Freud's Structural and Topographical Models of Personality

Sigmund Freud's Theory is quite complex and although his writings on psychosexual
development set the groundwork for how our personalities developed, it was only one of five parts
to his overall theory of personality. He also believed that different driving forces develop during
these stages which play an important role in how we interact with the world.

Structural Model (id, ego, superego)

According to Freud, we are born with our Id. The id is an important part of our personality
because as newborns, it allows us to get our basic needs met. Freud believed that the id is
based on our pleasure principle. In other words, the id wants whatever feels good at the time,
with no consideration for the reality of the situation. When a child is hungry, the id wants food,
and therefore the child cries. When the child needs to be changed, the id cries. When the child
is uncomfortable, in pain, too hot, too cold, or just wants attention, the id speaks up until his or her
needs are met.

The id doesn't care about reality, about the needs of anyone else, only its own satisfaction. If you
think about it, babies are not real considerate of their parents' wishes. They have no care for
time, whether their parents are sleeping, relaxing, eating dinner, or bathing. When the id wants
something, nothing else is important.

Within the next three years, as the child interacts more and more with the world, the second part
of the personality begins to develop. Freud called this part the Ego. The ego is based on the
reality principle. The ego understands that other people have needs and desires and that
sometimes being impulsive or selfish can hurt us in the long run. Its the ego's job to meet the
needs of the id, while taking into consideration the reality of the situation.

By the age of five, or the end of the phallic stage of development, the Superego develops. The
Superego is the moral part of us and develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on
us by our caregivers. Many equate the superego with the conscience as it dictates our belief of
right and wrong.

In a healthy person, according to Freud, the ego is the strongest so that it can satisfy the needs of
the id, not upset the superego, and still take into consideration the reality of every situation. Not
an easy job by any means, but if the id gets too strong, impulses and self gratification take over
the person's life. If the superego becomes to strong, the person would be driven by rigid morals,
would be judgmental and unbending in his or her interactions with the world. You'll learn how the
ego maintains control as you continue to read.

Topographical Model
 Freud believed that the majority of what we experience
in our lives, the underlying emotions, beliefs, feelings,
and impulses are not available to us at a conscious
level. He believed that most of what drives us is buried
in our unconscious. If you remember the Oedipus and
Electra Complex, they were both pushed down into the
unconscious, out of our awareness due to the extreme
anxiety they caused. While buried there, however, they
continue to impact us dramatically according to Freud.

The role of the unconscious is only one part of the

model. Freud also believed that everything we are
aware of is stored in our conscious. Our conscious
makes up a very small part of who we are. In other words, at any given time, we are only aware
of a very small part of what makes up our personality; most of what we are is buried and
inaccessible.

The final part is the preconscious or subconscious. This is the part of us that we can access if
prompted, but is not in our active conscious. Its right below the surface, but still buried somewhat
unless we search for it. Information such as our telephone number, some childhood memories, or
the name of your best childhood friend is stored in the preconscious.

Because the unconscious is so large, and because we are only aware of the very small conscious
at any given time, this theory has been likened to an iceberg, where the vast majority is buried
beneath the water's surface. The water, by the way, would represent everything that we are not
aware of, have not experienced, and that has not been integrated into our personalities, referred
to as the nonconscious.
Id, ego, and super-ego are the three parts of the "psychic apparatus" defined in Sigmund
Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms
of whose activity and interaction mental life is described. According to this model, the
uncoordinated instinctual trends are the "id"; the organized realistic part of the psyche is
the "ego," and the critical and moralizing function the "super-ego." [1]

Even though the model is "structural" and makes reference to an "apparatus", the id, ego,
and super-ego are functions of the mind rather than parts of the brain and do not
necessarily correspond one-to-one with actual somatic structures of the kind dealt with by
neuroscience.

The concepts themselves arose at a late stage in the development of Freud's thought: the
structural model was first discussed in his 1920 essay "Beyond the Pleasure Principle"
and was formalized and elaborated upon three years later in his "The Ego and the Id."
Freud's proposal was influenced by the ambiguity of the term "unconscious" and its many
conflicting uses.

The terms "id," "ego," and "super-ego" are not Freud's own but are latinisations
originating from his translator James Strachey. Freud himself wrote of "das Es," "das
Ich," and "das Über-Ich"—respectively, "the It," "the I," and the "Over-I" (or "Upper-
I"); thus to the German reader, Freud's original terms are more or less self-explanatory.
The term "das Es" was borrowed from Georg Groddeck, a German physician to whose
unconventional ideas Freud was much attracted.[2] (Groddeck's translators render the term
in English as 'the It').
Id
The Id comprises the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains the basic
drives. The id acts as a pleasure principle: if not compelled by reality it seeks immediate
enjoyment.[3] It is focused on selfishness and instant self-gratification. Personality, as
Freud saw it, was produced by the conflict between biological impulses and social
restraints that were internalized.[4][5] The Id is unconscious by definition. In Freud's
formulation,

It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we

“ have learnt from our study of the dream-work and of the construction of
neurotic symptoms, and most of this is of a negative character and can be
described only as a contrast to the ego. We all approach the id with analogies:
we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations... It is filled with
energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no
collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the
instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.

[Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933)] ”

The id stands in direct opposition to the super-ego. [6]

Developmentally, the Id is anterior to the ego; i.e. the psychic apparatus begins, at birth,
as an undifferentiated id, part of which then develops into a structured ego. Thus, the id:

contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth, is laid down in

“ the constitution -- above all, therefore, the instincts, which originate from the
somatic organisation and which find a first psychical expression here (in the
id) in forms unknown to us" [7]. ”
The mind of a newborn child is regarded as completely "id-ridden", in the sense that it is
a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and demands immediate satisfaction. This view
equates a newborn child with an id-ridden individual—often humorously—with this
analogy: an alimentary tract with no sense of responsibility at either end.

The id is responsible for our basic drives such as food, water, sex, and basic impulses. It
is amoral and egocentric, ruled by the pleasure–pain principle; it is without a sense of
time, completely illogical, primarily sexual, infantile in its emotional development, and
will not take "no" for an answer. It is regarded as the reservoir of the libido or "instinctive
drive to create".
Freud divided the id's drives and instincts into two categories: life and death instincts -
the latter not so usually regarded because Freud thought of it later in his lifetime. Life
instincts (Eros) are those that are crucial to pleasurable survival, such as eating and
copulation. Death instincts, (Thanatos) as stated by Freud, is our unconscious wish to die,
as death puts an end to the everyday struggles for happiness and survival. Freud noticed
the death instinct in our desire for peace and attempts to escape reality through fiction,
media, and substances such as alcohol and drugs. It also indirectly represents itself
through aggression.

[edit] Ego
The Ego acts according to the reality principle; i.e. it seeks to please the id’s drive in
realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bringing grief.[8]

"The ego is not sharply separated from the id; its lower portion merges into it.... But the
repressed merges into the id as well, and is merely a part of it. The repressed is only cut
off sharply from the ego by the resistances of repression; it can communicate with the ego
through the id." (Sigmund Freud, 1923)

The Ego comprises that organized part of the personality structure which includes
defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. Conscious
awareness resides in the ego, although not all of the operations of the ego are conscious.
The ego separates what is real. It helps us to organize our thoughts and make sense of
them and the world around us. [9]

According to Freud,

...The ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct
“ influence of the external world ... The ego represents what may be called ”
reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions
... in its relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in
 check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider
tries to do so with his own strength, while the ego uses borrowed forces
[Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923)]

In Freud's theory, the ego mediates among the id, the super-ego and the external world.
Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives and reality (the Ego devoid of
morality at this level) while satisfying the id and super-ego. Its main concern is with the
individual's safety and allows some of the id's desires to be expressed, but only when
consequences of these actions are marginal. Ego defense mechanisms are often used by
the ego when id behavior conflicts with reality and either society's morals, norms, and
taboos or the individual's expectations as a result of the internalization of these morals,
norms, and their taboos.

The word ego is taken directly from Latin, where it is the nominative of the first person
singular personal pronoun and is translated as "I myself" to express emphasis. The Latin
term ego is used in English to translate Freud's German term Das Ich, which literally
means "the I".

Ego development is known as the development of multiple processes, cognitive function,

defenses, and interpersonal skills or to early adolescence when ego processes are
emerged.[10]

In modern-day society, ego has many meanings. It could mean one’s self-esteem; an
inflated sense of self-worth; or in philosophical terms, one’s self. However, according to
Freud, the ego is the part of the mind which contains the consciousness. Originally, Freud
had associated the word ego to meaning a sense of self; however, he later revised it to
mean a set of psychic functions such as judgment, tolerance, reality-testing, control,
planning, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory. [11]

In a diagram of the Structural and Topographical Models of Mind, the ego is depicted to
be half in the consciousness, while a quarter is in the preconscious and the other quarter
lies in the unconscious.

The ego is the mediator between the id and the super-ego, trying to ensure that the needs
of both the id and the super-ego are satisfied. It is said to operate on a reality principle,
meaning it deals with the id and the super-ego; allowing them to express their desires,
drives and morals in realistic and socially appropriate ways. It is said that the ego stands
for reason and caution, developing with age. Sigmund Freud had used an analogy which
likened the ego to a rider and a horse; the ego being the rider while the id being the horse.
The horse provides the energy and the means of obtaining the energy and information
needed, while the rider ultimately controls the direction it wants to go. However, due to
unfavorable conditions, sometimes the horse makes its own decisions over the rocky
terrain.
When the ego is personified, it is like a slave to three harsh masters: the id, the super-ego
and the external world. It has to do its best to suit all three, thus is constantly feeling
hemmed by the danger of causing discontent on two other sides. It is said, however, that
the ego seems to be more loyal to the id, preferring to gloss over the finer details of
reality to minimize conflicts while pretending to have a regard for reality. But the super-
ego is constantly watching every one of the ego's moves and punishes it with feelings of
guilt, anxiety, and inferiority. To overcome this the ego employs defense mechanisms.The
defense mechanisms are not done so directly or consciously. They lessen the tension by
covering up our impulses that are threatening.[12]

Denial, displacement, intellectualisation, fantasy, compensation, projection,

rationalisation, reaction formation, regression, repression and sublimation were the
defense mechanisms Freud identified. However, his daughter Anna Freud clarified and
identified the concepts of undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealisation, identification,
introjection, inversion, somatisation, splitting and substitution.

[edit] Super-ego
The Super-ego aims for perfection[13]. It comprises that organized 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 his or her drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions.

The Super-ego can be thought of as a type of conscience that punishes

“ misbehavior with feelings of guilt. For example: having extra-marital
”
affairs.[14]

The Super-ego works in contradiction to the id. The Super-ego strives to act in a socially
appropriate manner, whereas the id just wants instant self-gratification. The Super-ego
controls our sense of right and wrong and guilt. It helps us fit into society by getting us to
act in socially acceptable ways.[15]
The Super-ego's demands opposes the id’s, so the ego has a hard time in reconciling the
two.[16] Freud's theory implies that the super-ego is a symbolic internalization of the father
figure and cultural regulations. The super-ego tends to stand in opposition to the desires
of the id because of their conflicting objectives, and its aggressiveness towards the ego.
The super-ego acts as the conscience, maintaining our sense of morality and proscription
from taboos. The superego and the ego is the product of two key factors: the state of
helplessness of the child and the Oedipus complex. [17] Its formation takes place during
the dissolution of the Oedipus complex and is formed by an identification with and
internalization of the father figure after the little boy cannot successfully hold the mother
as a love-object out of fear of castration.

The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more powerful
the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression
(under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and
 reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego
later on — in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense
of guilt (The Ego and the Id, 1923).

In Sigmund Freud's work Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) he also discusses the
concept of a "cultural super-ego". The concept of super-ego and the Oedipus complex is
subject to criticism for its perceived sexism. Women, who are considered to be already
castrated, do not identify with the father, and therefore form a weak super-ego, leaving
them susceptible to immorality and sexual identity complications. What a total bullshit
artist this guy was I mean if he really knew anything he would have kept his mouth shut.
Silence is golden.

[edit] Advantages of the structural model

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The partition of the psyche defined in the structural model is one that 'cuts across' the
topographical model's partition of 'conscious vs. unconscious'. Its value lies in the
increased degree of diversification: although the Id is unconscious by definition, the Ego
and the Super-ego are both partly conscious and partly unconscious. What is more, with
this new model Freud achieved a more systematic classification of mental disorder than
had been available previously: -

"Transference neuroses correspond to a conflict between the ego and the id;
“ narcissistic neuroses, to a conflict between the ego and the superego; and
psychoses, to one between the ego and the external world"

- [Freud, "Neurosis and Psychosis" (1923)]. ”

[edit] In popular culture
• In the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet, the murderously destructive
forces at large on the planet Altair 4 are eventually revealed to be "monsters from
the Id", internal forces unleashed upon the exterior world by the operations of the
Krell mind-materialisation machine.
• Guy Ritchie's mystery thriller Revolver is based upon the interactions between the
ego and the outer world.
• Computer game developer id Software was originally named "Ideas from the
Deep", but was later shortened to "id" and took on the Freudian meaning. In
addition, the "Garg" from its game, Commander Keen, is a personification of the
id.
 • Pearl Jam's 1995 single "I Got Id" describes an anxiety-ridden narrator and his
goal of returning to a less controlled state.
• In the video game Earthworm Jim 3D, player character Jim becomes his own
superego after a cow incident sends him into a coma.
• The film Shock Treatment features a song called "Look What I Did To My Id".
The song is about characters donning new roles, as if putting on new
personalities.
• In the computer game adaptation of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, the
ego, id and superego play an important part in the final section of the game.
• The band Transmission titled their 2007 debut album Id, Ego and Superego.
• The band Anti-Flag mentions the Id and Ego in their song "Post-war Breakout"
• The band Deadsy mentions the Id in their song "Key To Gramercy Park"
• The band Guided by Voices has a song titled "The Ids are Alright" on their 2002
album, Universal Truths and Cycles. The title is a pun referencing the song "The
Kids are Alright" by The Who.
• The PlayStation game Xenogears contains a character named Id, who represents a
dark side of the main character.
• Band of Montreal's song "Id Engager" from the album Skeletal Lamping.
• The band Billy Talent mentions the Id in their song "Line and Sinker".
• The television show Blood Ties devotes an episode to brothers whose psychotic
mother has developed them into being the three separate parts of the Freudian
psyche.
• Buffy season 4 episode 5 "beer bad" references the ID early on in the episode and
is the focus of the episode.
• Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes Make frequent references to the id, following
the idea that the protagonists are stuck inside their own minds. e.g. Sam Tyler
"Give my regards to the id"

[edit] Notes
Freud came to see personality as having three aspects, which work together
to produce all of our complex behaviours: the Id, the Ego and the
Superego. All 3 components need to be well-balanced in order to have
good amount of psychological energy available and to have reasonable
mental health.

However, the Ego has a difficult time dealing with the competing demands of
the Superego and the Id. According to the psychoanalytic view, this
psychological conflict is an intrinsic and pervasive part of human experience.
The conflict between the Id and Superego, negotiated by the Ego, is one of the
fundamental psychological battles all people face. The way in which a person
characteristically resolves the instant gratification vs. longer-term reward
dilemma in many ways comes to reflect on their "character".

THE ID (“It”): functions in the irrational and emotional part of the mind. At
birth a baby’s mind is all Id - want want want. The Id is the primitive mind. It
contains all the basic needs and feelings. It is the source for libido (psychic
energy). And it has only one rule --> the “pleasure principle”: “I want it and I
want it all now”. In transactional analysis, Id equates to "Child".

Id too strong = bound up in self-gratification and uncaring to others

THE EGO: (“I”): functions with the rational part of the mind. The Ego
develops out of growing awareness that you can’t always get what you want.
The Ego relates to the real world and operates via the “reality principle”. The
Ego realises the need for compromise and negotiates between the Id and the
Superego. The Ego's job is to get the Id's pleasures but to be reasonable and
bear the long-term consequences in mind. The Ego denies both instant
gratification and pious delaying of gratification. The term ego-strength is the
term used to refer to how well the ego copes with these conflicting forces. To
undertake its work of planning, thinking and controlling the Id, the Ego uses
some of the Id's libidinal energy. In transactional analysis, Ego equates to
"Adult".

Ego too strong = extremely rational and efficient, but cold, boring and distant

THE SUPEREGO (“Over-I”): The Superego is the last part of the mind to
develop. It might be called the moral part of the mind. The Superego becomes
an embodiment of parental and societal values. It stores and enforces rules. It
constantly strives for perfection, even though this perfection ideal may be quite
far from reality or possibility. Its power to enforce rules comes from its ability
to create anxiety.
The Superego has two subsystems: Ego Ideal and Conscience. The Ego Ideal
provides rules for good behaviour, and standards of excellence towards which
the Ego must strive. The Ego ideal is basically what the child’s parents approve
of or value. The Conscience is the rules about what constitutes bad behaviour.
The Conscience is basically all those things that the child feels mum or dad will
disapprove of or punish.

Superego too strong = feels guilty all the time, may even have an insufferably
saintly personality
Freud came to see personality as having three aspects, which work together
to produce all of our complex behaviours: the Id, the Ego and the
Superego. All 3 components need to be well-balanced in order to have
good amount of psychological energy available and to have reasonable
mental health.

However, the Ego has a difficult time dealing with the competing demands of
the Superego and the Id. According to the psychoanalytic view, this
psychological conflict is an intrinsic and pervasive part of human experience.
The conflict between the Id and Superego, negotiated by the Ego, is one of the
fundamental psychological battles all people face. The way in which a person
characteristically resolves the instant gratification vs. longer-term reward
dilemma in many ways comes to reflect on their "character".

THE ID (“It”): functions in the irrational and emotional part of the mind. At
birth a baby’s mind is all Id - want want want. The Id is the primitive mind. It
contains all the basic needs and feelings. It is the source for libido (psychic
energy). And it has only one rule --> the “pleasure principle”: “I want it and I
want it all now”. In transactional analysis, Id equates to "Child".

Id too strong = bound up in self-gratification and uncaring to others

THE EGO: (“I”): functions with the rational part of the mind. The Ego
develops out of growing awareness that you can’t always get what you want.
The Ego relates to the real world and operates via the “reality principle”. The
Ego realises the need for compromise and negotiates between the Id and the
Superego. The Ego's job is to get the Id's pleasures but to be reasonable and
bear the long-term consequences in mind. The Ego denies both instant
gratification and pious delaying of gratification. The term ego-strength is the
term used to refer to how well the ego copes with these conflicting forces. To
undertake its work of planning, thinking and controlling the Id, the Ego uses
some of the Id's libidinal energy. In transactional analysis, Ego equates to
"Adult".

Ego too strong = extremely rational and efficient, but cold, boring and distant

THE SUPEREGO (“Over-I”): The Superego is the last part of the mind to
develop. It might be called the moral part of the mind. The Superego becomes
an embodiment of parental and societal values. It stores and enforces rules. It
constantly strives for perfection, even though this perfection ideal may be quite
far from reality or possibility. Its power to enforce rules comes from its ability
to create anxiety.

The Superego has two subsystems: Ego Ideal and Conscience. The Ego Ideal
provides rules for good behaviour, and standards of excellence towards which
the Ego must strive. The Ego ideal is basically what the child’s parents approve
of or value. The Conscience is the rules about what constitutes bad behaviour.
The Conscience is basically all those things that the child feels mum or dad will
disapprove of or punish.

Superego too strong = feels guilty all the time, may even have an insufferably
saintly personality
Understanding the Id, Ego, and Superego
in Psychology
Sigmund Freud would have been a great Hollywood screenwriter. His "story" of
personality is one of desire, power, control, and freedom. The plot is complex and the
characters compete. Our personalities represent a drama of sorts, acted out in our minds.
"You" are a product of how competing mental forces and structures interact. The ancient
Greeks thought that all people were actors in the drama of the gods above. For Freud, we
are simply actors in the drama of our minds, pushed by desire, pulled by conscience.
Underneath the surface, our personalities represent the power struggles going on deep
within us.

Three main players carry all of this drama out:

• Id: The seat of our impulses

• Ego: Negotiates with the id, pleases the superego

• Superego: Keeps us on the straight and narrow

Each of these characters has its own idea of what the outcome of the story should be.
Their struggles are fueled by powerful motives, and each one is out for itself.

I want, therefore I am
The initial structural component and first character in Freud's drama of personality is the
id. Has an urge, impulse, or desire so strong that it just had to be satisfied ever
overpowered you? A new car, sexual desire, a dream job? The answer is probably a
resounding "Yes!" Where does such desire come from? According to Freud, desire comes
from the part of your personality called the id, located in the expanses of our mind. So
look around, and look deep within. Look at your co-workers, look at your boss. It's in all
of us, even the quiet old lady at the bus stop. Underneath that quiet, grandmotherly
demeanor lurks a seething cauldron of desire.

The id contains all of our most basic animal and primitive impulses that demand
satisfaction. It's the Mr. Hyde emerging from the restrained Dr. Jekyll. It's that little devil
that sits on your shoulder, whispering temptations and spurring you on. Whenever you
see a selfish, spoiled child in the grocery store demanding a toy and throwing a tantrum if
he doesn't get his way, you'll know that's the id in action!

The id is a type of "container" that holds our desires. Relentlessly driven by a force Freud
called the libido, the collective energy of life's instincts and will to survive, the id must be
satisfied! We're all born with the id in full force. It's unregulated and untouched by the
constraints of the world outside of our minds. When a baby gets hungry, does she sit
quietly and wait until someone remembers to feed her? Anyone who's ever gotten out of
bed in the middle of the night to feed a baby knows the answer to that.

But don't give the id a bad rap. Where would you be without desire? Your desire pushes
you through life; it leads you to seek the things you need to survive. Without it we'd die,
or at the very least, we'd be really boring! So keep in mind that a large part of your
personality consists of your desires and your attempts to satisfy them.

Enter the ego

Wouldn't it be nice if you could get everything you wanted, whenever and however you
wanted it? Unfortunately, most of us know otherwise. We all know how frustrating it can
be when a desire goes unmet or gets stifled. Well, you can blame your ego for that. The
ego is Freud's second mental apparatus of personality. The ego's main function is to
mediate between the id's demands and the external world around us — reality in other
words. Does the Rolling Stones' song "You Can't Always Get What You Want" come to
mind?

So far, it seems that, if it wasn't for reality, we would be a lot more satisfied. Even though
the ego finds itself in conflict with the id, satisfaction is not abandoned. The ego is like a
sports agent for a really talented athlete. Even though the athlete may demand a
multimillion-dollar contract, the agent reminds him that he could price himself out of a
job. So the ego negotiates with the id in order to get it what it wants without costing it too
much in the long run. The ego accomplishes this important task by converting, diverting,
and transforming the powerful forces of the id into more useful and realistic modes of
satisfaction. It attempts to harness the id's power, regulating it in order to achieve
satisfaction despite the limits of reality.

The final judgment

As if the ego's job wasn't hard enough, playing referee between the id and reality, its
performance is under constant scrutiny by a relentless judge, the superego. While the ego
negotiates with the id, trying to prevent another tantrum, the superego judges the
performance. Superego is another name for your conscience. It expects your ego to be
strong and effective in its struggles against the libido's force.

Usually, our conscience comes from our parents or a parental figure. As we grow, we
internalize their standards, those same standards that make us feel so guilty when we tell
a lie or cheat on our taxes. But does everyone have a conscience? There are certain
people throughout history who have committed such horrible acts of violence that we
sometimes wonder if they are void of conscience. How can serial killers such as Ted
Bundy or Wayne Williams commit such horrible crimes? A strong bet is that they lack the
basic capacity to feel guilt, so nothing really prevents them from acting out their violent
fantasies.
A famous psychiatrist once said that evil men do what good men only dream of.

(CONTENTS)
 The Id, Ego and Super Ego of O’Neill:
Reflected in The Iceman Cometh

John Iverson
Austin, Texas

Despite his failing health between 1936 and 1943, Eugene O’Neill produced some of his
greatest works. During these years, O’Neill wrote The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s
Journey Into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten. These are dark, autobiographical
plays, searching for meaning in a life dominated by addiction, depression and death.
“O’Neill returned in these last plays to acceptance of struggle and flight as inseparable
from and intrinsic to the life process. Now there was no way out but death” (Faulk 22).
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the characters of Don Parritt, Theodore
Hickman and Larry Slade in The Iceman Cometh correlate to the three Freudian
components of psychological identity: the Id, the Ego and the Super Ego of its author,
Eugene O’Neill. Collectively, these three characters reflect their author’s complex
personality.

The setting of the play, Harry Hope’s, an “End of the Line Café” is an amalgam of three
lower end New York saloons where O’Neill stayed in 1912 (Alexander 8), but it is also
the microcosm of O’Neill’s memories. O’Neill told the journalist Croswell Bowen, “In
writing The Iceman Cometh, I felt I had locked myself in with my memories” (Gelb 833).
In Iceman, O’Neill has returned to a pivotal time and place in his life. The people he met
there affected him and later served as inspiration for many characters. “The people in that
saloon were the best friends I’ve ever known” (Diggins 66). The three characters focused
on in this paper represent O’Neill reflecting on his past, his memories on the page.

Sigmund Freud was a prominent influence on O’Neill’s writing, and critics interpret
Iceman as representing O’Neill’s Oedipus complex (Miliora 136). The Oedipus complex
represents internal desire and external conflict as they relate to the parents. Freud also
theorizes that Oedipal desires are the origin of individual identity in relation to the
external world (Gay 643). Outwardly, two of the three primary characters exemplify the
Oedipus complex: Parritt, the Id and Slade, the Super Ego. Hickey completes the trio as
the Ego.

Don Parritt—the ID

The Id is the original impulse of wants and desire in a newborn. Freud describes the Id as
the subconscious part of the personality that contains the primitive impulses such as
sexual desire (libidinal energy), anger and hunger (Gay 632). The primary desire of a
newborn is the love and affection of its mother. Freud describes a scenario with a boy.
“The little boy develops an object-cathexis for his mother, which originally related to the
mother’s breast” (Gay 640). A child directs his libidinal energies towards his mother, and
as they become more intense “the father is seen as an obstacle to them; from this, the
Oedipus complex originates” (Gay 640). This relationship forms one pair of bonds in the
play.
O’Neill has created Parritt, a young man on the run, as someone craving but denied
maternal compassion. Parritt’s mother, Rosa, is a fiercely independent woman and a
leader of an Anarchist movement. She expressed her independence through sexual
freedom. While Parritt had no father growing up, he had many competitors for his
mother’s affection. “She just had to keep on having lovers to prove to herself how free
she was” (O’Neill, Act 2).

Parritt resented his mother’s lovers. “I’d get feeling it was like living in a whore house”
(O’Neill, Act 3). Resentment leads Parritt to inform the police about his mother’s
Anarchist activities. Imprisonment is a virtual death sentence for such an independent
woman. “It started me thinking about Mother—as if she were dead. I suppose she might
as well be. Inside herself, I mean” (O’Neill, Act 3).

When the mother withholds her affection, Freud theorizes a child will seek identification
with the father. “The boy’s object-cathexis must be given up. Its place may be filed by
one of two things: either identification with the mother or an intensification of his
identification with his father” (Gay 640). In this way, Parritt, who has betrayed his
mother, seeks out Larry as the only father he’s ever known. “Larry, I once had a sneaking
suspicion that maybe, if the truth was known, you were my father” (O’Neill, Act 3).

The character of Don Parritt is loosely based on a young man named Donald Vose, the
son of a woman in the Anarchist movement. In 1914, Vose infiltrated the movement to
inform the police of the whereabouts of another Anarchist hiding from the law
(Alexander 34). O’Neill was quoted as remarking about Vose, “His betrayal of the
Movement derives from a real incident, but I never knew the guy, or anything about his
mother, so Parritt’s personal history is my own fiction” (Barlow 13).

O’Neill’s “own fiction” came from combining the Vose story with several of the author’s
own experiences as a young man in the early 1900’s. O’Neill, like Parritt, harbored an
unfulfilled longing for maternal attention. His mother, Ella, was equally dispassionate
towards him due to morphine addiction. O’Neill discovered her addiction in 1903.
“Eugene returned to the hotel one day unexpectedly and stumbled upon his mother in the
act of giving herself a morphine injection” (Gelb 72). Later that year, as her addiction
progressed, O’Neill lost his faith and abandoned the Catholic Church for good (Gelb 78).
Throughout his life, he would feel this to be a betrayal of his mother more than God.

Another event that became part of Parritt’s story occurred in 1912. Desperate over his
failed marriage, O’Neill attempted suicide at Jimmy the Priest’s, one of the hotels upon
which Harry Hope’s is based. During this time, O’Neill resided in these hotels and drank
heavily. One evening, after an embarrassing incident with a prostitute, he swallowed a
lethal dose of barbiturates (Gelb 97). His companions revived him, but his brush with
death haunted him for years to come.
Drawing on these formative experiences as a means of fleshing out this character, O’Neill
has unintentionally revealed a primary component of his personality. Don Parritt, a young
character of complex longing represents the Id of Eugene O’Neill.

Hickey—the Ego

Freud defines the Ego as the component of identity that negotiates with the desires of the
Id. “Thus in its relation to the Id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check
the superior strength of the horse” (Gay 636). The Ego’s primary job is to regulate the
satisfaction of the Id. The connection between desire and control is profoundly significant
in the formation of personality and identity (Gelb 634).

This connection is revealed in Iceman when Hickey, O’Neill’s Ego, mysteriously

recognizes Parritt, his Id. Although they have never met, Hickey sees a connection, “In
my game, to be a shark at it, you teach yourself never to forget a name or a face. But I
still know damned well I recognized something about you. We’re members of the same
lodge—in some way” (O’Neill, Act 1). Hickey recognizes part of himself.

O’Neill portrays Hickey as plagued by desires but attempting to regulate them. For
example, Hickey has always used Harry’s birthday parties as his excuse for regular,
periodic drinking binges. “Yuh could set your watch by his periodicals” (O’Neill, Act 1).
This time, when he appears, he seems to have beaten his addiction. “I’m off the stuff for
keeps” (O’Neill, Act 1). Hickey married Evelyn in hopes that their love would reign in
his wild ways. But it did not. He admits as much toward the end of the play. “I never
could learn to handle temptation. I’d want to reform and mean it. I’d promise Evelyn, and
I’d promise myself, and I’d believe it” (O’Neill, Act 4). In this way, O’Neill presented the
decadent impulses of the Id being regulated by the Ego.

Like Parritt, O’Neill based Hickey on a combination of acquaintances from his time
living in the New York hotels. Hickey is not based on any one salesman in particular,
rather several salesmen who would come and go in the bars where O’Neill stayed. “Of
course, I knew many salesmen in my time who were periodical drunks, but Hickey is not
any of them. He is all of them, you might say, and none of them” (Barlow 14). Like Harry
Hope’s is a combination of locations, Hickey is an amalgam of salesmen.

Some critics have seen a connection between Hickey and O’Neill. James A. Robinson
sees Hickey as O’Neill, the playwright of the 1920’s who scolded his bourgeois
audiences. “His mission was, like Hickey’s, to expose his audience’s illusions and make
them face unpleasant truths about themselves” (636). Others have seen Hickey as the
influence of O’Neill’s brother, James O’Neill Jr. O’Neill idolized his older brother, and
his influence is seen in many of the author’s work (Gelb 285).

Like Jamie, who drank himself to death, the struggle for sobriety became too much for
Hickey. “I was due to come here for my drunk around Harry’s birthday, I got nearly
crazy. I kept swearing to her every night that this time I really wouldn’t “ (O’Neill, Act
4). The forces driving Hickey take their toll. As Freud explains, the Ego regulates the
desires of the Id, but it is those desires that shape the Ego. “It is easy to see that the ego is
that part of the Id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world
through the medium of the conscious mind” (Gay 635).

Hickey’s murder of his wife can be seen as a last, desperate attempt at control. If he could
not resist temptation, he would prevent it from causing Evelyn any more pain. Where
Parritt, as O’Neill’s Id suffered from a lack of maternal love, Hickey as Ego suffered
from excess of it. Evelyn loved Hickey despite himself. And when marriage and love
could not help him resist temptation, the Ego found a way out.

Slade—the Super Ego

Freud explains that the formation of the Super Ego stems from the relationship between
the Id and Ego. The impulses of the Id are the biological products of countless preceding
generations and the Super Ego tempers those impulses. “The Ego Ideal (Super Ego) is
therefore the [visible] expression of the most powerful impulses and most important
libidinal vicissitudes of the Id” (Gay 643). As a person matures, desexualization of the
mother occurs and the intensifying of identification with the father results in a deeper
incorporation of cultural and soci4etal structures. This identity within the Ego becomes
the Super Ego and represents man’s religion and morality. “The self-judgment which
declares that the Ego falls short of its ideal produces the religious sense of humility” (Gay
643). It also produces the feeling of guilt, the main emotion associated with the Super
Ego.

Larry Slade performs the role of O’Neill’s Super Ego to the other main characters in
Iceman. Sitting in the grandstand of philosophical detachment, Slade projects the façade
of indifference towards the other roomers at Harry Hopes, even though they look to him
for moral guidance. When Don Parritt arrives unexpectedly, Larry is torn between his
affection for Don and his disgust with human nature. Don reminds Larry of two his
greatest disappointments in life: his love for Rosa Parritt, Don’s mother and the failure of
Socialism in America. Yet Larry was resolute in his detachment. When Hickey arrives as
expected, his unexpected transformation draws Larry toward involvement as well. His
influence over the other roomers was not enough to prevent Hickey from his attempts to
“save” them. In the end, Larry is compelled to judge the crimes of both Parritt and
Hickey. Larry condemns them of their crimes and his condemnation sets them free.

Conventional interpretations of the play present Hickey as the protagonist and Slade as
the leader of the chorus of roomers at Harry Hope’s. As Timo Tiusanen explains, “There
is a chorus in The Iceman Cometh, and there is a protagonist playing against this chorus:
Hickey against the roomers” (29). Critics like Cyrus Day and John Patrick Diggins agree
that Slade “speaks for O’Neill in the play” (Day 11; Diggins 9) providing a moral
compass to a bar full of addicts and dreamers. O’Neill has created Slade as the character
to whom the audience is first attracted and with whom it identifies. He is connected with
the audience and the characters simultaneously. Stephen Black describes Slade as “The
rational man, one on whom to rely as a guide through an evening in the asylum” (Black
4). Calling him rational is calling him the Super Ego that tempers Parritt’s Id and
Hickey’s Ego.

The character of Larry Slade is based on O’Neill’s life-long friend, Terry Carlin. O’Neill
met Carlin in his early Anarchist days while publishing Revolt (Gelb 833). O’Neill
believed that Carlin “Cared for nothing in the world except the integrity of the soul”
(Alexander 39), a characteristic that O’Neill attributed to Slade. He provided Slade with
other details from Carlin’s past. Carlin fell in love with an unfaithful woman. Her
infidelity eventually ended the relationship and caused Carlin to lose faith in the
Anarchist movement and humanity. “His suffering transformed him into the detached
philosopher he was when O’Neill came into his life” (Alexander 43). The Slade character
channels these emotions—both a high sense of integrity and an affected detachment. He
is content to “fall asleep observing the cannibals do their death dance” (O’Neill, Act 1).

Parritt and Hickey retreat to Hope’s carrying their guilt, Parritt’s for Rosa’ arrest and
Hickey’s for Evelyn’s death. Each man wanted to use Larry to relieve his guilt. But Larry
is resolved to remain detached. “Larry rejects Hickey for the same reason he rejects
Parritt. [Each wants] understanding…and requires that understanding fit his own self-
justification” (Black 9). Willingly or otherwise, the Id and Ego characters must work
through their guilt with Slade as the uncompromising voice of moral authority, their
Super Ego.

Toward the end of Iceman, despite his resistance, Parritt and Hickey pull Slade off the
philosophical grandstand and cause him to admit he cares enough to judge their crimes.
Once provoked, Slade, the Super Ego, forces Hickey to realize his hatred for Evelyn
motivated the murder. Similarly, once forced, Slade condemned Parritt’s betrayal. The
Super Ego judges the action of the Id and Ego, and finds them reprehensible and lays a
death sentence on each. Parritt leaps to his own death. The police take Hickey away to the
electric chair.

Conclusion

Depression and illness caused O’Neill to feel the presence of death in 1939. It inspired
him to reflect back upon his life. Dwelling in his memories, like the roomers at Harry
Hope’s, he wrote The Iceman Cometh. Unwittingly, he revealed more of himself to the
audience than he may have realized. For in the characters of Parritt, Hickey and Slade
O’Neill has portrayed his own Id, Ego and Super Ego searching for meaning in the
shadow of the Iceman.
n The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin describes the hour after which a woman, Louise
Mallard, finds out that her husband has died in a sudden and tragic train accident.

The character’s initial response to the news is logical. She immediately begins to mourn
her deceased husband with violent sobs, implying that she registers the tragedy. She
seems to spend no time whatsoever in denial. What she does seems completely
appropriate.

However, afterwards, in her room, she stares dully. Specifically, she glances in such a
way that “indicates a suspension of intelligent thought” (250). The fact that this occurs in
private implies that the super-ego, or the socially-appropriate version of herself, is now
giving way to the id, her innermost, self-gratifying desires.

Louise Mallard doesn’t completely give in, though. Instead, she seems to be trying very
hard to understand what the id wants. She wants to become conscious of the id’s
disorganized and unrestrained desires. That which tries to understand and please the id is
the ego.

The Id Informing the Ego

In this state of “suspended intelligent thought,” Louise’s sobs of mourning become

affected by the “new spring life” visible through her bedroom window (250). She is taken
over by “monstrous joy” (251). Her super-ego fears this force, as it stands in direct
opposition to the id. The ego, however, embraces the joy she feels.

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In her dazed, semi-conscious state, however, she focuses more on the joyful feeling than
on the monstrousness of it, demonstrating that the ego is in charge. Her id is informing
her attempts to sort out her feelings.
Now, when she has turned off her will to conform to social constraints, Louise is able to
see freedom in the patches of blue sky outside her window. That feeling of freedom,
which comes from the id, causes the ego to find joy by showing that she now has a
chance to live for herself instead of remaining devoted to her husband.

Half-Loved Husband

It is immediately mentioned that Louise has heart trouble. This makes the later revelation
that she is quite young surprising. It seems, therefore, that the trouble is with the love and
not the ventricles of her beating heart. The super-ego finds this fact very difficult to
admit. After all, you are supposed to love the man you’ve married.

Whether or not she ever actually loved her husband is uncertain from the outset: “…she
had loved him---sometimes. Often she had not.” It is not surprising, then, that in her state
of suspended intelligent thought, she thinks: “What did it matter!” She describes love as
an “unsolved mystery,” unable to compete with “self-assertion which she suddenly
recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” (251).

Again, this important realization occurs during a time when her intelligence is turned off,
a time when she is trying to consciously deal with her most essential feelings. It,
therefore, seems likely that this deferral of regular thought, this blankness, is actually the
very thing that allows her to gather insight into her own soul.

Louise understands what is happening in her own core by letting her body and the forces
within it take over what she tells herself. She gives in to herself instead of struggling to fit
a mold. Without her conscious, socially-appropriate self telling her that she is in love, her
body allows some mysterious and “monstrous” force to celebrate the acquisition of the
freedom for which it yearns.

Chopin, Kate. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction Seventh Edition.
Bedford/St. Martin’s (Boston: 2007). Charters, Ann. “The Story of an Hour” p 250-252

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