Sunday, September 29, 2013

Id, Ego and super-ego: Freud's dynamic model of the mind.

The Id, Ego and Super-ego, according to Freud, are the three main elements of our mind system. They arouse our drives, motives and forces, however each and every of them arouse it's own ones, so the battles inside our mind go on constantly between different elements (or different levels of consciousness).

All of this three elements sometimes operates on both levels - not only on conscious, but on unconscious as well.  

Let's look a bit deeper into the nature of this 3 parts of our mind, fighting with each other for the right to be a leader in our daily life decisions. 

Id - the oldest part, which contains everything that is inherited, instinctive impulses.
It is a primitive or unconscious element of the psyche, an inaccessible area dealing only with our selfish needs. "I want it now" - that's our Id, our pleasure principle that ignores any rational, realistic reasons for "not getting it not, or not being able to get". 

Id can be seen to be very strong in Infants, whenever they are uncomfortable or want anything - they will scream until they get it. 
During the development of maturity children learn to suppress Id's desires, as from the nature Id is illogical, disorganized and completely amoral. 

Totally contrast to Id is Super-ego - our traditional inner grown-up, our sense of morals, wrong and right, pride and guilt. 
This part of our psycho is conscious and responding to social  rules: guide us to act in acceptable way for society, rather than for ourselves. 
Our behavior is "being watched"by Super-ego that puts taboo on and repress an "inappropriate" behavior. 

Super-ego has bossy nature, it always observe and direct the Ego, demanding the perfection

Ego, in it's turn, is the mediator between super-ego and Id. 
It deals with external reality and is a part of the psyche that person see as "Self". It is mostly always conscious part of your mind, but as I previously mentioned, it can operate from time to time on both levels. 

The Ego is practical, rational - it makes the decisions, create the ideas and the sense of reality. 
The ego is rather weak than strong in comparison to pushy Super-ego and demanding Id, but in the end of the day Ego is the one responsible for problem-solving, for maintaining the upper hand and for finding the compromise between Id and Super-ego.

Some people may have personality dissonance (when the person holds more than two different ideas, beliefs not matching with each other), according to Freud, it happens when Ego (The Self) are having difficulties to rationalize between Id and Super-ego and in the end makes the wrong decisions provoking the feeling of dissatisfaction, doubt, guilt, anger, embarrassment or even anxiety.

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