-I”).

The id is the original, fundamental component of personality. These are primary instincts and memories that have been repressed from consciousness.

The id is a component of the personality that she has from birth, it is unconscious, includes instincts and primitive behavior.

This component of the personality functions in accordance with pleasure. If these needs are not met in a timely manner, a person experiences a state of tension and anxiety.

The id plays an important role in infancy, as it is this component of the personality that ensures that all the needs of the baby are met.

Ego.

The ego is that component of the personality that directly interacts with reality. The ego helps a person navigate the outside world and shapes his character. This part of the personality is subject to the requirements and standards of reality.

Super-Ego.

The super-ego is the totality of all attitudes, all values that the child has learned. Freud pointed out three functions of the Super-Ego: the formation of models of social behavior, self-observation, and ethics. This part of the personality directs a person’s activities towards the interests of society. The super-ego tries to improve and adjust human behavior in accordance with the laws, culture, and prohibitions that are accepted in society.

The superego is the last component to be formed in the personality. These are all the moral values, norms, ideals that we have learned - we get them from our parents, they are the ones who make up our idea of right and wrong. The superego begins to manifest itself at the age of 5.

In psychology, the Superego is aimed at the formation of civilized and perfect behavior.

We are not unique..

Let us first find out what is meant by “ego”. The meaning of the word seems to be simple: from Latin it is translated as “I” and, according to the theory of a number of psychoanalysts, is one of the components of the personality structure. Simply put, it is a set of our thoughts, beliefs, our daily habits. We always turn to our own “collection” of thoughts in order to make this or that decision, evaluate something, make a choice, thereby turning life in a certain direction. We often claim, and we ourselves firmly believe in it, that all thoughts are our own, when in fact most of them came to us from friends, family members, colleagues, acquaintances and even strangers. In order for a truly original idea to arise in your head, you need to engage in deep introspection for a very long time. But in everyday life it is difficult for us to do this, so we simply accept what is given to us. Agree, we are forced to keep up with fashion, religion, and ideals that are popular today. Those who seem to stand out from the general mass are looked upon as outcasts or eccentrics. We usually support our positions with statements such as: “But everyone else thinks...” or “What will people think...”. Essentially, this brings us back to the position that in psychology is called “herd mentality.”

Interaction of three elements

Sometimes conflict may arise between these three components of personality. In psychoanalysis, there is a special term “ego strength”, according to which a person with a strong ego is able to successfully cope with stress, problems and difficult situations. Those who have it overdeveloped may be too unyielding, while those who are underdeveloped may be weak-willed.

According to Freud, a healthy personality has a balance between the three components of personality.

Eid

It is innate because it helps the baby survive, that is, it ensures safety and satisfaction of basic needs. In fact, these are our instincts, primitive, but effective and vital. Have you noticed that you do some work automatically, while thinking about completely distant things that are more relevant at the moment? This is the manifestation of the id. It controls us, so much so that sometimes we are unable to cope with it, or we do not always monitor these manifestations.

When a person is hungry, he is unable to concentrate on the tasks at hand. He will not be able to think about anything, since his thoughts will be devoted to food. Do you find yourself daydreaming or daydreaming on an empty stomach about what you would eat if you had a choice? By the way, it is for this reason that it is not recommended to visit supermarkets and grocery stores if you have even the slightest feeling of hunger. A person will not be able to think critically and objectively examine the situation and evaluate it. And this threatens with unintentional expenses. And the products may be chosen completely different from what was previously planned.

In fact, it is an excellent marker; it allows you to notice in time that the body is in a state of frustration against the background of unmet needs. That is, what a person wants to eat, sleep, drink, relax, reproduce, and so on. But there are also disadvantages. If a person lived guided only by instincts, he would be no different from an ordinary animal, and would lose the status of a higher being.

Just imagine, you saw a beautiful thing on someone, and you instantly started taking it off because you liked it. We would snatch food almost from the mouth of the chewer and go to bed at the first signs of fatigue, regardless of where we are at the moment and whether there are conditions for rest. In general, they would turn into savages. And then there could be no talk of any civilized society.

Violations

Psychosis, by the way, develops precisely due to problems with this unbridled primitive energy. The individual loses contact with reality and other components of the personality, which is why he behaves at ease and primitively. He can no longer creatively adapt to different situations, and produces the same reactions to any stimulus. He is unable to understand what his body needs at the moment, as well as what others want and expect from him.

Due to these circumstances, a lot of tension arises, which is not so easy to contain. Therefore, cases of uncontrolled destructive aggression are not uncommon. It can be directed both at yourself and at those around you.

Those who have difficulty with this element may become desensitized to themselves. There is even a condition called alexithymia. A person diagnosed with it is unable to recognize feelings, both his own and those of others. Sometimes it seems to him that he does not know how to experience emotions at all. And indeed sometimes he looks a little distant. He doesn't know what he wants, he doesn't care what happens in the world around him. He does something out of inertia, relying only on the knowledge that this is necessary and correct. But whether you want it or not is not clear.

Formation

The structure of the Super-Ego is formed thanks to the social name of a person (Last Name, First Name, Patronymic), which is recorded in a passport or other identity document. For example, stateless persons or those with identification problems cannot become full-fledged members of society.

A person’s personal name determines the harmony of his Super-Ego. Any change of full name inevitably leads to a change in the structure of the personality component, and therefore changes the social conditions of a person. The correct choice of name is an important condition for harmonious relationships between society and the individual.

Article information

This article was co-authored by. Trudy Griffin is a licensed psychotherapist in Wisconsin. She received her master's degree in clinical psychotherapy from Marquette University in 2011.

Category: Health

In other languages:

English: Understand the Male Ego, Español: entender el ego masculino, Português: Entender o Ego Masculino, Italiano: Capire l'Ego Maschile, Deutsch: Das männliche Ego verstehen, Français: comprendre l'égo masculin, Bahasa Indonesia: Memahami Ego Pria , Tiếng Việt: Hiểu cái tôi của đàn ông, ไทย: เข้าใจอีโก้แบบผู้ชาย, العر بية: فهم الأنا الذكورية, Nederlands: Het mannelijk ego begrijpen

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Manifestation

So, the Super-Ego is the social shell of the personality. The minds of many people are not active, and they perceive the surrounding reality not with their own, but with the collective mind. That is, a person’s personality is labeled as Super-Ego. This label is a criterion for how a person will be treated by society.

That is, if the Super-Ego is disharmonious, the reaction of others to the person will be negative. A person with a harmonious Super-Ego will always be understood, normally perceived and supported by others.

The negative reaction of society absorbs a huge amount of personal power and creates an uncomfortable and unpleasant environment around the person.

Managing your life

In order to achieve balance in the manifestation of the influence of the ego in our lives, we must follow a few simple rules:

determine your own criteria for success and methodically move towards it;
don’t be a complete outsider, trying to swim against the current just for the sake of doing something contrary;
you should understand that the majority does not exist, there is only a specific person with whom you should interact;
anger and negativity must be transformed into creativity;
energy should not be spent on disappointment, but on the creative act.

How to detect influence

Selfish people are proud, vain, thirst for power and self-interest, aggressive competition. Their faithful companions are resentment, jealousy and envy. Passive egoists are cowardly, lazy, deceitful and hate others.

Getting rid of selfishness

It comes in two types: rational (sound) egoism and hedonism. Rational selfishness does not involve harming other people. To show your own individuality, there is no need to infringe on other people in any way. At the same time, hedonism is selfishness that causes harm to others. He is aimless, devoid of effectiveness. It is hedonism that requires its elimination or the search for a balance between it and healthy egoism.

Important! The main advice to help get rid of hedonism: “Do to people as you want them to do to you!”

Find out how to get rid of constant feelings of fear and anxiety.

“Super-Ego” technique

Not long ago, the “Master Whale” technique was developed, which is designed to enable people to independently transform reality through the subconscious. It includes 2 main blocks:

Working with internal attitudes (knowledge and stable ideas about the world, what a person strictly and firmly believes in), fears, complexes, grievances. That is, with all that poisons life, hinders development, interferes with self-realization.
Working with character traits and qualities. Every person has weaknesses and strengths, we are all endowed with qualities that we ourselves or society paint in a negative or positive color. With the help of the technique, a person understands that everything, even negative qualities, was given to him for a reason, that everyone has his own inner strength that will allow him to act. With the help of the technique, a person is able to find this strength, accept qualities that he has tried to suppress all his life and spent a colossal amount of energy on this.

This technique is aimed at working on attitudes and character traits for the sake of personal growth. This is a completely new approach to understanding the psychology of self-development. A person masters theory and independently implements this knowledge into real life.

Opinion

First, as expected, about the good. Of course, S. Freud’s merits in the field of psychotherapy and psychology are great. He was the first to create a detailed theory of personality development, created an original method of treating neurotic disorders, developed a system of clinical observations based on self-analysis, substantiated and put into practice his method of studying mental processes that could not be studied at that time in other ways. Discovered what is beyond our consciousness. But!

Not all of Freud's research received scientific recognition, although his ideas were translated into practice and attracted the attention of many scientists. But what about the stages of personality development (oral, anal, phallic, etc.)? How to relate to the Oedipus complex and Electra? The Great Sigismund Shlomo Freud just wants: “Are you serious?” It turns out that without sexual attraction, even in children, there is no personal development? Oh? Maybe that’s why the child’s treatment did not produce results and the doctor only worked with adults? Or maybe the scientist’s bipolar disorder is to blame for everything?

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The unconscious or it

S. Freud called this level id, which can be translated from Latin as “this” and “something”, and in Russian psychology the concept “it” is more often used. The founder of psychoanalysis considered the unconscious to be the most important area of the psyche. It is innate in nature and is subject to biological, not social laws, because instincts and natural, mainly sexual, needs play a significant role in this area.

In many ways, the content of “it” is determined by hereditary factors. By the way, one of Freud’s followers, K. Jung, believed that the level of the unconscious is also connected with the ancestral memory of the ethnic group, and the archetypes of the collective unconscious are stored there - the most ancient prototypes that we inherited from our distant ancestors.

The content of the unconscious is quite diverse, and at this level there are not only archetypes, but also many other mental formations:

instincts;
natural, primarily sexual needs;
asocial (forbidden) desires repressed from the level of consciousness;
aggressive impulses and desires to dominate;
psychological complexes resulting from the unrealized energy of forbidden desires.

From the point of view of psychoanalysis, it is “it” that largely controls human behavior. If anything, most of the behavioral problems and communication difficulties we experience are related to this level. The whole point is that the unconscious is, as it were, focused on obtaining pleasure at any cost, and society introduces its own, often quite strict, restrictions into this process.