The Western Ego, Three People live in your head..

In mainstream Western culture, we have a very simplified understanding of the ego. Generally, we use the term ego to refer to a person who is self-obsessed or arrogant. We view Sports stars like Conor McGregor or Cristiano Ronaldo as egotistical, and we view shy timid characters as non-egotistical.

Then there’s the psychological understanding of Ego known as Freud’s three aspects of human psyche, the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. These systems of mind develop early in a person’s life. The Id is the most primitive desire-based part, it is concerned only with our basic needs and it is not self-aware. The Id’s only concerns are sexual reproduction, food, and oxygen. It just wants whatever it desires regardless of the consequences.

The Id is primarily found in the brain structure called the amygdala. The amygdala is found at the base of the human brain and it is the most primitive part of the brain. It is always the first part of the brain to receive information from the senses and it is the first part to provide feedback.

This is why we often react to situations in strange ways, for example, we will often uncontrollably lose our temper. All evolutions of the brain were built on top of this structure, so the amygdala is very primitive and it is the same as a reptile’s brain. Reptiles have two reactions to any situation, fight or flight! At the base of our brains, we are still reptiles.

The mammalian brain was built on top of the amygdala during the next evolution of the human brain. This part of the brain serves many functions, including the regulation of the amygdala. The mammalian brain enabled humans to evolve away from simple reactionary animals to creatures that considered the consequences of their actions. The amygdala still reacts first but the mammalian brain can regulate this reaction after a few seconds. We can train our mammalian brain to have more control over our amygdala and it’s something we usually get better at as we get older. This is why we are often told to count to ten when we lose our temper.

The mammalian brain is the primary area where Freud’s next aspect of psyche known as the Ego resides. The Ego is the self-aware middleman that stands between the Id’s wants and the real world. The Ego tries to satisfy the Id in socially acceptable ways, it is self-aware and realizes the importance of maintaining a desirable public image. Gollum from the Lord of the Rings books/movies is the perfect example of Id and Ego at play. The part of Gollum that says “my precious” is the Id, and the part that plans, thinks, and worries is the Ego.

The mammalian brain is also home to the Superego. The Superego is the final aspect of Freud’s aspects of human psyche. The Superego incorporates the learned morals and values of society as learned from inputs such as parents, radio/television, social media, peer groups, etc. The Superego imagines how we should be idealistically and it is where our conscience comes from. It imagines what we would be like if we were perfect in the eyes of society. It uses guilt to punish the Ego for fulfilling some needs of the Id.

Imagine a delicious cake sitting on a table, the light from the cake pours into your eyes and it is converted into an electrical pulse. The electrical pulses pass up nerve endings to your amygdala where your Id instantly kicks in and says “FOOD, EAT IT, EAT IT, My precious!!”. The Id will literally kill for this cake if it has to. Then the electrical pulse passes through to your mammalian brain, where the Ego kicks in and says “yes we want the food, but it’s too risky, people will know we’re greedy, give it a minute, then have one slice”.

Finally, your Superego kicks in and makes you feel guilty for wanting cake at all, especially since you already ate some cake this week. You decide that you won’t have any cake and you plan to give up eating sugary foods altogether. You also think that you could start to encourage others to give up eating sugary foods and maybe join a gym.

The brain creates an electrical pulse that is sent to your voice box to create the sentence: “no cake for me thanks, I’m thinking of giving up sugary foods, I want to join the gym, maybe you should too, have you ever considered turning vegan?”. Then the Superego kicks in again and says “you’re being pretentious, stop trying so hard, a perfect person doesn’t force things on others” and so on forever. This is the endless circle of thought that is happening in our brains all day, every day in relation to every situation. Is it any wonder most of us feel insane?

There are three people living in our heads!