The Ego and the Id
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| Author | Sigmund Freud |
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| Original title | Das Ich und das Es |
| Publisher | Internationaler Psycho- analytischer Verlag (Vienna), W. W. Norton & Company |
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Publication date
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24 April 1923 |
The Ego and the Id (German: Das Ich und das Es) is a prominent paper by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. It is an analytical study of the human psyche outlining his theories of the psychodynamics of the id, ego and super-ego, which is of fundamental importance in the development of psychoanalysis. The study was conducted over years of meticulous research and was first published in 1923.
The Ego and the Id develops a line of reasoning as a groundwork for explaining various (or perhaps all) psychological conditions, pathological and non-pathological alike. These conditions result from powerful internal tensions—for example: 1) between the ego and the id, 2) between the ego and the super ego, and 3) between the love-instinct and the death-instinct. The book deals primarily with the ego and the effects these tensions have on it.
The ego—caught between the id and the super-ego—finds itself simultaneously engaged in conflict by repressed thoughts in the id and relegated to an inferior position by the super-ego. And at the same time, the interplay between the love instinct and the death instinct can manifest itself at any level of the psyche. The outline below is an exegesis of Freud's arguments, explaining the formation of the aforementioned tensions and their effects.
All concepts in The Ego and the Id are built upon the presupposed existence of conscious and unconscious thoughts. On the first line, Freud states, "[About consciousness and the unconscious] there is nothing new to be said... the division of mental life into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise on which psycho-analysis is based" (9). He further distinguishes between two types of unconscious thoughts: "preconscious" ideas, which are latent yet fully capable of becoming conscious; and "unconscious" ideas, which are repressed and cannot become conscious without the help of psychoanalysis.
It would be overly simple to assume that the unconscious and the conscious map directly onto the id and the ego, respectively. Freud argues that (according to his work with psychoanalysis) the supposedly conscious ego can be shown to possess unconscious thoughts (16) when it unknowingly resists parts of itself. Thus, a third kind of unconscious thought seems to be necessary, a process that is neither repressed nor latent (18), but which is nonetheless an integral part of the ego: the act of repression.
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