The Ego and the Id

In this book, The Ego and the Id, Sigmund Freud delves deeper into the concepts of the human mind and the results of the conflicts and workings between them. All human behaviors and traits, according to this 1923 study, derive from the complicated interactions of three elements of the psyche: the id, the ego, and the superego. Freud claimed these components of the human psyche controlled all processes of personality, behaviors, and traits in a person. The Id was a person’s most basic and impulsive instincts—the ones that feed into our deepest desires and physical needs. The Super-Ego was the opposite of the id. This component controlled our highest morals and standards, operating through our conscience and making us desire to be our most ideal-selves. The piece in the middle is the Ego. The ego mediates between the id and realities of the world around us, while being supervised (and guilted) by the super-ego.

About the Author:
Sigmund Freud, (born May 6, 1856, Freiberg, Moravia, Austrian Empire [now Příbor, Czech Republic] - died September 23, 1939, London, England ), Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual legislator of his age. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a therapy for the relief of its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society. Despite repeated criticisms, attempted refutations, and qualifications of Freud’s work, its spell remained powerful well after his death and in fields far removed from psychology as it is narrowly defined.