![]() ![]() When something like a "nipple slip" sends us into seizures of simulated shame, we've got a problem. This may mean an individual is crippled by guilt and anxiety and commits crime in. Nasty, overreaching super-egos are a sign of psychological weakness, a fear of our own impulses. 3) Over-harsh Superego may develop is the same-sex parent is overly harsh. The harsh reality is that, at least in Freud's view, the more punitive the super-ego, the more repressed we all are. We get to pretend that we don't yell and call people stupid (Calhoun), that we don't scream with excitement in a way that conflicts with our artificial role in the world (Dean), that we don't point out obvious but possibly offensive facts (Lennon). 1 A concept similar in many ways to the Freudian superego as inhibiting censor, 2 or the negative Jungian animus, 3 the inner critic is usually experienced as an. We get to feel puffed up with censorious pride by denouncing behavior that in fact deserves far less attention than it receives. The inner critic or 'critical inner voice' is a concept used in popular psychology and psychotherapy to refer to a subpersonality that judges and demeans a person. These sanctimonious, indulgent, pompous, morally superior reactions to celebrity acting out episodes are our little superego-trips. It-the super-ego-stands above the ego as its judge and censor. It's one portion of Freud's tripartite structural model of the mind, along with the ego and the id. What is the super-ego? An internalized conscience, our mostly unconscious sense of guilt. The super-ego trip ought to be just as well known. But then about Alan Elms's wonderful concept of the "super-ego trip." Everyone's heard the expression ego-trip. First of all about how pathetically thin-skinned and fake polite we all are. Doubtless you've already thought of about a zillion additional examples. ![]() He too issued the requisite bewildered and in his case sideways apology. Long ago John Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. He lost his lead in the polls, apologized (naturally), and dropped out of the primary. There was Howard Dean, who screamed at a rally-so unpresidential! (Personally, I figure Presidents ought to scream a lot more). Dutifully, Calhoun apologized to Jim Nance. Then the celebrity/notable appears on Larry King or Oprah or Wolf Blitzer and issues a hackneyed and clearly less than heartfelt apology accompanied, if he or she can act, by crocodile tears.Ī recent example is Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun who, of all things, yelled at a reporter and called him stupid. Much fake abashed righteous indignation ensues. Over one or more days the celebrity/notable is pilloried. The press and mainstream media pounce (24 hour news cycle! Got to have something to say something about). Some major or even minor celebrity/notable says or does something he or she "shouldn't" have. It's embarrassingly formulaic, and like all such formulas, pathological in its compulsiveness and utter lack of imagination. Thus Freud argues for-though he does not use the term-a “social psychology,” or a way of explaining society based on the accumulated effects of individuals’ minds.You know the (by now) ancient rite. Freud puzzles out whether civilization is itself a “good” or “progressive” thing: whether it makes human beings happier, healthier, and freer than an ideal “state of nature” before, or outside, civilization.įreud concludes that the very same processes and antagonisms operating in the individual mind are the forces shaping whole civil societies. Freud argued that unconscious drives shape human beings’ lives-who they are and why they do what they do.Ĭivilization and its Discontents is a thought-experiment by Freud: an essay attempting to determine whether the same unconscious impulses that Freud saw as driving individual’s behavior could also be used to describe the formation of human civilization. In Freud’s theory of mind, humans generally are aware of the desires that drive their behaviors, but oftentimes they aren’t-and that makes these latter impulses unconscious. ![]() ![]() This may unconsciously drive the individual to perform criminal acts in order to satisfy the super egos. His theory of “psychoanalysis,” which he developed over the course of his lifetime, has many aspects-but can be summed up, primarily, as the descriptive study of a system of internal checks and balances that regulate emotion and action.įreud believed that the mind could be divided into the ego (the “I”), the id (deep, sometimes perverse, desires) and the superego (the warden or overseer, keeping id and ego in check). A healthy superego is kind but firm, in contrast an excessively punitive or overly harsh superego means the individual may never be able to fulfil its standards so constantly feel a sense of inadequacy and thus guilt and anxiety. Sigmund Freud was a psychologist, therapist, and intellectual concerned with the forces at work in the human mind. ![]()
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