Ego is a tough negotiator between desires and morality. And yet, a soft skin for the psyche, both separating and connecting two different worlds. Freud’s followers borrowed the notion of the ego, but they look at it from a broader perspective.
Psychoanalysis gave new meaning to numerous terms, but “ego” has been the most prominent. We use terms such as “egoism” or “egotism,” we speak of a big or hurt ego. And yet, we rarely give any thought to the exact meaning of the words, holding on to their negative associations instead. We see the “ego” as a vehicle for unmitigated individualism, a person’s hard core separating them from everything external. We connect the ego with self-love, self-importance, dreams of greatness. In the rich tradition originating in psychoanalysis, one can easily find justification for these associations, yet one can discover very different interpretations as well. Even though these interpretations haven’t gone through to the collective imagination, they are equally fascinating.
First of all, we need to distinguish between the ego in the psychoanalytic sense from what we could call “the self” or the individual’s subjectivity—i.e. their psychological entity, their separateness, “being oneself.” For Freud and his later followers, the notion of ego has a narrower scope: it refers only to one of the psyche’s agencies, which together form the human subject. A person cannot be reduced to their ego, even though this aspect of the psyche is crucial to identity. Ego interacts with external reality; therefore, it is more easily communicable and more readily available for introspection than other agencies of the psyche. This does not mean, however, that it is only an artificial mask which we show to the world, while hiding our “real self.” Neither is it—despite the common convictions about psychoanalytic notions of the self—transparent to itself. Freud often emphasized that the ego is not to be identified with consciousness, and that it contains a lot of unconscious content. The image of the ego as a source of pride, strength and self-contentment does not conform to the psychoanalysis’ characterization of the agency either; the ego (exclusively) feels anxiety and in response, triggers a series of defense mechanisms that are causes of enormous suffering to an individual. In the repeated, unintentional behaviors, intrusion symptoms, and obsessions his patients struggled with, Freud often saw the ego’s defensive actions that push the individual into a trap.
Keeping the drives in check
So what is the ego according to psychoanalysis? According to Freud’s most famous description, from the 1920s, ego is a mediator between the two other agencies. The ego is torn between the demands of the superego—the internalized voice of conscience reminding us of cultural prohibitions and dictates—and the id, a melting pot of primal drives that ignores morality. The ego, following reason, knows that it cannot let the tempestuous passions have their way. The absolute selfishness and a disregard for others, traits we label as “egoism,” in psychoanalytic theory, are properties of the id rather than the ego. Since it is a reservoir of blind drives, the id really has no qualms about actualizing its desires. Yet the ego—even though its main, “selfish,” task is keeping the individual alive—has to take various constraints into consideration. According to Freud, pride and honor, also commonly associated with the notion of ego, are in fact connected with the superego, or the residue of parental authority—the voice ceaselessly comparing the real “I” with its unreachable ideal.
The ego mediates not just between the drives of the id and the expectations of the superego, but also between the psychological reality and the outside world with which we must negotiate our desires. Freud considers this agency “the representative of the real world,” trying to replace the pleasure principle—the desire for pleasure regardless of obstacles—that governs the id with the more pragmatic reality principle.
According to one of Freud’s concepts, the ego emerged from the id; it was formed as the result of a regular interaction with the world. As the most external part of the id, it is the proponent of compromise, so important for Freud’s bourgeois worldview. Since the ego is responsible for perception, the will, and bodily movement, it enables the fulfillment of the drives’ demands. Simultaneously, it tries to constantly influence the id, to change its desires to ones both more in accordance with real possibilities and more readily acceptable to the strict superego. It may have been this vision that shaped the common perception of the ego as the seat of reason and control, which are both vital issues for liberal individualism. No wonder that in cursory summaries of psychoanalytic theory, the ego began to be erroneously identified with consciousness. A closer look into the writings of the founder of psychoanalysis lets us see that the ego conceived of this way enjoys a rather limited autonomy: dependency on three different masters, “a triple servitude”—in the words of Freud—to the id, the superego and the external reality, which forces it to realize contradictory, incompatible goals. Because of its role as mediator, the ego is subject to dangers from the outside and the inside—to the attacks of real competitors, the id’s appetitive pressures and the moral charges of the superego.
Narcissus and pseudopods
Despite numerous indications that its independence is uncertain—to say the least—the ego in Freud’s theory has an unambiguously privileged position, often close to its more common perception. One of Freud’s spatial metaphors presents ego as a “protoplasmic organism” producing pseudopodia. According to this comparison, the entire energy of the drives is, in fact, narcissistic—focused on the “I”—while the relationships with others are like pseudopodia—completely dependent on the egotistical nucleus. Moreover, according to this vision, the ego “spills over” to the outside only when the drive has reached too high a level, when it literally cannot stand the enormity of its own narcissism. Freud’s followers had various views on his ideas focused on the ego. The daughter of the founder of psychoanalysis, Anna Freud, and her supporters will reinstate the ego’s value and consider strengthening the ego the most important goal of psychoanalytic therapy—this strain has become the most popular with analysts in the US. Carl Gustav Jung will follow a different path. Inspired by Eastern religions, he will conceive of the ego as only a part of a bigger, holistic self-consciousness that should be the proper object of psychoanalytic investigations.
The vision of the ego as a lone proponent of compromise struggling for its autonomy in difficult conditions is not the only psychoanalytical interpretation of the subject. Even in Freud we find seeds of relational thinking, focused not on individualism, but on a more basic dependency—from other people. Freud pointed out many times that the ego does not exist from the beginning of life; something must happen for such a complex structure to appear in the human psyche. That “something” is the earliest relationship with another person, or, to be more precise, with people who provide love and care for the child’s fragile subject (not yet an ego!), i.e. the parents. According to Freud, the ego takes shape through identification with already-formed individuals who become models for the “I” in the process of becoming. Narcissism—which pop-psychology deems the ultimate evil, an untreatable disorder ascribed to “toxic” individuals—in Freud’s theory is precisely the internalization of the relationship with a loving parent—a process indispensable for living. According to one of psychoanalysis’ basic assumptions, the vital functions in a weak organism, such as the body of a baby, must be supported by an additional element—love. Yet, because such kind of support is not always available outside, in order to have an autonomous life, the individual must provide love themselves. According to this paradoxical conception, the ego forms only when it has identified with its first love object and comes to love itself as much as it loved its close ones.
The ego’s dependence on others does not end with the identification with parents. Freud argues that every object of our feelings is eventually internalized, becoming a building block for the “I.” The ego consists of the residue of our relationships with other people—our absent close ones, past romantic relationships, and unrequited loves. In this respect, the ego’s shape is much more dependent on chance than the id, whose shape is determined by drives that are common to everyone. It is the ego that makes us singular and different from everyone around us; it makes us different because it contains the exceptional history of our relationships with other people—a record of personal dependence. This is the interpretation developed by Melanie Klein and her followers, the representatives of the object relations theory school. For the British psychoanalyst, the human ego is nothing more than a mechanism for externalizing that which is loved and hated, as well as projecting our own emotions outside, getting our love and hate out of our system. According to Klein, narcissism is only about the love for the internalized love object, the inner “good mother” whose existence helps the child bear a temporary absence of the external mother. In psychoanalysis, then, we can find the idea of the ego as a constellation of persons important to the individual—this vision strongly undermines the common conviction about the ego’s solipsistic, autonomous nature.
The skin I live in
One of the least obvious aspects of the ego as understood by psychoanalysis is its connection to the body. We might often think about this agency as the subject’s core—that which is the deepest and the most internal—yet in his “The Ego and the Id” Freud says the opposite: “The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface.” (Freud) The individual “I” does not hide in a safe depth but is always on the surface, close to the outside world, which makes it vulnerable to blows and hurts. The ego is a psychological counterpart of skin, the thin surface of the body. The French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu pointed out the similarity, when he wrote about “the skin-ego.” Jacques Lacan also identified the ego with something simultaneously fragile and bodily. According to Lacan, what we call the “I,” is formed during the so-called mirror phase, which covers the earliest years of a person’s life. According to this concept, the physically uncoordinated infant identifies themselves with the image in the mirror, a holistic image of the body which—outside the mirror image—is experienced as fragile and fragmentary. Our psychophysical identity and illusory consistency is provided by something external—a mirror image, as superficial as human skin.
Anzieu observes that everything can become a substitute for skin—even words. A theory of the ego that is formed via an identification, not with the image of another person (or the image in the mirror), but with the person’s speech is offered by, among others, Julia Kristeva. According to her theory—presented in Tales of Love—the human ego is constituted by sounds and words rather than visual sensations. In other words, the outside shell, internalized in the act of the first identification with the other, is not the surface of the skin, but a metaphorical surface of language. Hence, our ego is not only something relational—reliant on the other person, the first “Other” who directs their speech at us—but also infinitely delicate: a thin cover of words spread over a void, a fragile tangle of language, a narcissistic “second skin,” i.e. a tale.
Are these two visions of the ego—individualistic and relational—at odds? Paradoxically, the answer is no. Psychoanalysis teaches us that the thing that enables us to preserve our own, separate subjectivity, stems from the most intimate and radical dependence. Thus, the ego is formed through external influences. At the same time, the ego opposes the influences, demands autonomy. Yet—as the psychoanalyst André Green observed—in this case, autonomy means (true to the word’s etymology), governing oneself according to one’s own rules, but under somebody else’s occupation. Since psychoanalysis posits that the unconscious—the stranger inside—is at the same time the thing that is most intimately our own, we are always under occupation;: the only independence we can afford is the one we owe to our entanglements in relationships. Yet, the weak autonomy is absolutely indispensable to us. It is the only thing that prevents our identities from dissolving in the wilderness of total indistinguishability, in an abyss, where there is no difference between the “I” and the “non-I.” The ego, protecting everyone from the void of non-differentiability, is not a thick armor, but a thin film—as delicate as skin, the surface of a mirror or the beam of a tale. The independence it lets us have is always imbued with other people’s influences. Perhaps any other independence would turn out to be only a soothing illusion, really “egoistic” to boot.
Notes: 1. Sigmund Freud, “The Ego and the Id,” in Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 636.
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