http://politics2100.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/superego/
Freud’s concept of the superego is helpful in understanding what is at stake in the upcoming midterm election and more generally in the American political economy (and in political conflicts in other countries). Republicans under the influence of libertarianism are attempting to get rid of or weaken our society’s “superego”, our collective conscience, which is often expressed in government laws and regulations. Democrats are more or less, though often weakly and ambivalently, aligned with and supporting the notion that society needs an “auxiliary external superego” realized in part through government action. The choice in November is between those who are in some way in touch with moral and social reality and those who are via their professed ideology out of touch with the reality of actually “doing the right thing”..
Egos, Ids, and Superegos
Freud proposed in his later work a theory that has been called the “
structural model” of the individual psyche, which is still current in common parlance as a way to describe mental experience and dynamics. Freud located animalistic drives in the “id” (
das Es = German for “the It”), Among these drives Freud’s theoretical and clinical focus was on sex and aggression, which were the impulses most troublesome to his neurotic patients; a more inclusive approach than Freud’s would include other drives like thirst, hunger and thermo-regulation. In any case, the id is supposed to operate according to the pleasure principle, the notion that gratification must be instantaneous, either via the supply of real satisfactions or imaginary ones, as in fantasy. The “ego” (
das Ich = the “I”) contains most of the central executive functions of the personality, including calculative rationality, and abides by the “reality principle”, which understands the difference between wish and the fulfillment of wish, the dream and the external world outside. The ego endeavors to organize life and the environment so as to fulfill the wishes of the id in a realistic manner. Our popular use of the word “ego” for “exaggerated self-regard” is not part of the way the term is used by Freud and subsequent psychoanalysts; more recent psychoanalysts have formulate theories that specifically address these narcissistic issues.
The superego (das Ueberich = the “over-I”) is thought to be the internalized mandates of society and significant others in the early life of a child (parents, etc.), the should’s and shouldn’ts of life. The superego is supposed to enforce taboos and inspire guilt as well as present a picture of the ideal self, alternating rewarding and punishing the ego and id for conformance to ideals or violations of prohibitions. Someone who is a psychopath or sociopath is supposed to have a weak or non-existent superego; they act to satisfy their own impulses without regard to what society mandates. While the “superego” sounds like the executive function of the personality it is dependent upon the ego to obey its mandates and work towards its ideals.
While Freud and Freudians after him thought that a complete set of this psychological “furniture” was installed in early life inside individuals, this model of the psyche overlooks the contribution of the environment to actual behavior. For instance people are much more likely to abide by laws or “do the right thing” if they know that they will be observed or they have continual modeling of good behavior by people they identify with (giving to charity if others give to charity, etc.). Thus a social environment functions as an “external superego” (most obviously policemen, peer groups, courts, group bylaws and codes of conduct) to supplement the internal superego; psychoanalysts since Freud unfortunately have talked as though such an external help for the superego is the exception rather than the rule.
