Philosophy
Sigmund Freud enumerates that the human psyche consists of the unconscious id, the ego (which is partly conscious and partly unconscious), and the superego (also partly conscious and partly unconscious). At first, a newborn has only an id, which consists of blind drives that seek satisfaction. In a few months, the ego is developed when the newborn experiences resistance and frustration of its drives by the outside world: it realizes that it is separate from that external world and develops a sense of self. The superego will develop later, when it has internalized the rules, prohibitions and ideals of its parents. In the meantime, the ego is the infant's structure that relates with the outside world on the basis of the reality principle, whereby the developing child learns to weigh its choices according to the consequences. This it does while pursuing or fulfilling the innate pleasure principle, whereby it seeks to gratify as many of its desires as possible.
Freud believes that the infant's developing sexual drive is focused on its mother, who becomes its first love, and views the father as a competitor and thus resents him. But while it feels this way towards its father, it also loves him. Out of fear of revenge from the father, the infant represses both its desire for the mother and its resentment for the father. The ego dumps that desire and that resentment out of consciousness for good by identifying with the same-sex parent (towards the father if the infant is male, and towards the mother, if female). When it succeeds, the superego develops.
The superego is a resident controller in the psyche: it knows what is in the conscious mind and either approves or disapproves it. Knowing this, the ego strives to repress or deny from consciousness anything that...
This places the ego between the strong but blind urges of the id and the omnipotence of the superego and the impositions of reality as well.
Sometimes too many desires or urges that need to be repressed can overburden the ego and these escape control in the disguise of slips of the tongue or accidents, oversight or forgetfulness. Two other ways by which this happens are through dreams and neuroses.
Freud maintains that the ego sometimes allows the expression of a repressed urge or desire but in a disguised and evasive form, which the superego will not detect and therefore approve. The repressed urge is expressed in imagery when in the form of dreams and in action or behavior when in the form of neurosis.
Because the ego becomes weak during sleep, repressed desires take over and express themselves in disguise as dreams. Dreams, like slips of the tongue and forgetting, are a way of compromising with repressions.
While dreams are an unconscious and private expression of repression, a neurosis is not private. It is bad, because the person is aware of his behavior or action, but cannot explain the cause of it (being unconscious). His irrationality can be a source of ridicule, fear or annoyance to others, which in turn, is cause for his unpopularity.
Dreams and neuroses are similar in that they are both camouflages of repressed desires or urges, which the ego rejects and tries to drive out of consciousness. But psychotherapists and psychologists find that there is secondary gain in neurosis: it allows escape to the person from the danger or unpleasant situation, or gives the person some power over others, such as when the afflicted person is sick. For…
