The Ego and the Id

by Sigmund Freud

shibboleth

Thus we obtain our concept of the unconscious from the theory of repression. The repressed is the prototype of the unconscious for us.

ado,

now we have three terms, conscious (Cs.), preconscious (Pcs.), and unconscious (Ucs.),

the descriptive sense there are two kinds of unconscious, but in the dynamic sense only one.

PATHOLOGICAL

Hitherto

We have said that consciousness is the surface of the mental apparatus; that is, we have ascribed it as a function to a system which is spatially the first one reached from the external world-and

All perceptions which are received from without (sense-perceptions) and from within-what we call sensations and feelings-are Cs.

mnemic

cathexes

impelling

cathexis.

theorem

Georg Groddeck,

ovum.

awry.

motility

id

Psychophysiology

‘cortical homunculus’

bewilders

The fact that this part of the ego is less firmly connected with consciousness is the novelty which calls for explanation.

acquiesces

introjection,

unduly

Oedipus

At a very early age the little boy develops an object-cathexis for his mother, which originally related to the mother’s breast and is the prototype of an object-choice on the anaclitic model; the boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him. For a time these two relationships proceed side by side, until the boy’s sexual wishes in regard to his mother become more intense and his father is perceived as an obstacle to them; from this the Oedipus complex originates.

ambivalent;

the boy’s object-cathexis of his mother must be given up. Its place may be filled by one of two things: either an identification with his mother or an intensification of his identification with his father.

schematization

preponderating.

mutatis

prerogative.’

libidinal

apprehensions

vicissitudes

Whereas the ego is essentially the representative of the external world, of reality, the superego stands in contrast to it as the representative of the internal world, of the id.

longing.

The study of mild cases of homosexuality confirms the suspicion that in this instance, too, the identification is a substitute for an affectionate object-choice which has taken the place of the aggressive, hostile attitude.

totemism.

We have also already concluded that the ego is especially under the influence of perception, and that, speaking broadly, perceptions may be said to have the same significance for the ego as instincts have for the id.

the sexual instincts or Eros,

It comprises not merely the uninhibited sexual instinct proper and the instinctual impulses of an aim-inhibited or sublimated nature derived from it, but also the self-preservative instinct, which must be assigned to the ego and which at the beginning of our analytic work we had good reason for contrasting with the sexual object-instincts.

The second class of instincts was not so easy to point to; in the end we came to recognize sa...

dualistically.

anabolism

catab...

Eros.

alloyed