What is the meaning of Ego? Concept, Definition of Ego

Definition of Ego

On this website you will find one or more meanings in your language for the word or phrase: Ego. As well as definitions of Wikipedia pages and other Web pages related to Ego Word and, of course, synonym of it with appropriate images related to the use of this expression.




1. Concept of Ego

Ego

Psychoanalytical concept belonging to the call "second topical" (description of the psyche proposed by Freud in terms-I - super - I). It is an instance or most ancient structure of the psychic apparatus; the baby has only Ego, and only confrontation with reality will result in the emergence of the ego and superego. It takes the subject energy for the development of his psychic life. In it lie the instincts, desires, and traumatic experiences. It is the link between the somatic or body and mental. The principle that governs their activity is the pleasure principle and mechanisms or processes that dominate in it are the primary processes. It is unconscious.

2 Meaning of Ego

Ego is a word etymologically derived from the latin "illud" indicating the form of the personal pronoun of the third person, replacing the object that you want to designate: "you spoke of it, you don't do the distracted" or "Is Ego what I mean".
For Freudian psychoanalysis, the 'it' is the biological and primitive (first appearing, and the only one that has the little baby that still had no interaction with the environment) of the psychic apparatus, which acts at the unconscious level, where there are repressed instincts, trauma and wishes, that eager to emerge, manifested in some way in the "I" is in the performance of the subjectconstrained by the moral standards set by the "superego".
Its action is directed toward pleasure not methodically, or self-maintenance, and is that charges to the psychic life energy, that energy is the libido, driving and conditioning our Act, think, and feel, although we do not have awareness of such a situation.
It is composed of innate, inherited instincts, and other acquired have been repressed, and psychoanalysis attempts to recover them through free association.
There are these impulses of life (eros) which we have already mentioned, as the instinct to eat, drink, sleep, sexual desire and instincts of death, which leads to aggression and destruction, to carry people to stillness and passivity, still one of the requirements to which I must respond. When I repressed it, according to the demands of the superego, the neurosis of transfer occurs.

3. Definition of Ego

Ego

The ego acts according to the reality principle; i.e. it seeks to please the ID’s drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bring grief. At the same time, Freud concedes that as the ego "attempts to mediate between ID and reality, it is often obliged to cloak the Ucs. [Unconscious] commands of the ID with its own Pcs. [Preconscious] rationalizations, to conceal the ID's conflicts with reality, to profess ... to be taking notice of reality even when the id has remained rigid and unyielding." The ego operates according to the reality principle, the regulating mechanism that enables the individual to delay gratifying immediate needs and function effectively in the real world. An example would be to resist the urge to grab other people's belongings and purchasing them for self.
The ego comprises the organized part of the personality structure that includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. Conscious awareness resides in the ego, although not all of the operations of the ego are conscious. Originally, Freud used the word ego to mean a sense of self, but later revised it to mean a set of psychic functions such as judgment, tolerance, reality testing, control, planning, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory. The ego separates out what is real. It helps us to organize our thoughts and make sense of them and the world around us. "The ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world.... The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions ... in its relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength, while the ego uses borrowed forces." Still worse, "it serves three severe masters ... the external world, the super-ego and the id." Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives and reality while satisfying the id and super-ego. Its main concern is with the individual's safety and allows some of the id's desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal. "Thus the ego, driven by the id, confined by the super-ego, repulsed by reality, struggles ... [in] bringing about harmony among the forces and influences working in and upon it," and readily "breaks out in anxiety — realistic anxiety regarding the external world, moral anxiety regarding the super-ego, and neurotic anxiety regarding the strength of the passions in the id." It has to do its best to suit all three, thus is constantly feeling hemmed by the danger of causing discontent on two other sides. It is said, however, that the ego seems to be more loyal to the id, preferring to gloss over the finer details of reality to minimize conflicts while pretending to have a regard for reality. But the super-ego is constantly watching every one of the ego's moves and punishes it with feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inferiority.
To overcome this the ego employs defense mechanisms. The defense mechanisms are not done so directly or consciously. They lessen the tension by covering up our impulses that are threatening. Ego defense mechanisms are often used by the ego when id behavior conflicts with reality and either society's morals, norms, and taboos or the individual's expectations as a result of the internalization of these morals, norms, and their taboos.
Denial, displacement, intellectualisation, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, and sublimation were the defense mechanisms Freud identified. However, his daughter Anna Freud clarified and identified the concepts of undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealization, identification, introjection, inversion, somatisation, splitting, and substitution.
"The ego is not sharply separated from the id; its lower portion merges into it.... But the repressed merges into the id as well, and is merely a part of it. The repressed is only cut off sharply from the ego by the resistances of repression; it can communicate with the ego through the id." (Sigmund Freud, 1923)
In a diagram of the Structural and Topographical Models of Mind, the ego is depicted to be half in the consciousness, while a quarter is in the preconscious and the other quarter lies in the unconscious.
In modern English, ego has many meanings. It could mean one’s self-esteem; an inflated sense of self-worth; the conscious-thinking self; or in philosophical terms, one’s self. Ego development is known as the development of multiple processes, cognitive function, defenses, and interpersonal skills or to early adolescence when ego processes are emerged.