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In psychoanalytic theory the “id, the ego and the superego” are three different, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus as Sigmund Freud summarized and defined it in his structural model of the psyche. He developed these three terms to describe the basic structure and various phenomena of mental life as they were encountered in psychoanalytic practice. Freud himself used the German terms das Es, Ich, and Über-Ich, which literally translate as "the it", "I", and "over-I". The Latin terms id, ego and superego were chosen by his original translators and have remained in use.
In the essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud introduced his "structural model" of the soul. It describes the instincts of the unconscious as the primary process, which the consciousness - the secondary process - values according to its socialisation and directs in relation to the reality. This second model - further refined and formalised in subsequent essays as The Ego and the Id - represents a response to the ambiguous/contradictory use of the terms conscious and unconscious in the first model of the soul.[1][2]
In this ego psychology model of the psyche, the id is a set of uncoordinated instinctual needs; the superego plays the moralizing role via internalized experiences; and the ego is the perceiving, logically organizing agent that mediates between the id's instinctual desires, the demands of external reality and those of the critical superego;[3] Freud compared the ego - in its relation to the id - to a man on horseback: the rider must restrain and direct the superior energy of his animal and at times allow for a satisfaction of its urges if he wants to keep it alive and the species healthy. The ego is thus "in the habit of transforming the id's will into action, as if it were its own."[4]
- ^ The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, Third Edition (1999) Allan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, Eds. pp. 256–257.
- ^ Freud, Sigmund (1955). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVIII (PDF). Translated by Strachey, Strachey, and Tyson. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. p. 51.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: translators list (link) - ^ Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIX (1999) James Strachey, Gen. Ed. ISBN 0-09-929622-5
- ^ Freud, Sigmund (1978). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XIX (1923–26) The Ego and the Id and Other Works. Strachey, James., Freud, Anna, 1895–1982, Rothgeb, Carrie Lee, Richards, Angela., Scientific Literature Corporation. London: Hogarth Press. p. 19. ISBN 0701200677. OCLC 965512.