EGO

Narcissism, id, super ego

In anthropology ego refers to the individual from whom the networks of kinship and family relationship and descent are reckoned and traced. In psychology the term ego is used to refer to the self of the individual and the way they have constructed their personality and identity in society. 

In Freud's psychoanalytic theory, the ego is the outcome of the individual's struggle to adapt their basic drives (the ‘id’) to the imperative control of society and culture (the ‘super ego’). Between their drives and the coercive influence of social expectation, individuals create a sphere of unique personality.

The Ego Revisited - Understanding and Transcending Narcissism - The ego as a construct in humanistic and transpersonal psychology has a turbulent history. Early efforts to distinguish transpersonal theories from the reductionism of Freudian drive psychology tended to eschew psychoanalytic views altogether, including theories on the development of the ego as an intrapsychic structure. Transpersonal theorists have began to recognize and integrate the important contributions of American ego psychology and object relations theory toward an understanding of prestructural or "prepersonal" difficulties. The seminal contribution of Heinz Kohut's self psychology is placed in the context of this expanded spectrum of development. The fundamental quest of the grandiose aspect of self for affirmative mirroring is examined in both its progressive and regressive dimensions. - Karen M. Peoples, Bert Parlee, Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

Beyond the Ego: Toward Transpersonal Models of the Person and Psychotherapy 
Roger N. Walsh, Frances Vaughan, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 20, No.1,   (1980)
All psychologies posit either explicit or implicit models of the person which shape perception, organize experience, and determine methods of inquiry. A transpersonal model, like a humanistic model, focuses on the human potential for growth, health, and well-being. It goes beyond existing models to include self-transcendence, and it emphasizes the centrality of conscious ness in shaping experience and enhancing well-being.

Ego and Self in the Group - H. Shmuel Erlich, the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. 
Group Analysis, Vol. 29, No. 2, 229-243 (1996) © 1996 The Group-Analytic Society
The psychodynamic concepts of ego and Self are interwoven with group phenomena in a number of ways. Even though ego/Self are at an opposite pole to group, they are also what makes up the group, and are in need of the group for attaining their fullest state. The group may also be viewed as having the character and quality of an ego/Self, albeit at a new level of conceptualization, as an entity in its own right. Understanding ego and Self as representing different experiential modes of the subject's relatedness to his or her object enables us to better understand ego and Self in the group, and can help account more fully for the different atmospheres that prevail in the Work Group as compared to the Basic Assumption Group. Such an understanding is in turn greatly facilitated by viewing experiences in groups through the experiential modalities of Being and Doing, which are embedded in the dimension of merger versus separateness of Self and object. - gaq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/29/2/229

Ego Development and Black Identity - Jacqueline Looney, Duke University 
Journal of Black Psychology, Vol. 15, No.1, (1988) © 1988 Association of Black Psychologists
The relationship of ego development and Black identity formation was explored in thirty Black male and thirty Black female college students. The subjects were administered the Washington University Sentence Completion Test and the Racial Identity Attitude Scale. A significant inverse relationship was found between ego development and Black identity. This suggests that if an individual has strong ego, he or she defines self; if the individual's ego is weak, others define self. Social and cultural differences, the definition of self, and the perception of development, identity, and change are discussed as other possible explanations for this inverse relationship. - jbp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/1/41

The Relationship of Moral Judgment and Ego Development to Political-Social Values in Black College Students - Patricia J. Dunston, Albert Roberts, Howard University, Journal of Black Psychology, Vol. 13, No. 2, 43-49 (1987) © 1987 Association of Black Psychologists
An investigation was made of interrelationships among ego development, moral judgment, self-concept, and political- social values within a Black College-age population. Two alternative models were structured of possible interrelation ships based on the literature generated by the research groups of Lawrence Kohlberg and Jane Loevinger. Data gathered on 193 college students were probed by regression analyses. The results failed to validate either of the two proposed models, but they did indicate that moral judgment has a greater causal influence that did ego development. The discussion explores factors that might account for our failure to obtain a more complex pattern of relationships among these variables. - jbp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/43

Social Complexity, Threat, Ego Defenses, and Labeling the Other a Deviant - A 'Racial' Incident in the Development of a Small Group, Arthur Ferrari, Connecticut College 
Small Group Research, Vol. 21, No. 4, 538-553 (1990) © 1990 SAGE Publications
This article provides an examination of ego defense and their role in triggering people to lable another as deviant in a developing small group. Swanson's theory posits a relationship between the complexity of a social relationship and the complexity of ego defense when self and relationaship are threatened. Support was found for the purported relationship and showed that disparate levels of social interaction played a role in the decision to label(which in this study's instance was compounded by apparent racism). - sgr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/4/538

Freud on Homosexuality and the Super-Ego: Some Cross-Cultural Tests - Michael P. Carroll, Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 13, No. 4, 255-271 (1978) © 1978 SAGE Publications
Cross-cultural data that have recently become available make it possible to test several hypotheses derivable from Freud's theories relating to male homosexuality and the development of the super-ego. These hypotheses are (1) relatively little father-son contact during early childhood increases the probability of homosexuality; (2) under a condition of relatively high father contact, increased sexual attachment to the mother decreases the probability of homosexuality; (3) relatively little father-son contact during early child hood impedes the development of the son's super-ego; and (4) there should be a negative zero-order correlation between homosexuality and the super- ego development. This correlation should vanish once degree of father con tact is controlled. The data from fifty-one societies indicate that hypotheses (1), (2) and (3) are strongly supported, and hypothesis (4) is moderately supported. Whiting's "status envy" theory is also relevant to the same data, but is not as consistent with this data as is Freud's theory. - ccr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/4/255