In The Ego and the Id Freud (1923) drew together ideas initiated in earlier works and presented a more formalized conceptualization of the psyche or mind as an energy system taking the form of a confluence of interacting forces which may and often do, conflict. These forces, Freud suggested, were broadly of three types. The most basic and primitive of these, and the source of all instinctual energy, he called the id. (The others are the ego—the perceptual, integrative aspect of self—and the superego, which is roughly equivalent to conscience). Discharge of the energy of the id, either through consummatory actions or appropriate fantasy, is experienced as pleasure. Where the urge cannot be directly gratified in action or fantasy, tension results. According to Freudian theory, young babies are dominated by id impulses. If their needs are not met, tension builds up and they cry until breast or bottle is produced. Once they are satisfied, tension is relieved and they rest back content.
The id is the instinctual, hereditary part of the psyche. In developing this concept, Freud extended the idea of the unconscious to include not only that which is repressed but also the biological basis of personality. The id is the repository of sexual drive or libido and of the destructive power of the death instinct (thanatos). It follows only the pleasure principle without regard for reality or logic (‘primary process’). Gratification may come through fantasy and urges may be displaced on to other objects. (In contrast the ego, while it also seeks pleasure, follows the reality principle and its secondary process thinking takes account of the external world.) Although the ego is the executive of the psyche and the id ‘has no will of its own’, Freud clearly accorded primacy to the id, seeing it as the source of all energy and as expressing the ‘true purpose of the individual organism’s life’. In describing the relation between ego and id, he drew the analogy between a horse and rider. ‘Just as there often remains nothing for the rider, if he does not want to be separated from the horse, but to lead it where it wants to go, so the ego, too, is accustomed to translating the will of the id into actions as if that will were its own’.
Because psychoanalysis was for Freud primarily the study of the unconscious, so ‘psychoanalysis is to be described as a psychology of the id and of its effects on the ego’.
It is worth noting that Freud himself never used the word id. His original term was das Es, literally ‘the it’. This effectively puts across the notion of a different kind of impulsion capable of acting outside and sometimes in spite of our conscious intention. Bettelheim (1985) has criticized Freud’s English translators for introducing terms which ‘reek of erudition’ but whose effect is to distance us from Freud’s ideas.
Richard Stevens
Open University
References
Bettelheim, B. (1985) Freud and Man’s Soul, Harmondsworth.
Freud, S. (1923) The Ego and the Id, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. J.Strachey, vol. 19, London.
Further reading
Freud, S. (1933) New Introductory lectures in Psychoanalysis, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. J.Strachey, vol. 22, London.
Stevens, R. (1983) Freud and Psychoanalysis, Milton Keynes.
