The Ego and the Id

by Sigmund Freud

This unconscious state then coincides with the latent ability to become conscious.

The state in which they resided before consciousness we call repression and the force which induced the repression8 and upheld it, we argue, is felt as resistance9 during analytical work.

It does not only include the actual unrestrained sex drive as well as the goal-inhibited and sublimated impulses derived from it, but also the self-preservation instinct, which we must ascribe to the Ego

sadism as a representative of it.91 On the basis of theoretical, biology-based considerations, let’s suppose92 there is a death instinct, for which the function is set to reducing organic living entities to a

Ego stands for “three kinds of servitude” and thus suffers from the “threats of three dangers [... ] from the outside world, from the libido of the Id, and from the harshness of the Superego.”(ibid.).