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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 was 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 ego psychology model of the psyche, the id is the 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;[1] 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."[2]
Freud introduced the structural model (id, ego, superego) in the essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) in response to the unstructured ambiguity and conflicting uses of the term "the unconscious mind". He elaborated, refined, and formalized that model in the essay The Ego and the Id (1923).[3]
- ^ 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.
- ^ The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, Third Edition (1999) Allan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, Eds. pp. 256–257.