Samme Sheikh

Freud Super Ego & Morality In Freuds move from a topographical outline of mental activities toward a more structural conception of the mind, the ego rose to a new position of centrality. As the unconscious increasingly appeared to Freud a more agentive region of the mind than he had previously considered, the relations between the conscious, unconscious, and the intermediary preconscious appeared incapable of housing a dynamic understanding of repression as a mental activity in relation to the constructed self. Thus in The Ego and the Id, Freud presents an ego that enters into complex relations with both unconscious and conscious activities, which require distinctions of ego activities according to these relations. The ego now existsnot as a set of individual drives, nor as a reconciliation between these drives and the external worldbut rather as a lived construction of self, dependent upon the instinctual self-hood of the id and the projected self-hood of the super ego. In this system, the role of morality in mental life becomes clearer. Though Freud had always maintained that repressive forces were strongly implicated in both normal and abnormal mental behaviors, his focus on tracing libidinal energies through the conscious and unconscious kept him from a conception of morality that could be universalized. With the super ego, Freud conceives of a mental agency in which morality, both social and individual, becomes its main prerogative. Ego and Id In The Ego and the Id, Freud is able to arrive at the super ego with a kind of authority due to the functions that are implied but unaccounted for during his delineation of ego and id functions. The necessity for dynamic and interrelated conscious and unconscious activities creates in Freuds theory mental entities through which these activities are channeled. Presiding over an individuals unconscious forces is the id, the character of which differs far less than the ego from individual to individual because it is an agency, which voices the demands of the uncompromising and universal libido. Freud speaks of the id more as an embedded instead of constructed component of mental life. It simultaneously serves as the physical ground for the establishment of other mental structures, and also the temporal reservoir for all mans libidinal history. However, as foundational as the id appears, it would have little relevance without an agency that is capable of ordering conscious activity in the shared reality outside of the mind. It is in the egos capacity to fulfill this kind of negotiation between the potent libidinal demands of the id and the constraints and obstacles to be found in external reality. Freud speaks of the id following a pleasure principle in contrast to the egos workings under a reality principle. As these doctrines are clearly in conflict with one another, the nature of these negation and their observed results in both normal and abnormal cases, yields an image of the ego sharing the ids burden. Freud hints throughout The Ego and Id that the ego might be seen vertically, with a higher ego and a lower ego. This is because the egos calculations do not occur outside the individual. Its attempt to reconcile a persons own libidinal demands with the external world do not occur in the sphere it wishes to reconcile itself with, but rather in and of that which holds a vested interest in this reconciliation: the body. Freuds assertion that the ego is a mental projection of physical life is essential to enlivening the dichotomy of conscious

and unconscious and offers legitimacy for this turn in his theory. Because the ego is both physical and subjectively rational (capable of an intentional organization of information from which to sanction conscious actions) its relation to the id loses some of its oppositional character, and we can see the workings of an egos susceptibility to an id how the egos imposition of control on the id might actually result in a symbiotic relationship between that which needs to control and that which seeks to be controlled. Oedipus Complex and Super Ego In light of this, the conscious function of the ego in relation to the id differs from the character of the ego that maintains unconscious allegiance to the ids fundamental drives. This duality of the egos relationship with the id, cannot fundamentally affect the id, positively or adversely, but the ego can recognize the contradictions of its situation. When the ego cannot effectively repress the demands of the id, it allows the id to expend libidinal energies within the mind toward that which that which both the ego and the id are desirous. The first time this happens in the life of any individual, for Freud, is during the first sexual phase of life: in the Oedipal phase. Briefly, it is in the helplessness of youth combined with a mental stage defined by the id, that a child experiences her strongest libidinal connection with one or both of his parents. But as she realizes the existence of separate egos within the triangle of this relationship, and that hers is the weakest and is under the dominion of her parents, there is the development of a mental agency that corresponds to the egos negotiation of the external and the need for limitations on the id. This is the super ego. Super Ego and Morality The super ego subsumes the libidinal inclinations of safety and comfort, which were satisfied before the Oedipal phase, but in adult life these objects of submission are positioned within the super ego as authorities with complete prerogative and to whom ego/id relations need to be adjusted in order to meet the perceived demands of this authority. During the progression of adult life, such authority is augmented by social sources of authority, the state, religion, class hierarchy and other impositions on the expressions of the id and thus the health of the ego. This idea of the healthy mind is more the focus of Freuds conversations of morality as opposed to and ascension toward a moral ideal. This comes from the economic dimension to mental activity that Freud often evokes. For Freud, morality seems to be an idealized conversation removed from natural bases. In Ego and Id, morality is merely seen through a psychological capacity or incapacity to accommodate external demands.