Ego, superego, and id: Encyclopedia II - Ego, superego, and id - Freud's structural theory

Ego, superego, and id - Freud's structural theory

Ego, superego, and id - Id

The id (Latin, it in English, "Es" in the original German) represented primary process thinking — our most primitive, need-gratification impulses. It is organized around the primitive instinctual drives of sexuality and aggression. In the id, these drives require instant gratification or release. Freud borrowed the term Id from the "Book of the Id" by Georg Groddeck, a pathfinder of psychosomatic medicine.

Ego, superego, and id - Ego

In Freud's view the ego mediates between the id, the superego, and the external world to balance our primitive drives, our moral ideals and taboos, and the limitations of reality (ego means I in Latin—the original German word Freud applied was "Ich".) Although in his early writings Freud equated the ego with our sense of self, he later began to portray it more as a set of psychic functions such as reality-testing, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, memory, and the like.

Ego, superego, and id - Superego

The superego stands in opposition to the desires of the id. The superego is based upon the internalization of the world view, norms and mores a child absorbs from parents and the surrounding environment at a young age. As the conscience, it includes our sense of right and wrong, maintaining taboos specific to a child's internalization of parental culture.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Freud's structural theory", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki