Updated April 20th, 2014
I was starting to read 'An Outline of Psychoanalysis' (1938) the other day -- and there it was, or at least the essence of it -- a concept and label that I have been 'playing around' with for a while now -- the concept of 'id-ego' or 'ego-id' (Freud used the latter on page 149 of V. 23 of Strachey's Standard Edition, Chapter 2, 'The Theory Of The Instincts').
Wrote Freud in his last essay, a year before he died,
'We may picture an initial state as one in which the total available energy of Eros which henceforward we shall speak of as 'libido' is present in the still undifferentiated ego-id and serves to neutralize the destructive tendencies which are simultaneously present.' (p.149-150).
Well, far be it for me to challenge but I am going to do it anyway (not unlike thousands of critics or 'reformers' before me).
Who says that the id-ego ever differentiates itself the way Freud claims it does -- and in effect, locks itself in a deep, unconscious chamber, or is locked down there by the evolving ego and superego, and only let's itself be known by its 'instincts and their vicissitudes'.
Just for a minute, let us entertain the idea that the id-ego is capable of doing exactly the same thing that both the superego and ego are capable of doing -- specifically, moving up and down through different degrees of consciousness from unconscious to preconscious, to conscious elements of the Self.
Thus, we could and can differentiate between a thinking, feeling, wanting, driving, unconscious id-ego, pre-conscious id-ego, and conscious id-ego.
Most importantly, that does two different things: one, it puts the id-ego in the same light (and darkness) as the ego and superego. And two, it brings the 'id-ego' into the confines of 'The Wholistic Ego or Self' -- in other words, it doesn't separate the id from the ego like it is some 'alien from Mars' (even if it may seem or feel that way sometimes).
In even different words, if we imagine and subscribe to Freud's conceptual assumption that the id is the 'primal uncivilized ego at birth and through our earliest development when we don't have any idea what is 'socially appropriate' and what is 'socially inappropriate' and in need of 'self-censorship' -- until the internalization (introjection) of greater and greater socialization teaches us to create a 'split within ourselves' that separates our 'undifferentiated, primal, uncivilized, unsocialized id-ego or ego-id' from our evolving, more 'civilized and/or socialized ego' that 1. helps us to better meet 'social and cultural expectations'; and 2. creates a 'barrier' or 'shield' between our more primitive, uncivilized id-ego and our more socialized 'restraining reality-ego'. Finally, we might entertain -- at least I am -- the addition of one more 'ego-split' in this immediate context here and that is 'The Central Mediating (and 'Symptom-Forming') which negotiates 'solutions' between the more primal, uncivilized demands of our id-ego and our more 'restraining impulses of our reality-ego' which is taken to another level of 'splitting' in our 'Ego-Ideal' and 'Superego'.
Now, depending on how conservative or 'anally stringent' you want to be, this re-working of Freud's Classical Psychoanalysis Personality Theory is not that great a stretch upwards and outwards.
I mean think about it. In his last paper, An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1938), Freud describes the 'undifferentiated ego-id' (before the id and the ego 'split' and each become what Freud ultimately defined and described them as).
Well, this is a far cry from Freud's 1923 definition and description of the id as a 'reservoir' or 'cauldron' containing the 'life' and 'death' instincts....that at different times 'escape' or are 'released' from the restricting confines of the id, and start 'free-floating' as 'vicissitudes of the id' up towards the pre-conscious and conscious personality, and eventually present themselves as 'neurotically and/or psychotically (or in dream-fashion)' as 'unconscious symptoms' in the surface psycho-dynamics of the personality.
We have to synchronize what Freud was writing in 1923 with what he was writing in 1938, just before he died. I concur with Harry Guntrip (1971, 1973, Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and The Self) when Guntrip said that Freud was just starting to become more of a serious Object Relations theorist in 1938 before he died in 1939.
The two essays he wrote in 1938 -- 'Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defense'; and the already mentioned 'An Outline of Psychoanalysis' were certainly heading in a Object Relations direction, although 'Splitting' seemed like a 'tidbit' of an Object Relations paper stuck inside a very Victorian, Freudian, Classical Psychoanalysis paper. Specifically, in the last part of 'Splitting', Freud came back to -- what I would call his largely outdated concept of 'castration anxiety' to explain the client's creation of a 'fetish' to presumably ward off the castration anxiety somehow. Today, I think there would be easier, less convoluted ways of explaining the fetish -- like 'performance anxiety' as opposed to 'castration anxiety'.
In this view, from a client of this type's perspective, 'all women' become viewed as 'hostile, rejecting objects/figures/persons' that/who take away his ability to perform.
Thus, instead, he chooses a 'non-judging fetish object' to 'excite' him without 'having to deal with the projected and/or real negative judgments of the imagined or real 'hostile, critical woman' that he doesn't want to engage with ('castration anxiety' which should probably be viewed as a Victorian-relevant label for what we might now call 'performance-rejection anxiety' and the 'unbearable idea' attached to it -- specifically, something like this: If I do not perform properly, then I am something less than a 'real man' which fits with Adler's idea of 'the masculine protest' -- some men and women will go to great lengths to avoid such a 'masculinity-threatening' or 'feminine-threatening performance challenge').
In the first part of 'Splitting', Freud was coming back to one of his earliest ideas (1893, 1894) -- or rather Janet's which Freud undoubtedly perceived the need to differentiate himself from.
Indeed, Freud found a way with his concept of 'repression' -- and the idea of let us say a 'vertical splitting of consciousness from unconsciousness' (which would eventually become 'the splitting of the ego from the id' in 1923) as opposed to Janet's early idea of a 'splitting of consciousness' which is more of a precursor to an Object Relations type of model and suggests the visualization of a 'horizontal splitting of consciousness or the ego' into -- let us say -- 'the ego' and 'the alter-ego' -- like in the 'Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' which had been written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886 -- and was an idea followed up by Janet around 1892 just as Freud was starting to enter the 'clinical psychology and psychotherapy' picture.
What we are interested in here, is the synthesis of not only Freud's early trauma theory with his later fantasy theory, but also with the synthesis between Classical Psychoanalysis with Object Relations and Self Psychology, is the idea of 'the ego-id' (or 'id-ego) being a thinking, feeling, wanting, impulsively driving 'primal ego-state' that is with us from the day we are born to the day we die (but tends to 'go under cover' for much our life because of its 'uncivil, primal nature').
Call the id-ego not only our primal ego but also our primary ego until socialization and our 'cerebral cortex' starts to take over the more complex tasks of what Freud called our 'secondary process'. The cerebral cortex, and particularly within the cerebral cortex, the pre-frontal cortex (one of four regions of this area of the brain) is that part of our brain that, from a psychological and psychoanalytic perspective, we are calling 'The Reality Ego' and or 'The Central Mediating and Executive Ego' -- that part our mind-brain that deals with reality in whatever manner we choose to deal with it.
Topographically, the type of model I am using is much more 'compartment-laden' than Freud's easy to remember 'id-ego-superego' model, or Gestalt Therapy's 'topdog-underdog' model. Rather, it looks more like Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis model (which was built partly from an Object Relations model). From top to bottom, the DGB Multi-Integrative (Quantum) Psychoanalytic and Neo-Psychoanalytic model looks presently like this:
A/ Superego Compartments
1. The Nurturing-Unconditional Attachment Ego-Ideal and Superego;
2. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Pleasure-Seeking) Ego-Ideal and Superego;
3. The Righteous-Critical-Conditional Attachment Ego-Ideal and Superego;
B/ Ego Compartments
4. The Private-Shadow Ego;
5. The Central Mediating and Executive Ego;
6. The Reality Ego and Public Persona;
C/ Underego Compartments
7. The Nurturing-Unconditional Attachment Underego;
8. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Pleasure-Seeking) Underego;
9. The Righteous-Critical-Conditional Attachment Underego;
D/ Subsidiary Conscious, Pre-Conscious, and Unconscious Psycho-Dynamic and/or Defense-Mechanism, Ego Compartments
10. The Feeling Ego and Phenomenology of Spirit;
11. The Body Ego;
12. The Dream and Fantasy Ego;
13. The Transference Ego;
14. The Identification and Introjection Ego;
15. The Projection Ego;
16. The Sublimation Ego;
17. The Displacement Ego;
18. The Reaction-Formation Ego;
19. The 'Manic', 'Anal-OCD' and/or 'Oral-Genital Addiction' Ego-Compartment
20. The Paranoid-Schizoid (Distancing/Dissociative) and/or Borderline Personality Ego-Compartment;
21. The Depressive Personality Ego;
22. The Ambivalent, Bipolar Ego;
E/ Pre-Conscious and Unconscious Ego Processes
23. The Screening Ego and Symptom Converter
24. 'Free-Floating' Id and Transference Complexes;
25. The Id and Transference Vault;
26. The Experience-Memory-Learning-Transference (EMLT) Templates;
27. The Unconscious Id-Ego;
28. The Abyss-Ledge;
29. The Abyss;
30. The Genetic Potential Self.
-- dgb, April 28th, 2014...
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations...
-- Are Still in Process
