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    The Ego and the Id
    The Ego and the Id
    The Ego and the Id
    Ebook69 pages1 hour

    The Ego and the Id

    By Sigmund Freud

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    All human behaviors and traits, according to this 1923 study, derive from the complicated interactions of three elements of the psyche: the id, the ego, and the superego. The root of Sigmund Freud's approach to psychiatric treatment resides in bringing the id, the hidden source of human passion, to the surface. The ego — formed to negotiate the id's interactions with reality — and the superego — the critical, moralistic part of the mind — remain in constant conflict with the id's demands.
    Although the concept of the unconscious was not Freud's own invention, he brought it into popular awareness and pioneered its use in treating mental conditions. This groundbreaking volume constitutes one of the Viennese physician's most insightful works on the topic. In addition to positing the balancing act between the id, ego, and superego, Freud further explores the concepts of the life force and the death force, and the anxieties driven by fear, morality, and guilt.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateFeb 28, 2018
    ISBN9780486829654
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      Book preview

      The Ego and the Id - Sigmund Freud

      THE EGO AND

      THE ID

      Sigmund Freud

      DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

      MINEOLA, NEW YORK

      DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

      GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

      EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: TERRI ANN GEUS

      Copyright

      Copyright © 2018 by Dover Publications, Inc.

      All rights reserved.

      Bibliographical Note

      This Dover edition, first published in 2018, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, London, in 1927. This edition includes the authorized translation by Joan Riviere.

      International Standard Book Number

      ISBN-13: 978-0-486-82156-6

      ISBN-10: 0-486-82156-0

      Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

      82156001 2018

      www.doverpublications.com

      Contents

      Translator’s Note

      Introduction

      I. Consciousness and the Unconscious

      II. The Ego and the Id

      III. The Ego and the Super-Ego (Ego-Ideal)

      IV. The Two Classes of Instincts

      V. The Subordinate Relationships of the Ego

      TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

      Das Ich und das Es was published in 1923 by the Internationaler Psycho-analytischer Verlag, Vienna. I was able to discuss the translation of this very obscure book with the Author, and became responsible for it, so that it bears my name. The actual version which follows, however, though drafted by me, has been worked over by three people. Dr. Ernest Jones as Editor has given it his usual care; Fräulein Anna Freud has corrected misapprehensions and also referred to the Author several doubts that arose; but if the translation attains any exactness in rendering the Author’s thoughts and intentions, this is almost wholly due to Mr. James Strachey’s sedulous and discriminating exertions in aid of clear elucidation of the text.

      J. R.

      INTRODUCTION

      IN MY ESSAY, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, published in 1920,¹ I began the discussion of a train of thought, my personal attitude towards which, as I mentioned there, might be described as a sort of benevolent curiosity; in the following pages this train of thought is developed further. I have taken up those ideas and brought them into connection with various facts observed in psycho-analysis and have endeavoured to draw fresh conclusions from the combination; in the present work, however, no further contributions are levied from biology, and it consequently stands in a closer relation to psycho-analysis than does Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The thoughts contained in it are synthetic rather than speculative in character and their aim appears to be an ambitious one. I am aware, however, that they do not go beyond the baldest outlines and I am perfectly content to recognize their limitations in this respect.

      At the same time, the train of thought touches upon things not hitherto dealt with in the work psycho-analysis has done, and it cannot avoid concerning itself with a number of theories propounded by non-analysts or by former analysts on their retreat from analysis. I am as a rule always ready to acknowledge my debts to other workers, but on this occasion I feel myself under no such obligation. If there are certain things to which hitherto psycho-analysis has not given adequate consideration, that is not because it has overlooked their effects or wished to deny their significance, but because it pursues a particular path which had not yet carried it so far. And, moreover, now that these things have at last been overtaken, they appear to psycho-analysis in a different shape from that in which they appear to the other people.

      ¹ Beyond the Pleasure Principle , London, 1922; translated from Jenseits des Lustprinzips , Vienna, 1920.

      I

      CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

      IN THIS PRELIMINARY chapter there is nothing new to be said and it will not be possible to avoid repeating what has often been said before.

      The division of mental life into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise on which psycho-analysis is based; and this division alone makes it possible for it to understand pathological mental processes, which are as common as they are important, and to co-ordinate them scientifically. Stated once more in a different way: psycho-analysis cannot accept the view that consciousness is the essence of mental life, but is obliged to regard consciousness as one property of mental life, which may co-exist along with its other properties or may be absent.

      If I were to allow myself to suppose that every one interested in psychology would read this book, I should still be prepared to find that some of them would stop short even at this point and go no further; for here we have the first shibboleth of psycho-analysis. To most people who have had a philosophical education the idea of anything mental which is not also conscious is so inconceivable that it seems to them absurd and refutable simply by logic. I believe this is only because they have never studied the mental phenomena of hypnosis and dreams, which—quite apart from pathological manifestations—necessitate this conclusion. Thus their psychology of consciousness is incapable of solving the problems of dreams and hypnosis.

      The term conscious is, to start with, a purely descriptive one, resting on a perception of the most direct and certain character. Experience shows, next, that a mental element (for instance, an idea) is not as a rule permanently conscious. On the contrary, a state of consciousness is characteristically very transitory;

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