This archetype was described as Carl Jung as a person with great judgment and wisdom. The wise old man is sometimes referred to as the Sage. This archetype is characterized by being old, bearded, father-figure type who uses his great personal knowledge of the world and offer guidance through stories and may impress upon his [...]
Freud had initially divided our psyche into the conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious. And although this division had helped explain a lot of psychological behavior, he abandoned the old topographical model and developed a new one: the id, ego and super-ego.
Freud still maintained that the different levels of the mind operated at the different consciousness levels, he found that the new division better explained how the mind works.
The id operates on pleasure. He states that the id is childlike and demands instant satisfaction for its urges and desires. The id operates on the unconscious. It only knows one thing and that is “want”. During our infancy the id is the most active part of our mind. The id is primitive, selfish and contains all our basic needs and feelings. The id is the “child” within us.
The ego is rational. It can slip in between our pre-conscious and unconscious. Unlike the id, it operates on reality. The ego takes care of the id’s desires as long as circumstances or situations permit it. Inappropriate urges or desires are repressed. The super-ego constantly negotiates between the id and the super-ego. It gratifies the id while dealing with the long term consequences of storing repressed urges in the super-ego. The ego is the “adult”.
The super-ego is the moral part of the mind. It imposes the rules. It controls the id through guilt and anxiety. The super-ego struggles with right and wrong. Freud calls the super-ego as the conscience. There are two divisions of the super-ego the Ego Ideal and the conscience. The ego-ideal are those behaviors or modes of conduct that our parents approve of, or the goals which society has deemed ideal. The conscience is what forces the id to become inhibited. It represses the urges of the id by punishing it.
Tags: Dream Psychology, Sigmund Freud
