ID

Narcissism, Ego, Super Ego

Id is a concept of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), founder of psychoanalysis. The id is the unconscious drives and psychic energies of humans as biological organisms. 

Id is untouched by culture and social learning and encompasses all that is primitive, natural and pre-civilized in human passions and energies. 

Freud seems to have assumed that the human struggle to achieve self consciousness against the ungoverned and unconstrained passions of the id, remained deeply buried in the unconscious minds of all human beings.

Freeing the Id: Deconstructing the Colonial Basis to Freud’s Ego/Id/Superego - Rachael Vaughan
Abstract: On close reading, Freud’s conception of id, ego and superego reveals itself to be founded on a colonialist metaphor in which the id is equated with similar qualities to those projected onto ‘the natives’ in the colonies of the time. Freud’s work necessarily participates in the ideology of empire. If we can however, step outside of this ideology, we can reread his work less as a true description of the internal psychic economy and more as a fascinating revelation of the process of colonization. In our current context of globalization, this issue is more relevant than ever before.

Introduction (short extract): When I first read Freud’s metaphorical mapping of the psyche into regions called id, ego and superego, it made me uneasy. There seemed to be something sadly flawed about his apparent conception of the instinctual realm as profoundly base, dangerous and untrustworthy.

I was equally unable to approve of the ego as conceptualized by Freud: this arrogant horseman astride the id, using its energy to control the beast, “transforming the id’s will into action as though it were its own” (Freud 1923, p. 636). What made the ego so darned sure of itself? As for the superego, I hated the strident, self-righteous sound of it. But it was the id as described by Freud that gave me the most difficulty. I was concerned for the id. It seemed as though there was some projection going on, and that the id was getting the brunt of it. - radpsynet.org/journal/vol4-1/vaughan.html

Freud's 'id' and Jung's 'self' as aids in self-analysis - Alfred B. J. Plaut
[Translated from the German by Barbara Wharton]
Abstract: The id and the self are described as constructs of our unconscious which can be deployed in describing the analytic process. They can be used like the x in mathematics or the joker in a pack of cards as fitting in almost anywhere. But we can call on them as important aids to concentration, when additional room is made for meditating on the past which then comes to life again. They are useful for analysing ourselves and others. In this way the id as well as the self become aide-mémoires. The analysis of the repressed by means of the transference is not the only road to hitherto unconscious memories. - blackwell-synergy.com

Origin of the id: Freud, Groddeck, Nietzsche--Schopenhauer and E. von Hartmann [Article in German] - Nitzschke B., Psyche (Stuttg). 1983 Sep;37(9):769-804.

The Ego and the Id by Sigmund Freud, Joan Riviere, Review: Karl M. Bowman
The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Oct., 1928)

Disney and Freud: Walt Meets the Id - The Journal of Popular Culture xv (4), 93–104.

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