Id, ego and superego

"[4] In order to overcome difficulties of understanding as far as possible, Freud formulated his "metapsychology" which for Lacan represents a technical elaboration[6] of the concepts of the soul model: dividing the organism into three instances the id is regarded as the germ from which the ego and the superego develop.

Driven by an energy that Freud calls libido in direct reference to Plato's Eros,[7][8] the instances complement each other through their specific functions in a similar way to the organelles of a cell or parts of a technical apparatus.

[9] Further distinctions (as the coordinates of topology, dynamics and economy) encouraged Freud to assume that the metapsychological elaboration of the structural model would make it fully compatible with biological sciences such as evolutionary theory and enable a well-founded concept of mental health including a theory of human development, which naturally completed in three successive stages: the oral, anal and genital phase.

[11] Without knowledge of the instinctive social behaviour with the corresponding structure of cohabitation of our genetically closest relatives in realm of primates, Freud's thesis of Darwin's primordial horde (as presented for discussion in Totem and Taboo) can't be tested and, if possible, replaced by a realistic model.

It stands in contrast to the religiously enigmatic reports about the origin of monogamous couples on earth as an expression of divine will, but closer to the ancient trap to pacify political conflicts among the groups of Neolithic mankind.

(See Prometheus' uprising against Zeus, who created Pandora as a fatal wedding gift for Epimetheus to divide and rule the titanic brothers; Plato's myth of spherical men cut into isolated individuals for the same reason;[12] and the similarly resolved revolt of inferior gods in the Flood epic Atra-Hasis).

Nonetheless, due to the lack of ethological primate research, these ideas remained an unproven belief of palaeo-anthropological science – only a hypothesis or "just so story as a not unpleasant English critic wittily called it.

Freud understands the id as "the great reservoir of libido",[20] the energy of desire as expressed, for example, in the behaviours of sexuality, the incorporation of food or the baby-care (maternal love).

Complementing this constructive aspect of the libido, the author later postulated an inherent death drive, the Thanatos that has a decomposing effect and seeks "to lead organic life back into the inanimate state.

It analyses complex perceptions (things, ideas, dreams), synthesises the appropriate parts into logically coherent interpretations (also models) and rules the muscular apparatus.

Since the id's drives are frequently incompatible with the moral prescriptions and religious illusions of contemporary cultures,[24][25] the ego attempts to direct the libidinal energy and satisfy its demands in accordance with the imperatives of that reality.

[31] Denial, displacement, intellectualization, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, and sublimation were the defense mechanisms Freud identified.

His daughter Anna Freud identified the concepts of undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealization, identification, introjection, inversion, somatization, splitting, and substitution.

[31] It is the part of the personality structure, mainly but not entirely unconscious, that includes the individual's ego ideals, spiritual goals, and the psychic agency, commonly called "conscience", that criticizes and prohibits the expression of drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions.

[35] In the case of the little boy, it forms during the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, through a process of identification with the father figure, following the failure to retain possession of the mother as a love-object out of fear of castration.

[39] The concept of the Oedipus complex internalised in the superego - anchored by Freud in the hypothetical murder of the forefather of the Darwinian horde by his sons - has been criticised for its supposed sexism.

Therefore, ‘their superego is never as implacable, as impersonal, as independent of its emotional origins as we demand of men...they are often more influenced in their judgements by feelings of affection or hostility.’ - not by fear of castration, as was the case with ‘Little Hans’ in his conflict with his father over his wife and mother.

"[41] Freud's basic metapsychological thesis is that the living soul with their needs, consciousness and memory resembles a psychological apparatus to which "spatial extension and composition of several pieces" can be attributed (...) and wich "locus ... is the brain (nervous system)".

begin to show themselves neuronally; where the highest performances of consciously thinking ego take place (s. frontal lobe); and that other parts of the brain are specialised in storing memories: one of the main function of the superego.

According to Freud, therefore haphazard phenomena can be integrated between "both endpoints of our knowledge" (findings of modern neurology just as well as the position of our planet in the universe, for example), but this only contribute to the spatial "localisation of the acts of consciousness", not to their understanding.

[45] In the topographic model of the soul, his first one, Freud divided mental phenomena into three regions: the Conscious, of whose contents the mind is aware at every moment, including information and stimuli from internal and external sources; the preconscious, whose material is merely latent (not directly present to thinking and feeling, but capable of becoming so without great effort); and the unconscious, which consists of biological needs and impulses that are made inaccessible to the conscious mind as a result of traumatic experiences in such a way that Freud describes this process as the pathological act of repression.

With the introduction of the structural model, Freud intended to separate the terms unconscious and conscious from their spatially opposing meanings by formulating the three instances of id, ego and superego, which interlock with each other through their specific functions in a similar way to the organelles of a cell or parts of a machine, for example.

[47]The three newly presented entities, however, remained closely connected to their previous conceptions, including those that went under different names – the systematic unconscious for the id, and the conscience/ego ideal for the superego.