Then the ego
arises and develops as an adjunct to the id. It mediates the id because you
can't always get what you want. There's some pretty serious consequences
to impulsive irrational behavior, especially when you get older but
certainly when you're a toddler and you start learning that the world will operate on you
and it will tolerate certain things and it won't tolerate other things and you have
to learn
to get along in that world. You have to learn to operate within those
constraints
and so the ego then develops as an adjunct to the id
and it operates then on the reality principle. So,
what can I get realistically, and young children,
as we've seen with cognitive stages of development
à la Piaget, do not have the capacity to really
take into account other people's perspectives, needs, wants, wishes.
They're really operating on a very self-centered platform until they're old
enough to develop the cognitive capacity to
abstractly think about other people and
hypothetically run scenarios in their minds. So,
the reality principle just gives you this idea that you can
get some things if you engage in certain kinds of behaviors and
you'll be less successful if you don't engage in those behaviors.
So we have secondary process now. Adaptive measures taken by the mind
to assess needs and the ability to get desires
fulfilled, wishes fulfilled. So, you have that primal drive. In this case, I
want a cookie, I want a cookie, but maybe I'm a little bit older and I know that
screaming and yelling doesn't get the cookie.
Not only doesn't get the cookie, but I get punished on top of it. So, that's
that makes it worse. Not only don't I get what I want, I get something I don't want.
So, now ego starts to develop and takes these things into account
and as it's taking it into account it says, well, let me think about this for a minute. Now,
the kid isn't necessarily a devious operator here
carefully assessing the situation, but responds to the environment. So,
go into the kitchen and we'll just put a mom and dad in this scenario.
Mom, can I have a cookie?
No, it's almost dinner time. You can't have a cookie. Oh, okay.
So you're not going to tantrum, not going to flip out, just going to nominally agree,
and then go into the other room and go, dad? Huh?
Can I have a cookie? Well, stupid dad like me goes, yeah, yeah, whatever, have a
cookie.
So, the kid doesn't run in and go, Ha! Dad said I can have a cookie, ha ha,
right? The reality principle and the secondary process
might allow that child to assess the situation.
The mom leaves to go do something and the kid walks in now and gets the cookie,
being caught in the act of getting the cookie by the mom now says,
dad said I could have one. See? I'm not doing something wrong.
I know that you said I couldn't, but dad said I could and he's an authority too so I
took a realistic means into consideration and
now I shouldn't be in trouble because I did what I was supposed to. I asked permission and I got
the cookie because he said I could have it. But, in that act of being caught,
in a young child who's developed the reality principle and the secondary
process
they're not a moral creature at that point from a Freudian perspective,
they are amoral, right? They are without morals. They are just operating in the
environment but
the moral principles that we talked about with Kohlberg and others
in development are coming along. We're learning what gets punished and what
gets rewarded
and ultimately we're going to internalize these ideas
and the superego starts to develop. Now the superego
is operating on the morality principal,
that you should do certain things and you should not do other things. In other
words, we're talking about conscience
developing as one learns what society and others expect of their behavior and
and desires. Some things you could say I really want and other things you better not say
you really want because other people will judge you very negatively
for even voicing those desires. Now, what's interesting is there's no thought you
can't have. There's no behavior you couldn't engage in
no matter how repulsive it may seem to most members of society
and just thinking something doesn't make you guilty of doing something. So the
idea of sinning in your heart is a
is a moral principal idea of what you should and shouldn't do
but, you know, if we look at conscious experience of what one is capable of thinking of
and you look at say a writer like Stephen King who writes about horrifying situations,
people look at that and they go, oh, I didn't think that he thought that, but they
read it because it's really enjoyable and they can gratify
those really primal urges to at least think about,
right, and primary process these things which they can't even acknowledge
having any thought's of outside of having read the book but
in reading the book they have the same thoughts that perhaps the writer had but
the writer,
if that was the kind of person he was, is what he thought, then we would have to lock
him up because obviously he's insane and he's a danger to everybody. But he's not.
He's just a person comfortable having thoughts most people find repulsive,
writing them down, and there is a ready market for that kind of thing
because they can gratify
these id impulses through just reading about his accounts,
the things that he was he was thinking
that were negative to most people. But the conscience then develops and says, well
you shouldn't do that.
You might think it, but you better not do it. But we know that some people do
things they shouldn't do.
So maybe their consciences aren't fully developed. The ego ideal is what we believe
we should aspire to. What would we be if we were a perfect person? Now, you can't
be a perfect person
but they're is as we will see in the idea of cognitive dissonance when we get into
the social psych chapters,
alright, this standard you hold for yourself that your behavior does not
always meet and when your standard
and your behavior do not meet with one another, it causes
some discomfort. Well, there's ways you can resolve the discomfort and for Freud it
would be
defense mechanisms, which we'll talk about in a minute. But you have this notion of
what it would be like to be a perfect person,
and so we're looking at the morality principle and conscience and ego ideal
and, as such,
going back to our cookie episode,
the id, the kid just tantrums, right,
and the ego developing, the kid assesses his ability to get the cookie,
succeeds in getting a cookie, thinks he succeeds, gets caught,
but has an excuse, but then what happens now?
Dad said I can have a cookie and mom goes, oh
no, I can't believe you would do that. You're manipulating your father.
You're manipulating me. You should feel bad.
I can't believe you would do that to us. You knew that you
shouldn't have a cookie and you went and found a way to have one
anyway, and thus you should feel
guilty. That guilt feeling, then, is the superego developing
because before that why would the kid feel guilty? They just wanted a cookie.
But in this sense the society, through the parents as agents of society,
is telling the child there are certain things you should feel bad about
wanting or doing and for me one of the easiest ways to remember
how this all works is to think about that classic cartoon set up.
Well, let me go here first, just
to look at this. A lot of people use an iceberg as a
metaphor for these concepts. The
ego is the most conscious aspect of
your reality. So, that's what you're aware of
and it mediates, as we'll see, the id and the superego.
The id is perhaps the most unconscious aspect
of your personality but there's a lot of your super-ego that's
unconscious as well but can become conscious. So, when you have guilt feelings,
you're conscious of feeling guilty. So, above this line we have conscious
experience.
But for Freud, these id impulses are so deep, so dark, so
primal, that you can't be an adult and acknowledge them in yourself, that you can't
even bring them to consciousness, and so they might gain expression through
dreams
or through some kind of other vicarious means like watching
horrible movies or reading books that are titlating in ways that you
wouldn't
cop to or admit to thinking on your own but
but largely you're not thinking that you have these desires. They gain expression
though,
and it's this conflict between the id
and the superego that goes on all the time. So,
my little trick for remembering this is that you look at that cartoon
angel and devil on the shoulder, right? You have
this person who has a dilemma. Should I do this?
I really want to do this, but I kind of know I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't even
acknowledge wanting to do this
much less do it, and you have the devil pops up and goes,
do it, do it, you know you should do it. Go ahead. You know you want to.
You can get away with it. Kind of think we could do this, right? And that's the
that would be the id pushing the person towards doing something
that they really want deep down,
and then you've got the angel that pops up and goes, oh, I can't even believe you would think this
don't listen to him. You're so much better than that.
You're not the kind of person that would even think these kinds of things much
less do them.
At the head in the middle between the devil
and the angel is your ego trying to work out and negotiate the differences between
the two
and makes the decision consciously. Not necessarily conscious
from a Freudian perspective because they're going to do something, and whatever they wind up
doing
Freud would say, well, it's kind of predetermined by the dominance of the id or the dominance
of the superego,
beyond consciousness. They might rationalize the choice they make
but it had more to do with the internal psychic forces. In fact, that's why they
call it
psychodynamic because these forces are dynamic
and, in a pressure hydraulic sense, whichever one has the greatest amount of
pressure, exerts the greatest amount of pressure, is going to be the one that wins.
But this is where we live in ego consciousness and we can't
we can't allow ourselves to feel certain kinds of things because they're so
devastating.
And we can't operate with certain levels of guilt because they're so overwhelming
that we can't feel good about ourselves.
And so the ego is always striving to negotiate between these two things,
these forces of a largely unconscious nature.
And so with the id and the ego, or excuse me id and super ego,
both striving to dominate, the
ego is the one that mediates between them. That's the conscious experience. So,
for Freud, what caused mental illness, which is a topic we'll get
onto at the end of the course,
was caused by disharmony in these forces.
There would an overwhelming id force or an overwhelming superego force or
a deficient ego to put them in check,
and that that was at the root of all your mental illnesses and neuroses. Now
neurosis is something we all share from a Freudian perspective. Everybody's got their
hangups, their proclivities, their eccentricities, their things that
are unique to them that they struggle with, their issues if you will.
That's very different than psychoticism which is a departure from
reality,
right, in some some major way. But Freud would say we actually do depart from
reality
pretty regularly because our ego will simply shift our interpretations of
reality to be more consistent
with what we need. He says we all live with these anxieties.
The anxieties are of three major types. We have a a reality anxiety which
is normal and something that we all have where there's real threats to the
environment.
If I lose my job, I would then have a real
anxiety about whether I'd be able to pay my rent or pay my mortgage.
That's a reality-based anxiety
that I'm going to have to deal with that problem one way or the other. Consciously and proactively
hopefully,
but if I did or I didn't do that consciously and proactively then it
would be these other forces operating within
me that are really driving the ship. I'm not aware of them or accounting for them and
they're the ones that are making it more adaptive or less adaptive in terms of my
adjustment.
However then, you've got these neurotic tendencies.
Neurotic anxiety where the id threatens to break through. It threatens to gain
access to control the behavior and do things that one
would later be either punished for if caught
or ashamed of if they're carried out. And so,
having this worry about certain desires being inappropriate
and then breaking through is is a neurotic anxiety. Now, if they do break
through in a
consistent way, if somebody is completely dominated by their id,
well then that's the kind of person you would find, from a Freudian point of view,
and I always point out these are Freud's ideas not Dula's ideas,
so, bear with me, then that's who's in prison,
right? These people who we see in prison are breaking laws,
compulsively, impulsively, regularly, not everybody of course.
Everybody has variations. But if you see somebody's who's habitually
locked up, time and again, from a Freudian point of view,
what's happening is their id is dominating. They're always gratifying their most basic
and primal needs without regard for society's standards.
The flip side of that is moral anxiety,
where somebody is so dominated by their superego
that they feel small, unworthy,
and guilt-ridden all the time. So
it's a very negative experience because you can't possibly be the perfect person.
You'll always fall short, but because the superego is so strong in the person,
that they always feel unworthy, guilty, and ashamed,
and that's going to lead to depression and anxiety and other kinds of negative
outcomes because,
from a Freudian point of view, they have this massive
superego dominance that's putting the ego
at risk for feeling bad consciously
a lot of the time. But it's probably going to keep the id in check.
There won't be much expression of any expression of id wants or needs.